He said: "You were bridesmaid to my mother. You are the Celia

Paige of her letters."

"She is always Connie Berkley to me. I loved no woman better. I

love her still."

"I found that out yesterday. That is why I dared come. I found,

among the English letters, one from you to her, written--after."

"I wrote her again and again. She never replied. Thank God, she

knew I loved her to the last."

He rested on the tabletop and stood leaning over and looking down.

"Dear Mr. Berkley," she murmured gently.

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He straightened himself, passed a hesitating hand across his

forehead, ruffling the short curly hair. Then his preoccupied gaze

wandered. Ailsa turned toward him at the same moment, and

instantly a flicker of malice transformed the nobility of his set

features:

"It seems," he said, "that you and I are irrevocably related in all

kinds of delightful ways, Mrs. Paige. Your sister-in-law very

charmingly admits it, graciously overlooks and pardons my many

delinquencies, and has asked me to come again. Will you ask me,

too?"

Ailsa merely looked at him.

Mrs. Craig said, laughing: "I knew you were all Ormond and entirely

Irish as soon as I came in the do'--befo' I became aware of your

racial fluency. I speak fo' my husband and myse'f when I say,

please remember that our do' is ve'y wide open to our own kin--and

that you are of them----"

"Oh, I'm all sorts of things beside--" He paused for a

second--"Cousin Celia," he added so lightly that the grace with

which he said it covered the impudence, and she laughed in

semi-critical approval and turned to Ailsa, whose smile in response

was chilly--chillier still when Berkley did what few men have done

convincingly since powdered hair and knee-breeches became

unfashionable--bent to salute Celia Craig's fingertips. Then he

turned to her and took his leave of her in a conventional manner

entirely worthy of the name his mother bore,--and her mother before

her, and many a handsome man and many a beautiful woman back to

times when a great duke stood unjustly attainted, and the Ormonds

served their king with steel sword and golden ewer; and served him

faithfully and well.

Camilla Lent called a little later. Ailsa was in the backyard

garden, a trowel in her hand, industriously loosening the earth

around the prairie roses.

"Camilla," she said, looking up from where she was kneeling among

the shrubs, "what was it you said this morning about Mr. Berkley

being some unpleasant kind of man?"




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