“Oh, stop fooling, there’s a good girl,” exclaimed Robert, passing his hand over his forehead. “Any one would think you were seven instead of seventeen. And I’ve got a headache.” “Nothing but naughty temper because mother found you out!” declared Diana, irrepressibly. “You’ve brought her up very badly,” said Mayne, turning to Cecily. “I _gave_ her up long ago,” laughed Cecily. She began to talk amusingly, quite in her old fashion. A fantastic sense of the ludicrousness of life, of all situations that seem tragic, excited her to trembling laughter. Her sense of humor had been roused, bitterly roused, but it animated her as nothing else could have done, and for the rest of the evening Cecily was her most brilliant self. That Robert was not listening to her remarks was a circumstance which, at an early stage of the evening, Mayne noticed with some incomprehension and more resentment. As his visit lengthened, the incomprehension vanished. CHAPTER VIII A week later Kingslake was sitting in his study, before a table littered with papers, doing nothing. It was nearly twelve o’clock. At half-past one Philippa Burton was coming to lunch. He had not seen her now for eight days, a period which, he impatiently admitted to himself, had seemed more like eight weeks, and the morning had appeared interminable. She was to have gone to the rooms his wife had taken for her in the village, the day after Mayne’s arrival, but she had written to Cecily that a piece of work--a commission--must keep her longer in town. He thought of her incessantly--and confusedly. She was the most wonderful woman he had ever met; the cleverest, the most elusive, the purest-minded. That was so touching, so adorable in Philippa, yet at unguarded moments he wondered if it could be cured. Philippa as a friend, an inspirer, a twin soul! How exquisite she had been--_would_ be. But Philippa as a mistress? The thought would obtrude. He took it from its depths, and caressed it at furtive moments, thinking with rapture of her eyes, her mysterious hair--then thrust it hastily back, piling lilies of thought above its hiding-place. It would have surprised him to know he was thinking at second hand, but Robert seldom dug to the depths. It was characteristic of him that he never saw the roots of his own motives and actions,--it was merely their interlacing leaves and flowers to which he directed his attention.