"Eileen? Why, don't you--why, of _course_, you don't know yet that I've
taken Eileen for my own. I didn't want to write you; I wanted first to
see how it would turn out; and when I saw that it was turning out
perfectly, I thought it better to wait until you could return and hear
all about it from me, because one can't write that sort of thing--"

"Nina!"

"What, dear?" she said, startled.

"Who the dickens _is_ Eileen?"

"Philip! You are precisely like Austin; you grow impatient of
preliminary details when I'm doing my very best attempting to explain
just as clearly as I can. Now I will go on and say that Eileen is Molly
Erroll's daughter, and the courts appointed Austin and me guardians for
her and for her brother Gerald."

"Oh!"

"Now is it clear to you?"

"Yes," he said, thinking of the tragedy which had left the child so
utterly alone in the world, save for her brother and a distant kinship
by marriage with the Gerards.

For a while he sat brooding, arms loosely folded, immersed once more in
his own troubles.