Althea knew that if she looked like a dove, she felt like a very fluttering one. She was much moved by this welcoming of Mr. Digby to his home, and she wondered if the quickened beating of her heart manifested itself in any change of glance or colour. She soon felt, however, as she distributed teacups and looked about her circle, that if she were visibly moved Mr. Digby would not be aware of the fact. The fact, obviously, that he was most aware of was Lady Pickering's presence, and he was talking to her with a lightness and gaiety that she could presently only define, for her own discomfort, as flirtation. Althea had had little experience of flirting, and the little had not been personal. It had remained for her always a rather tasteless, rather ludicrous spectacle; yet Mr. Digby's manner of flirting, if flirting it was, was neither. It was graceful, unemphatic, composed of playful repartee and merry glances. It was Lady Pickering who overdid her side of the dialogue and brought to it a significance that Mr. Digby's eyes and smile disowned even while they evoked it. One of the things of which Mr. Digby had shown himself most completely unaware was Franklin Kane, who sat, as usual, just outside the circle in the sun, balancing his tea-cup on his raised knees and 'Fletcherising' a slice of cake. Gerald had glanced at him as one might glance--Althea had felt it keenly--at some nice little insect on one's path, a pleasant insect, but too small to warrant any attention beyond a casual recognition of type. But Franklin, who had a casual interest in nobody, was very much aware of the newcomer, and he gazed attentively at Gerald Digby as he had gazed at Helen on the first evening of their meeting, with less of interest perhaps, but with much the same dispassionate intentness; and Althea felt sure that he already did not approve of Gerald Digby. She asked Helen that evening, lightly, as Helen had asked an equivalent question about Franklin and Miss Buckston, whether Mr. Digby and Lady Pickering were in love; she felt sure that they were not in love, which made the question easier. 'Oh no; not at all, I fancy,' said Helen. 'I only asked,' said Althea, 'because it seemed the obvious explanation.' 'You mean their way of flirting.' 'Yes. I suppose I'm not used to flirtation, not to such extreme flirtation. I don't like it, do you?' 'I don't know that I do; but Gerald is only a flirt through sympathy and good nature. It's Frances who leads him on; she is a flirt by temperament.' 'I'm glad of that,' said Althea. 'I'm sure he is too nice to be one by temperament.' 'After all, it's a very harmless diversion.' 'Do you think it harmless? It pains me to see a sacred thing being mimicked.' 'I hardly think it's a sacred thing Frances and Gerald are mimicking,' Helen smiled. 'It's love, isn't it?' 'Love of such a trivial order that I can't feel anything is being taken in vain.'