"I think it will be a clever man who can do that against my will—and over the telephone," replied Ailsa gayly. "I shan't be gone more than a minute or two, Kathie dear; and while I'm away, you might get your hat and be ready for a stroll in the grounds when I come back. And you, too, Mrs. Raynor, if you will. The weather is glorious, and one might as well spend the time waiting for the General's and Mr. Harry's return in the open air as cooped up here at half-past nine o'clock on a brilliant April morning."
"My dear, you are wonderful, positively wonderful," said Mrs. Raynor admiringly. "How do you maintain your composure under such trying circumstances? Look at Katharine and me—both of us shaking like the proverbial aspen leaf and looking as washed out as though neither of us had slept a wink all night; and you as fresh and serene as the morning itself. No, I don't think I will go out, thank you. There may be people with cameras you know; and to be snapshotted for the edification of the readers of some abominable halfpenny paper——"
Ailsa did not wait to hear the conclusion of the remark, but slipped out, went hastily to the library and the telephone, and lost not a moment in making her presence known to the caller at the other end of the line. She had barely spoken three words into the receiver, however, when she gave a little start, eyes and lips were involved in a radiant smile, and her face became all red and warm with sudden blushes.
"Yes, yes, of course I recognize your voice!" she said in answer to a query unheard by any ears but hers. "How wonderful you are! You find out everything. I had meant to write and tell you, but we came up so unexpectedly and—— What! Yes, I can hear you very distinctly. Pardon? Yes. I am listening." Then letting her voice drop off into silence she stood very, very still, with ever-widening eyes, lips parted, and a look of great seriousness steadily settling down over her paling countenance.
She had said that she would be absent for but a minute or two; it was five or six, however, before she came back, to find Lady Katharine and Mrs. Raynor just as she had left them.
"No, it wasn't a reporter," she said gayly in response to Mrs. Raynor's inquiring look. "It was a dear old friend"—blushing rosily—"a Mr. Philip Barch, whom I first met through my uncle, Sir Horace Wyvern, in the days before his second marriage. Mr. Barch has asked if he may be permitted to call this morning, and I have taken the liberty of saying that he may."
"Take a further one, dear, and ask him to stop to luncheon when he comes," said Mrs. Raynor. "When a girl blushes like that over the mere mentioning of a man's name—— Oh, well, I wasn't always fifty-two, my dear, and I flatter myself that I know the duties of a hostess."
Miss Lorne's only response was another and a yet more radiant blush and an immediate return to the side of the slim, dark girl standing in the recess of the window.
"Kathie, you are positively lazy," she said. "You haven't budged an inch since I left, and I distinctly asked you to get your hat."
"I know it," admitted Lady Katharine. "But, Ailsa, dear, I simply couldn't. I am afraid Uncle John and Harry may return, and you know how anxious I am."