"I'm going to say 'em," insisted Camilla with malicious satisfaction. "You've jeered at me because I'm tender-hearted about men. Now my chance has come!" Ailsa began patiently: "There were scarcely a dozen words spoken----" Camilla, delighted, shook her dark curls. "You've said that before," she laughed. "Oh, you pretty minx!--you and your dozen words!" Ailsa Paige arose in wrath and stretched out a warning arm among her leafless roses; but Camilla placed both hands on the fence top and leaned swiftly down from the veranda steps, "Forgive me, dear," she said penitently. "I was only trying to torment you. Kiss me and make up. I know you too well to believe that you could care for a man of that kind." Ailsa's face was very serious, but she lifted herself on tiptoe and they exchanged an amicable salute across the fence. After a moment she said: "What did you mean by 'a man of _that_ kind'?" Camilla's shrug was expressive. "There are stories about him." Ailsa looked thoughtfully into space. "Well you won't say such things to me again, about any man--will you, dear?" "You never minded them before. You used to laugh." "But this time," said Ailsa Paige, "it is not the least bit funny. We scarcely exchanged----" She checked herself, flushing with annoyance. Camilla, leaning on the garden fence, had suddenly buried her face in both arms. In feminine plumpness, when young, there is usually something left of the schoolgirl giggler. The pretty girl below remained disdainfully indifferent. She dug, she clipped, she explored, inhaling, with little thrills, the faint mounting odour of forest loam and sappy stems. "I really must go back to New York and start my own garden," she said, not noticing Camilla's mischief. "London Terrace will be green in another week." "How long do you stay with the Craigs, Ailsa?" "Until the workmen finish painting my house and installing the new plumbing. Colonel Arran is good enough to look after it." Camilla, her light head always ringing with gossip, watched Ailsa curiously. "It's odd," she observed, "that Colonel Arran and the Craigs never exchange civilities." "Mrs. Craig doesn't like him," said Ailsa simply. "You do, don't you?" "Naturally. He was my guardian." "My uncle likes him. To me he has a hard face." "He has a sad face," said Ailsa Paige. CHAPTER III Ailsa and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Craig, had been unusually reticent over their embroidery that early afternoon, seated together in the front room, which was now flooded with sunshine--an attractive, intimate room, restful and pretty in spite of the unlovely Victorian walnut furniture. Through a sunny passageway they could look into Ailsa's bedroom--formerly the children's nursery--where her maid sat sewing. Outside the open windows, seen between breezy curtains, new buds already clothed the great twisted ropes of pendant wistaria with a silvery-green down.