group. 'Hello, Helen, how are you?
Hello, Charlie; and how nice to find you, Frances.'

He was introduced to the others, continuing to smile with marked
approbation, Althea felt, upon Mildred and Dorothy, who certainly looked
charming, and then he dropped on the grass beside Lady Pickering's
chair.

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.

'