the album. What an insolently
reckless head it was! She thought that she had never before seen
the back of any man's head so significant of character--or the want
of it. And the same quality--or the lack of it--now seemed to her
to pervade his supple body, his well-set shoulders, his voice,
every movement, every feature--something everywhere about him that
warned and troubled.

[Illustration: "What an insolently reckless head it was!"]

Suddenly the blood burnt her cheeks with a perfectly
incomprehensible desire to see his face again. She heard her
sister-in-law saying:

"We Paiges and Berkleys are kin to the Ormonds and the Earls of
Ossory. The Estcourts, the Paiges, the Craigs, the Lents, the
Berkleys, intermarried a hundred years ago. . . . My grandmother
knew yours, but the North is very strange in such matters. . . .
Why did you never before come?"

He said: "It's one of those things a man is always expecting to do,
and is always astonished that he hasn't done. Am I unpardonable?"

"I did not mean it in that way."

He turned his dark, comely head and looked at her as they bent
together above the album.

"I know you didn't. My answer was not frank. The reason I never
came to you before was that--I did not know I would be welcomed."

Their voices dropped. Ailsa standing by the window, watching the
orioles in the maple, could no longer distinguish what they were
saying.

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.

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 m