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Miss Carrington talked on lightly, not overdoing her carelessness, but with a voice silvery and indifferent. She watched Kit as she talked and saw him redden, trying boyishly to appear at ease.

“She isn’t a Cleavedge girl; she came from Connecticut, Aunt Anne,” Kit said.

“That’s a state I like!” Miss Carrington approved, heartily. “It’s odd—kindly, too—the present fashion of calling unattached women girls. The letter sounded mature. I suppose it is because she is earning her living that you speak of her as a girl. Is she a widow? Didn’t—no; you didn’t call her Miss Dallas.”

“Good gracious, no; she isn’t a widow!” cried Kit, and instantly regretted his vehemence, for his aunt raised her eyebrows. “Miss Dallas is young; she is a girl, a girl with a lot of girlhood in her; the kind they used to call ‛maidenly,’ you know,” Kit continued.

“I suppose you are forced to speak of maidenly as an obsolete term, Kit, my dear, because what it stood for is out of fashion,” observed Miss Carrington. She had found out all that she wanted to know for this time and was too wise to pursue the subject.