"No, it was fo' you to speak of it first," said Celia Craig gently.
"But you did not know that."

"Why?"

"There are reasons, Honey-bud."

"What reasons?"

"They are not yo' business, dear," said her sister-in-law quietly.

Ailsa had already risen to examine herself in the mirror. Now she
looked back over her shoulder and down into Celia's pretty
eyes--eyes as unspoiled as her own.

In Celia Craig remained that gracious and confident faith in
kinship which her Northern marriage had neither extinguished nor
chilled. The young man who waited below was a Berkley, a kinsman.
Name and quality were keys to her hospitality. There was also
another key which this man possessed, and it fitted a little locked
compartment in Celia Craig's heart. But Ailsa had no knowledge of
this. And now Mrs. Craig was considering the advisability of
telling her--not all, perhaps,--but something of how matters stood
between the House of Craig and the House of Berkley. But not how
matters stood with the House of Arran.

"Honey-bud," she said, "you must be ve'y polite to this young man."

"I expect to be. Only I don't quite understand why he came so