Sometime later Philippa with a sigh of content opens her eyes, she is still too sleepy to think of moving, so she remains quite still, presently the sound of voices breaks upon her ears, but she does not heed them.  ‘Oh—­how—­comfortable I am,’ she thinks and is just dropping off to sleep again when she hears her name spoken!

‘Philippa,’ someone is saying.  ‘Yes; she is a dear little girl.’

‘That’s Mab’s voice.  She thinks me a dear little girl, does she,’ comments Miss Seaton.

’Poor child; she is so like what her mother was at that age.  Does she know about her?’

Lippa recognises Lady Dadford’s voice, but it never enters her head that she ought not to listen.

‘No,’ replies Mabel.  ’You see she was such a baby at the time, and afterwards George thought it better that she should remain under the belief that she is dead; she is so very sensitive—­’

‘I daresay your husband is right,’ says Lady Dadford.  ’It was all very sad.  At first, you know, the doctors had hopes that her reason would come back, but they gave it up after a year.  Does your—­’

But Philippa hears no more.  She has listened breathlessly, her colour coming and going—­What does it all mean?  Is it true, is it true?  The mother she had always thought of as long since dead, is she alive and mad!  Oh!  ‘What shall I do?’ she asks herself, while her brain feels on fire.  ’Mad?  Then I might go mad too!  Oh, horrible thought!  Jimmy, Jimmy, what would you say if you knew?  Oh, it is all cruel, cruel—­’ And then Philippa sits very still and ponders over many things, till the voices of the others laughing and talking come nearer and nearer.  With an effort she rises.  ’I must not show that anything has happened, but oh! if I must give up Jimmy,’ and with a little sob she leans her head against the wall for a moment, then stepping forward, she meets the others.

‘Are you rested?’ asks Lord Helmdon.  ’I do believe you have been asleep, what!’

‘Yes,’ replies Lippa.  ‘I have been fast asleep—­’

‘Dreaming,’ suggests Miss Appleby, a young lady given to sentiment.

‘Of me, I hope,’ puts in Chubby.

‘Now, why you of all people, I should like to know,’ says Dalrymple, at which they all laugh.

CHAPTER VII

Lippa is strangely silent on the way home and all the evening she avoids being alone with Dalrymple, but Jimmy gets uneasy and on saying Good-night adds in a low tone, ’Come into the garden early to-morrow, I want to talk to you.’

‘Very well,’ she replies, ‘I have something to tell you too.’  She says this so gravely, and flushes a little, that he ponders for some time on what she can have to tell him, and Philippa goes up to her bedroom, her head throbbing and with a wild desire to cry.

‘Good-night, dear,’ says Mabel, ’I am so tired I really cannot stay and talk to you to-night, and you, child, you look knocked up, go to bed at once.’