"Perhaps.... But, Jim, there is no peasant ancestry in that child, I am sure, whatever else there may be."
"Just rascally aristocracy?"
The Countess de Moidrey laughed. She had married for love; she could afford to.
"I am Yankee enough," she said, "to be sensitive to that subtle and indescribable something which always characterizes the old French aristocracy. One is always aware of it; it is never absent; it clings always as the perfume clings to an ancient cabinet of sandalwood and ivory.
"And, Jim, it seems to me that it clings, faintly, to the child Philippa.... It's an odd thing to say. Perhaps if I had been born to the title, I might not have detected it. What is familiar from birth is rarely noticed. But my unspoiled, nervous, and Yankee nose seems to detect it in this young girl.... And my Yankee nose, being born republican, is a very, very keen one, and makes exceedingly few mistakes."
"You intend, then, to keep her as a companion for the present?"
"If she will stay. I don't quite know whether she wants to. I don't entirely understand her. She does not seem unhappy; she is sweet, considerate, agreeable, and perfectly willing to do anything asked of her. She is never exacting; she asks nothing even of the servants. It's her attitude toward them which shows her quality. They feel it—they all are aware of it. My maid adores her and is forever hanging around to aid her in a hundred little offices, which Philippa accepts because it gives pleasure to my maid, and for that reason alone.
"I tell you, Jim, if anybody thinks Philippa complex, it is a mistake. Her heart and mind are virginal, whatever her experience may have been; she is as simple and unspoiled as the children of that tall young King yonder, Albert of Belgium—God bless him! And that is the truth concerning Philippa—upon whom a suspicious world is going to place no value whatever because no rivets, ecclesiastical or legal, have irrevocably fastened to her the name she bears in ignorance of her own."
Peggy Brooks, a dark-haired, fresh-faced girl, came out on the terrace, nodded a familiar greeting to Warner, and looked around in search of Philippa.
Her sister said in a low voice: