"You proposed, I imagine, that Mrs. Friend should go with you?"

"Oh, yes, to my dressmaker's. Then I would arrange for her to go somewhere to lunch—Debenham's, perhaps."

"And it was your idea then to go alone—to meet Lord Donald?" He looked up.

"He would wait for me in the lounge at the Ritz. It's quite simple!"

Philip Buntingford laughed—good-humouredly.

"Well, it is very kind of you to have told me so frankly, Helena—because now I shall prevent it. It is the last thing in the world that your mother would have wished, that you should be seen at the Ritz alone with Lord Donald. I therefore have her authority with me in asking you either to write or telegraph to him again to-night, giving up the plan. Better still if you would depute me to do it. It is really a very foolish plan—if I may say so."

"Why?"

"Because—well, there are certain things a girl of nineteen can't do without spoiling her chances in life—and one of them is to be seen about alone with a man like Lord Donald."

"And again I ask—why?"

"I really can't discuss his misdoings with you, Helena. Won't you trust me in the matter? I thought I had made it plain that having been devoted to your mother, I was prepared to be equally devoted to you, and wished you to be as happy and free as possible."

"That's an appeal to sentiment," said Helena, resolutely. "Of course I know it all sounds horrid. You've been as nice as possible; and anybody who didn't sympathize with my views would think me a nasty, ungrateful toad. But I'm not going to be coaxed into giving them up, any more than I'm going to be bullied."

Lord Buntingford surveyed her. The habitual slight pucker—as though of anxiety or doubt—in his brow was much in evidence. It might have meant the chronic effort of a short-sighted man to see. But the fine candid eyes were not short-sighted. The pucker meant something deeper.

"Of course I should like to understand what your views are," he said at last, throwing away one cigarette, and lighting another.

Helena's look kindled. She looked handsomer and more maenad-like than ever, as she stood leaning against Buntingford's writing-table, her arms folded, one slim foot crossed over the other.

"The gist of them is," she said eagerly, "that we—the women of the present day—are not going to accept our principles—moral—or political—or economic—on anybody's authority. You seem, Cousin Philip, in my case at any rate, to divide the world into two sets of people, moral and immoral, good and bad—desirable and undesirable—that kind of thing! And you expect me to know the one set, and ignore the other set. Well, we don't see it that way at all. We think that everybody is a pretty mixed lot. I know I am myself. At any rate I'm not going to begin my life by laying down a heap of rules about things I don't understand—or by accepting them from you, or anybody. If Lord Donald's a bad man, I want to know why he is a bad man—and then I'll decide. If he revolts my moral sense, of course I'll cut him. But I won't take anybody else's moral sense for judge. We've got to overhaul that sort of thing from top to bottom."

Buntingford looked thoughtfully at the passionate speaker. Should he—could he argue with her? Could he show her, for instance, a letter, or parts of it, which he had received that very morning from poor Luke Preston, his old Eton and Oxford friend? No!—it would be useless. In her present mood she might treat it so as to rouse his own temper—let alone the unseemliness of the discussion it must raise between them. Or should he give her a fairly full biography of Jim Donald, as he happened to know it? He revolted against the notion, astonished to find how strong certain old-fashioned instincts still were in his composition. And, after all, he had said a good deal the night before, at dinner, when Helena's invitation to a man he despised as a coward and a libertine had been first sprung upon him. There really was only one way out. He took it.

"Well, Helena, I'm very sorry," he said slowly. "Your views are very interesting. I should like some day to discuss them with you. But the immediate business is to stop this Ritz plan. You really won't stop it yourself?"

"Certainly not!" said Helena, her breath fluttering.

"Well, then, I must write to Donald myself. I happen to possess the means of making it impossible for him to meet you at the Ritz next Wednesday, Helena; and I shall use them. You must make some other arrangement."

"What means?" she demanded. She had turned very pale.

"Ah, no!—that you must leave to me. Look here, Helena"—his tone softened—"can't we shake hands on it, and make up? I do hate quarrelling with your mother's daughter."

Involuntarily, through all her rage, Helena was struck by the extreme sensitiveness of the face opposite her—a sensitiveness often disguised by the powerful general effect of the man's head and eyes. In a calmer mood she might have said to herself that only some past suffering could have produced it. At the moment, however, she was incapable of anything but passionate resentment.

All the same there was present in her own mind an ideal of what the action and bearing of a girl in her position should be, which, with the help of pride, would not allow her to drift into mere temper. She put her hands firmly behind her; so that Buntingford was forced to withdraw his; but she kept her self-possession.

"I don't see what there is but quarrelling before us, Cousin Philip, if you are to proceed on these lines. Are you really going to keep me to my promise?"

"To let me take care of you—for these two years? It was not a promise to me, Helena."

The girl's calm a little broke down.

"Mummy would never have made me give it," she said fiercely, "if she had known—"

"Well, you can't ask her now," he said gently. "Hadn't we better make the best of it?"

She scorned to reply. He opened the door for her, and she swept through it.

Left to himself, Buntingford gave a great stretch.

"That was strenuous!"—he said to himself—"uncommonly strenuous. How many times a week shall I have to do it? Can't Cynthia Welwyn do anything? I'll go and see Cynthia this afternoon."

With which very natural, but quite foolish resolution, he at last succeeded in quieting his own irritation, and turning his mind to a political speech he had to make next week in his own village.



CHAPTER V

Cynthia Welwyn was giving an account of her evening at Beechmark to her elder sister, Lady Georgina. They had just met in the little drawing-room of Beechmark Cottage, and tea was coming in. It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than the two sisters presented. They were the daughters of a peer belonging to what a well-known frequenter of great houses and great families before the war used to call "the inferior aristocracy"—with an inflection of voice caught no doubt from the great families themselves. Yet their father had been an Earl, the second of his name, and was himself the son of a meteoric personage of mid-Victorian days—parliamentary lawyer, peer, and Governor of an Indian Presidency, who had earned his final step in the peerage by the skilful management of a little war, and had then incontinently died, leaving his family his reputation, which was considerable, and his savings, which were disappointingly small. Lady Cynthia and Lady Georgina were his only surviving children, and the earldom was extinct.

The sisters possessed a tiny house in Brompton Square, and rented Beechmark Cottage from Lord Buntingford, of whom their mother, long since dead, had been a cousin. The cottage stood within the enclosure of the park, and to their connection with the big house the sisters owed a number of amenities,—game in winter, flowers and vegetables in summer—which were of importance to their small income. Cynthia Welwyn, however, could never have passed as anybody's dependent. She thanked her cousin occasionally for the kindnesses of which his head gardener and his game-keeper knew much more than he did; and when he said impatiently—"Please never thank for that sort of thing!" she dropped the subject as lightly as she had raised it. Secretly she felt that such things, and much more, were her due. She had not got from life all she should have got; and it was only natural that people should make it up to her a little.

For Cynthia, though she had wished to marry, was unmarried, and a secret and melancholy conviction now sometimes possessed her that she would remain Cynthia Welwyn to the end. She knew very well that in the opinion of her friends she had fallen between two stools. Her neighbour, Sir Richard Watson, had proposed to her twice,—on the last occasion some two years before the war. She had not been able to make up her mind to accept him, because on the whole she was more in love with her cousin, Philip Buntingford, and still hoped that his old friendship for her might turn to something deeper. But the war had intervened, and during its four years she and Buntingford had very much lost sight of each other. She had taken her full share in the county war work; while he was absorbed body and soul by the Admiralty.

And now that they were meeting again as of old, she was very conscious, in some undefined way, that she had lost ground with him. Uneasily she felt that her talk sometimes bored him; yet she could not help talking. In the pre-war days, when they met in a drawing-room full of people, he had generally ended his evening beside her. Now his manner, for all its courtesy, seemed to tell her that those times were done; that she was four years older; that she had lost the first brilliance of her looks; and that he himself had grown out of her ken. Helena's young unfriendly eyes had read her rightly. She did wish fervently to recapture Philip Buntingford; and saw no means of doing so. Meanwhile Sir Richard, now demobilized, had come back from the war bringing great glory with him, as one of the business men whom the Army had roped in to help in its vast labour and transport organization behind the lines. He too had reappeared at Beechmark Cottage. But he too was four years older—and dreadfully preoccupied, it seemed to her, with a thousand interests which had mattered nothing to him in the old easy days.

Yet Cynthia Welwyn was still an extremely attractive and desirable woman, and was quite aware of it, as was her elder sister, Lady Georgina, who spent her silent life in alternately admiring and despising the younger. Lady Georgina was short, thin, and nearly white-haired. She had a deep voice, which she used with a harsh abruptness, startling to the newcomer. But she used it very little. Cynthia's friends, were used to see her sitting absolutely silent behind the tea-urn at breakfast or tea, filling the cups while Cynthia handed them and Cynthia talked; and they had learned that it was no use at all to show compassion and try to bring her into the conversation. A quiet rather stony stare, a muttered "Ah" or "Oh," were all that such efforts produced. Some of the frequenters of the cottage drawing-room were convinced that Lady Georgina was "not quite all there." Others had the impression of something watchful and sinister; and were accustomed to pity "dear Cynthia" for having to live with so strange a being.

But in truth the sisters suited each other very fairly, and Lady Georgina found a good deal more tongue when she was alone with Cynthia than at other times.

To the lively account that Cynthia had been giving her of the evening at Beechmark, and the behaviour of Helena Pitstone, Lady Georgina had listened in a sardonic silence; and at the end of it she said—

"What ever made the man such a fool?"

"Who?—Buntingford? My dear, what could he do? Rachel Pitstone was his greatest friend in the world, and when she asked him just the week before she died, how could he say No?" Lady Georgina murmured that in that case Rachel Pitstone also had been a fool—

"Unless, of course, she wanted the girl to marry Buntingford. Why, Philip's only forty-four now. A nice age for a guardian! Of course it's not proper. The neighbours will talk."

"Oh, no,—not with a chaperon. Besides nobody minds anything odd nowadays."

Cynthia meanwhile as she lay stretched in a deep arm-chair, playing with the tea-spoon in her shapely fingers, was a pleasant vision. Since coming in from the village, she had changed her tweed coat and skirt for a tea-frock of some soft silky stuff, hyacinth blue in colour; and Georgina, for whom tea-frocks were a silly abomination, and who was herself sitting bolt upright in a shabby blue serge some five springs old, could not deny the delicate beauty of her sister's still fresh complexion and pale gold hair, nor the effectiveness of the blue dress in combination with them. She did not really want Cynthia to look older, nor to see her ill-dressed; but all the same there were many days when Cynthia's mature perfections roused a secret irritation in her sister—a kind of secret triumph also in the thought that, in the end, Time would be the master even of Cynthia. Perhaps after all she would marry. It did look as though Sir Richard Watson, if properly encouraged, and indemnified for earlier rebuffs, might still mean business. As for Philip Buntingford, it was only Cynthia's vanity that had ever made her imagine him in love with her. Lady Georgina scoffed at the notion.

These fragmentary reflections, and others like them were passing rapidly and disconnectedly through the mind of the elder sister, when her ear caught the sound of footsteps in the drive. Drawing aside a corner of the muslin curtain beside her, which draped one of the French windows of the low room, she perceived the tall figure and scarcely perceptible limp of Lord Buntingford. Cynthia too saw him, and ceased to lounge. She quietly re-lit the tea-kettle, and took a roll of knitting from a table near her. Then as the front bell rang through the small house, she threw a scarcely perceptible look at her sister. Would Georgie "show tact," and leave her and Philip alone, or would she insist on her rights and spoil his visit? Georgina made no sign.

Buntingford entered, flushed with his walk, and carrying a bunch of blue-bells which he presented to Lady Georgina.

"I gathered them in Cricket Wood. The whole wood is a sea of blue. You and Cynthia must really go and see them."

He settled himself in a chair, and plunged into tea and small talk as though to the manner born. But all the time Cynthia, while approving his naval uniform, and his general picturesqueness, was secretly wondering what he had come about. For although he was enjoying a well-earned leave, the first for two years, and had every right to idle, the ordinary afternoon call of country life, rarely, as she knew, came into the scheme of his day. The weather was beautiful and she had made sure that he would be golfing on a well-known links some three miles off.

Presently the small talk flagged, and Buntingford began to fidget. Slowly Lady Georgina rose from her seat, and again extinguished the flame under the silver kettle. Would she go, or would she not go? Cynthia dropped some stitches in the tension of the moment. Then Buntingford got up to open the door for Georgina, who, without deigning to make any conventional excuse for her departure, nevertheless departed.

Buntingford returned to his seat, picked up Cynthia's ball of wool, and sat holding it, his eyes on the down-dropped head of his cousin, and on the beautiful hands holding the knitting-needles. Yes, she was still very good-looking, and had been sensible enough not to spoil herself by paint and powder, unlike that silly child, Helena, who was yet so much younger—twenty-two years younger, almost. It seemed incredible. But he could reckon Cynthia's age to a day; for they had known each other very well as children, and he had often given her a birthday present, till the moment when, in her third season, Cynthia had peremptorily put an end to the custom. Then he had gone abroad, and there had been a wide gap of years when they had never seen each other at all. And now, it was true, she did often bore him, intellectually. But at this moment, he was not bored—quite the contrary. The sunny cottage room, with its flowers and books and needlework, and a charming woman as its centre, evidently very glad to see him, and ready to welcome any confidences he might give her, produced a sudden sharp effect upon him. That hunger for something denied him—the "It" which he was always holding at bay—sprang upon him, and shook his self-control.

"We've known each other a long time, haven't we, Cynthia?" he said, smiling, and holding out her ball of wool.

Cynthia hardly concealed her start of pleasure. She looked up, shaking her hair from her white brow and temples with a graceful gesture, half responsive, half melancholy.

"So long!" she said—"it doesn't bear thinking of."

"Not at all. You haven't aged a bit. I want you to help me in something, Cynthia. You remember how you helped me out of one or two scrapes in the old days?"

They both laughed. Cynthia remembered very well. That scrape, for instance, with the seductive little granddaughter of the retired village school-master—a veritable Ancient of Days, who had been the witness of an unlucky kiss behind a hedge, and had marched up instanter, in his wrath, to complain to Lord Buntingford grand-pere. Or that much worse scrape, when a lad of nineteen, with not enough to do in his Oxford vacation, had imagined himself in love with a married lady of the neighbourhood, twenty years older than himself, and had had to be packed off in disgrace to Switzerland with a coach:—an angry grandfather breathing fire and slaughter. Certainly in those days Philip had been unusually—remarkably susceptible. Cynthia remembered him as always in or out of a love-affair, while she to whom he never made love was alternately champion and mentor. In those days, he had no expectation of the estates or the title. He was plain Philip Bliss, with an artistic and literary turn, great personal charm, and a temperament that invited catastrophes. That was before he went to Paris and Rome for serious work at painting. Seven years he had been away from England, and she had never seen him. He had announced his marriage to her in a short note containing hardly any particulars—except that his wife was a student like himself, and that he intended to live abroad and work. Some four years later, the Times contained the bare news, in the obituary column, of his wife's death, and about a year afterwards he returned to England, an enormously changed man, with that slight lameness, which seemed somehow to draw a sharp, dividing line between the splendid, impulsive youth who had gone abroad, and the reserved, and self-contained man of thirty-two—pessimist and dilettante—who had returned. His lameness he ascribed to an accident in the Alps, but would never say anything more about it; and his friends presently learned to avoid the subject, and to forget the slight signs of something unexplained which had made them curious at first.

In the intervening years before the war, Cynthia felt tolerably sure that she had been his only intimate woman friend. His former susceptibility seemed to have vanished. On the whole he avoided women's society. Some years after his return he had inherited the title and the estates, and might have been one of the most invited men in London had he wished to be; while Cynthia could remember at least three women, all desirable, who would have liked to marry him. The war had swept him more decidedly than ever out of the ordinary current of society. He had made it both an excuse and a shield. His work was paramount; and even his old friends had lost sight of him. He lived and breathed for an important Committee of the Admiralty, on which as time went on he took a more and more important place. In the four years Cynthia had scarcely seen him more than half a dozen times.

And now the war was over. It was May again, and glorious May with the world all colour and song, the garden a wealth of blossom, and the nights clear and fragrant under moon or stars. And here was Philip again—much more like the old Philip than he had been for years—looking at her with those enchanting blue eyes of his, and asking her to do something for him. No wonder Cynthia's pulses were stirred. The night before, she had come home depressed—very conscious that she had had no particular success with him at dinner, or afterwards. This unexpected tete-a-tete, with its sudden touch of intimacy, made up for it all.

What could she do but assure him—trying hard not to be too forthcoming—that she would be delighted to help him, if she could? What was wrong?

"Nothing but my own idiocy," he said, smiling. "I find myself guardian to an extremely headstrong young woman, and I don't know how to manage her. I want your advice."

Cynthia lay back in her chair, and prepared to give him all her mind. But her eyes showed a certain mockery.

"I wonder why you undertook it!"

"So do I. But—well, I couldn't help it. We won't discuss that. But what I had very little idea of—was the modern girl!" Cynthia laughed out.

"And now you have discovered her—in one day?" He laughed too, but rather dismally.

"Oh, I am only on the first step. What I shall come to presently, I don't know. But the immediate problem is that Helena bombed me last night by the unexpected announcement that she had asked Donald—Lord Donald—for the week-end. Do you know him?" Cynthia's eyebrows had gone up.

"Very slightly."

"You know his reputation?"

"I begin to remember a good deal about him. Go on."

"Well, Helena had asked that man, without consulting me, to stay at my house, and she sprang the announcement on me, on Thursday, the invitation being for Saturday. I had to tell her then and there—that he couldn't come."

"Naturally. How did she take it?"

"Very ill. You see, in a rash moment, I had told her to invite her friends for week-ends as she pleased. So she holds that I have broken faith, and this morning she told me she had arranged to go up and lunch with Donald at the Ritz next week—alone! So again I had to stop it. But I don't play the jailer even decently. I feel the greatest fool in creation." Cynthia smiled.

"I quite believe you! And this all happened in the first twenty-four hours? Poor Philip!"

"And I have also been informed that Helena's 'views' will not allow her—in the future—to take my advice on any such questions—that she prefers her liberty to her reputation—and 'wants to understand a bad man.' She said so. It's all very well to laugh, Cynthia! But what am I to do?"

Cynthia, however, continued to laugh unrestrainedly. And he joined in.

"And now you want advice?" she said at last, checking her mirth. "I'm awfully sorry for you, Philip. What about the little chaperon?"

"As nice a woman as ever was—but I don't see her preventing Helena from doing anything she wants to do. Helena will jolly well take care of that. Besides she is too new to the job."

"She may get on better with Helena, perhaps, than a stronger woman," mused Cynthia. "But I am afraid you have got your work cut out. Wasn't it very rash of you?"

"I couldn't help it," he repeated briefly. "And I must just do my best. But I'd be awfully grateful if you'd take a hand, Cynthia. Won't you come up and really make friends with her? She might take things from you that she wouldn't from me."

Cynthia looked extremely doubtful.

"I am sure last night she detested me."

"How could you tell? And why should she?"

"I'm twenty years older. That's quite enough."

"You scarcely look a day older, Cynthia."

She sighed, and lightly touched his hand, with a caressing gesture he remembered of old.

"Very nice of you to say it—but of course it isn't true. Well, Philip, I'll do what I can. I'll wander up some time—on Sunday perhaps. With your coaching, I could at least give her a biography of Jim Donald. One needn't be afraid of shocking her?"

His eyebrows lifted.

"Who's shocked at anything nowadays? Look at the things girls read and discuss! I'm old-fashioned, I suppose. But I really couldn't talk about Donald to her this morning. The fellow is such a worm! It would come better from you."

"Tell me a few more facts, then, about him, than I know at present."

He gave her rapidly a sketch of the life and antecedents of Lord Donald of Dunoon—gambler, wastrel, divorce, et cetera, speaking quite frankly, almost as he would have spoken to a man. For there was nothing at all distasteful to him in Cynthia's knowledge of life. In a woman of forty it was natural and even attractive. The notion of a discussion of Donald's love-affairs with Helena had revolted him. It was on the contrary something of a relief—especially with a practical object in view—to discuss them with Cynthia.

They sat chatting till the shadows lengthened, then wandered into the garden, still talking. Lady Georgina, watching from her window upstairs, had to admit that Buntingford seemed to like her sister's society. But if she had been within earshot at the last five minutes of their conversation, she would perhaps have seen no reason, finally, to change her opinion. Very agreeable that discursive talk had been to both participants. Buntingford had talked with great frankness of his own plans. In three months or so, his Admiralty work would be over. He thought very likely that the Government would then give him a modest place in the Administration. He might begin by representing the Admiralty in the Lords, and as soon as he got a foot on the political ladder prospects would open. On the whole, he thought, politics would be his line. He had no personal axes to grind; was afraid of nothing; wouldn't care if the Lords were done away with to-morrow, and could live on a fraction of his income if the Socialists insisted on grabbing the rest. But the new world which the war had opened was a desperately interesting one. He hadn't enough at stake in it to spoil his nerve. Whatever happened, he implied, he was steeled—politically and intellectually. Nothing could deprive him either of the joy of the fight, or the amusement of the spectacle.

And Cynthia, her honey-gold hair blown back from her white temples by the summer wind, her blue parasol throwing a summer shade about her, showed herself, as they strolled backwards and forwards over the shady lawn of the cottage, a mistress of the listening art; and there is no art more winning, either to men or women.

Then, in a moment, what broke the spell? Some hint or question from her, of a more intimate kind?—something that touched a secret place, wholly unsuspected by her? She racked her brains afterwards to think what it could have been; but in vain. All she knew was that the man beside her had suddenly stiffened. His easy talk had ceased to flow; while still walking beside her, he seemed to be miles away. So that by a quick common impulse both stood still.

"I must go back to the village," said Cynthia. She smiled, but her face had grown a little tired and faded.

He looked at his watch.

"And I told the car to fetch me half an hour ago. You'll be up some time perhaps—luncheon to-morrow?—or Sunday?"

"If I can. I'll do my best."

"Kind Cynthia!" But his tone was perfunctory, and his eyes avoided her. When he had gone, she could only wonder what she had done to offend him; and a certain dreariness crept into the evening light. She was not the least in love with Philip—that she assured herself. But his sudden changes of mood were very trying to one who would like to be his friend.

Buntingford walked rapidly home. His way lay through an oak wood, that was now a revel of spring; overhead, a shimmering roof of golden leaf and wild cherry-blossom, and underfoot a sea of blue-bells. A winding path led through it, and through the lovely open and grassy spaces which from time to time broke up the density of the wood—like so many green floors cleared for the wood nymphs' dancing. From the west a level sun struck through the trees, breaking through storm-clouds which had been rapidly filling the horizon, and kindling the tall trees, with their ribbed grey bark, till they shone for a brief moment like the polished pillars in the house of Odysseus. Then a nightingale sang. Nightingales were rare at Beechmark; and Buntingford would normally have hailed the enchanted flute-notes with a boyish delight. But this evening they fell on deaf ears, and when the garish sunlight gave place to gloom, and drops of rain began to patter on the new leaf, the gathering storm, and the dark silence of the wood, after the nightingale had given her last trill, were welcome to a man struggling with a recurrent and desperate oppression.

Must he always tamely submit to the fetters which bound him? Could he do nothing to free himself? Could the law do nothing? Enquiry—violent action of some sort—rebellion against the conditions which had grown so rigid about him:—for the hundredth time, he canvassed all ways of escape, and for the hundredth time, found none.

He knew very well what was wrong with him. It was simply the imperious need for a woman's companionship in his life—for love. Physically and morally, the longing which had lately taken possession of him, was becoming a gnawing and perpetual distress. There was the plain fact. This hour with Cynthia Welwyn had stirred in him the depths of old pain. But he was not really in love with Cynthia. During the war, amid the absorption of his work, and the fierce pressure of the national need, he had been quite content to forget her. His work—and England's strait—had filled his mind and his time. Except for certain dull resentments and regrets, present at all times in the background of consciousness, the four years of the war had been to him a period of relief, almost of deliverance. He had been able to lose himself; and in that inner history of the soul which is the real history of each one of us, that had been for long years impossible.

But now all that protection and help was gone; the floodgates were loosened again. His work still went on; but it was no longer absorbing; it no longer mattered enough to hold in check the vague impulses and passions that were beating against his will.

And meanwhile the years were running on. He was forty-four, Helena Pitstone's guardian, and clearly relegated already by that unmanageable child to the ranks of the middle-aged. He had read her thought in her great scornful eyes. "What has your generation to do with mine? Your day is over!"

And all the while the ugly truth was that he had never had his "day"—and was likely now to miss it for good. Or at least such "day" as had shone upon him had been so short, so chequered, so tragically wiped out, it might as well never have dawned. Yet the one dear woman friend to whom in these latter years he had spoken freely, who knew him through and through—Helena Pitstone's mother—had taken for granted, in her quiet ascetic way, that he had indeed had his chance, and must accept for good and all what had come of it. It was because she thought of him as set apart, as debarred by what had happened to him, from honest love-making, and protected by his own nature from anything less, that she had asked him to take charge of Helena. He realized it now. It had been the notion of a fanciful idealist, springing from certain sickroom ideas of sacrifice—renunciation—submission to the will of God—and so forth.

It was not the will of God!—that he should live forsaken and die forlorn! He hurled defiance, even at Rachel, his dear dead friend, who had been so full of pity for him, and for whom he had felt the purest and most unselfish affection he had ever known—since his mother's death.

And now the presence of her child in his house seemed to represent a verdict, a sentence—of hers upon him, which he simply refused to accept as just or final. If Rachel had only lived a little longer he would have had it out with her. But in those last terrible days, how could he either argue—or refuse?

All the same, he would utterly do his duty by Helena. If she chose to regard him as an old fogy, well and good—it was perhaps better so. Not that—if circumstances had been other than they were—-he would have been the least inclined to make love to her. Her beauty was astonishing. But the wonderful energy and vitality of her crude youth rather repelled than attracted him.

The thought of the wrestles ahead of him was a weariness to an already tired man. Debate with her, on all the huge insoluble questions she seemed to be determined to raise, was of all things in the world most distasteful to him. He would certainly cut a sorry figure in it; nothing was more probable.

The rain began to plash down upon his face and bared head, cooling an inner fever. The damp wood, the soft continuous dripping of the cherry-blossoms, the scent of the blue-bells,—there was in them a certain shelter and healing. He would have liked to linger there. But already, at Beechmark, guests must have arrived; he was being missed.

The trees thinned, and the broad lawns of Beechmark came in sight. Ah!—there was Geoffrey, walking up and down with Helena. Suppose that really came off? What a comfortable way out! He and Cynthia must back it all they could.



CHAPTER VI

"Buntingford looks twice as old as he need!" said Geoffrey French, lighting a cigarette as he and Helena stepped out of the drawing-room window after dinner into the May world outside—a world which lay steeped in an after-glow of magical beauty. "What's wrong, I wonder! Have you been plaguing him, Helena?" The laughing shot was fired purely at random. But the slight start and flush it produced in Helena struck him.

"I see nothing wrong with him," said Helena, a touch of defiance in her voice. "But of course it's extraordinarily difficult to get on with him."

"With Philip!—the jolliest, kindest chap going! What do you mean?"

"All right. It's no good talking to anybody with a parti pris!"

"No—but seriously, Helena—what's the matter? Why, you told me you only began the new arrangement two days ago."

"Exactly. And there's been time already for a first-class quarrel. Time also for me to see that I shall never, never get on with him. I don't know how we are to get through the two years!"

"Well!" ejaculated her companion. "In Heaven's name, what has he been doing?"

Helena shrugged her shoulders. She was striding beside him like a young Artemis—in white, with a silver star in her hair, and her short skirts beaten back from her slender legs and feet by the evening wind. Geoffrey French, who had had a classical education, almost looked for the quiver and the bow. He was dazzled at once, and provoked. A magnificent creature, certainly—"very mad and very handsome!"—he recalled Buntingford's letter.

"Do tell me, Helena!" he urged.

"What's the good? You'll only side with him—and preach. You've done that several times already."

The young man frowned a little.

"I don't preach!" he said shortly. "I say what I think—when you ask me. Twice, if I remember right, you told me of some proceeding of yours, and asked me for my opinion. Well, I gave it, and it didn't happen to be yours. But that isn't preaching."

"You gave so many reasons—it was preaching."

"Great Scott!—wasn't it more polite to give one's reasons?"

"Perhaps. But one shouldn't burst with them. One should be sorry to disagree."

"Hm. Well—now kindly lay down for me, how I am to disagree with you about Philip. For I do disagree with you, profoundly."

"There it is. Profoundly—that shows how you enjoy disagreeing. Why can't you put yourself at my point of view?"

"Well, I'll try. But at least—explain it to me."

Helena threw herself into a garden chair, under a wild cherry which rose a pyramid of silver against an orange sky. Other figures were scattered about the lawns, three or four young men, and three or four girls in light dresses. The air seemed to be full of laughter and young voices. Only Mrs. Friend sat shyly by herself just within the drawing-room window, a book on her knee. A lamp behind her brought out the lines of her bent head and slight figure.

"I wonder if I like you well enough," said Helena coolly, biting at a stalk of grass—"well enough, I mean, to explain things. I haven't made you my father confessor yet, Geoffrey."

"Suppose you begin—and see how it answers," said French lazily, rolling over on the grass in front of her, his chin in his hands.

"Well, I don't mind—for fun. Only if you preach I shall stop. But, first of all, let's get some common ground. You admit, I suppose, that the war has changed the whole position of women?"

"Yes—with reservations."

"Don't state them!" said Helena hastily. "That would be preaching. Yes, or No?"

"Yes, then,—you tyrant!"

"And that means—doesn't it—at the very least—that girls of my own age have done with all the old stupid chaperonage business—at least nearly all—that we are to choose our own friends, and make our own arrangements?—doesn't it?" she repeated peremptorily.

"I don't know. My information is—that the mothers are stiffening."

A laughing face looked up at her from the grass.

"Stiffening!" The tone was contemptuous. "Well, that may be so—for babes of seventeen—like that one—" her gesture indicated a slight figure in white at the edge of the lawn—"who have never been out of the school-room—but—"

"You think nineteen makes all the difference? I doubt," said Geoffrey French coolly, as he sat up tailor-fashion, and surveyed her. "Well, my view is that for the babes, as you call them, chaperonage is certainly reviving. I have just been sitting next Lady Maud, this babe's mother, and she told me an invitation came for the babe from some great house last week, addressed to 'Miss Luton and partner'—whereon Lady Maud wrote back—'My daughter has no partner and I shall be very happy to bring her.' Rather a poke in the eye! Then there are the women of five or six and twenty who have been through the war, and are not likely to give up the freedom of it—ever again. That's all right. They'll take their own risks. Many of them will prefer not to live at home again. They'll live with a friend—and visit their people perhaps every day! But, then there's you, Helena—the betwixt and between!—"

"Well—what about me?"

"You're neither a babe—nor a veteran."

"I'm nineteen and a half—and I've done a year and a half of war work—"

"Canteen—and driving? All right. Am I to give an opinion?"

"You will give it, whatever I say. And it's you all over—to give it, before you've allowed me to explain anything."

"Oh, I know your point of view—" said Geoffrey, unperturbed—"know it by heart. Haven't you dinned it into me at half a dozen dances lately? No!—I'm entitled to my say—and here it is. Claim all the freedom you like—but as you're not twenty-five, but nineteen—let a good fellow like Buntingford give you advice—and be thankful!"

"Prig!" said Helena, pelting him with a spray of wild cherry, which he caught and put in his button-hole. "If that isn't preaching, I should like to know what is!"

"Not at all. Unbiased opinion—civilly expressed. If you really were an emancipated young woman, Helena, you'd take it so! But now—" his tone changed—"let's come to business. What have you and Philip been quarrelling about?"

Helena straightened her shoulders, as though to meet certain disapproval.

"Because—I asked Lord Donald to spend the week-end here—"

"You didn't!"

"I did; and Cousin Philip wired to him and forbade him the house. Offence No. 1. Then as I intended all the same to see Jim, I told him I would go up and lunch with him at the Ritz. Cousin Philip vows I shan't, and he seems to have some underhand means of stopping it—I—I don't know what—"

"Underhand! Philip! I say, Helena, I wonder whether you have any idea how people who really know him think about Buntingford!"

"Oh, of course men back up men!"

"Stuff! It's really silly—abominable too—the way you talk of him—I can't help saying it."

And this time it was Geoffrey's turn to look indignant. His long face with its deeply set grey eyes, a rather large nose, and a fine brow under curly hair, had flushed suddenly.

"If you can't help it, I suppose you must say it. But I don't know why I should stay and listen," said Helena provokingly, making a movement as though to rise. But he laid a hand on her dress:

"No, no, Helena, don't go—look here—do you ever happen to notice Buntingford—when he's sitting quiet—and other people are talking round him?"

"Not particularly." The tone was cold, but she no longer threatened departure.

"Well, I just ask you—some time—to watch. An old friend of his said to me the other day—'I often feel that Buntingford is the saddest man I know.'"

"Why should he be?" asked Helena imperiously.

"I can't tell you. No one can. It's just what those people think who know him best. Well, that's one fact about him—that his men friends feel they could no more torment a wounded soldier, than worry Buntingford—if they could help it. Then there are other facts that no one knows unless they've worked in Philip's office, where all the men clerks and all the women typists just adore him! I happen to know a good deal about it. I could tell you things—"

"For Heaven's sake, don't!" cried Helena impatiently. "What does it matter? He may be a saint—with seven haloes—for those that don't cross him. But I want my freedom!"—a white foot beat the ground impatiently—"and he stands in the way."

"Freedom to compromise yourself with a scoundrel like Donald! What can you know about such a man—compared with what Philip knows?"

"That's just it—I want to know—" said Helena in her most stubborn voice. "This is a world, now, in which we've all got to know,—both the bad and the good of it. No more taking it on trust from other people! Let us learn it for ourselves."

"Helena!—you're quite mad!" said the young man, exasperated.

"Perhaps I am. But it's a madness you can't cure." And springing to her feet, she sent a call across the lawn—"Peter!" A slim boy who was walking beside the "babe" of seventeen, some distance away, turned sharply at the sound, and running across the grass pulled up in front of Helena.

"Well?—here I am."

"Shall we go and look at the lake? You might pull me about a little."

"Ripping!" said the youth joyously. "Won't you want a cloak?"

"No—it's so hot. Shall we ask Miss Luton?"

Peter made a face.

"Why should we?"

Helena laughed, and they went off together in the direction of a strip of silver under distant trees on which the moon was shining.

French walked away towards the girlish figure now deserted.

Helena watched him out of the corner of her eyes, saw the girl's eager greeting, and the disappearance of the two in the woody walk that bordered the lawn. Then she noticed a man sitting by himself not far away, with a newspaper on his knee.

"Suppose we take Mr. Horne, Peter?"

"Don't let's take anybody!" said the boy. "And anyway Horne's a nuisance just now. He talks you dead with strikes—and nationalization—and labour men—and all that rot. Can't we ever let it alone? I want to talk to you, Helena. I say, you are ripping in that dress! You're just divine, Helena!" The girl laughed, her sweetest, most rippling laugh.

"Go on like that, Peter. You can't think how nice it sounds—especially after Geoffrey's been lecturing for all he's worth."

"Lecturing? Oh well, if it comes to that, I've got my grievance too, Helena. We'll have it out, when I've found the boat."

"Forewarned!" said Helena, still laughing. "Perhaps I won't come."

"Oh, yes, you will," said the boy confidently. "I believe you know perfectly well what it's about. You've got a guilty conscience, Miss Helena!"

Helena said nothing, till they had pushed the boat out from the reeds and the water-lilies, and she was sitting with the steering ropes in her hands opposite a boy in his shirt sleeves, with the head and face of a cherub, and the spare frame of an athlete, who was devouring her with his eyes.

"Are you quite done with the Army, Peter?"

"Quite. Got out a month ago. You come to me, Helena, if you want any advice about foreign loans—eh? I can tell you a thing or two."

"Are you going to be very rich?"

"Well, I'm pretty rich already," said the boy candidly. "It seems beastly to be wanting more. But my uncles would shove me into the Bank. I couldn't help it."

"You'll never look so nice as you did in your khaki, Peter. What have you done with all your ribbons?"

"What, the decorations? Oh, they're kicking about somewhere."

"You're not to let your Victoria Cross kick about, as you call it," said Helena severely. "By the way, Peter, you've never told me yet—Oh, I saw the bit in the Times. But I want you to tell me about it. Won't you?"

She bent forward, all softness, her beautiful eyes on her companion.

"No!" said Peter with energy—"never!"

She considered him.

"Was it so awful?" she asked under her breath.

"For God's sake, don't ask questions!" said the boy angrily. "You know I want to forget it. I shall never be quite right till I do forget it."

She was silent. It was his twin brother he had tried to save—staggering back through a British barrage with the wounded man on his shoulders—only to find, as he stumbled into the trench, that he had been carrying the dead. He himself had spent six months in hospital from the effects of wounds and shock. He had emerged to find himself a V. V. and A. D. C. to his Army Commander; and apparently as gay and full of fun as before. But his adoring mother and sisters knew very well that there were sore spots in Peter.

Helena realized that she had touched one. She bent forward presently, and laid her own hand on one of the hands that were handling the sculls.

"Dear Peter!"

He bent impetuously, and kissed the hand before she could withdraw it.

"Don't you play with me, Helena," he said passionately. "I'm not a child, though I look it ... Now, then, let's have it out."

They had reached the middle of the pond, and were drifting across a moonlit pathway, on either side of which lay the shadow of deep woods, now impenetrably dark. The star in Helena's hair glittered in the light, and the face beneath it, robbed of its daylight colour, had become a study in black and white, subtler and more lovely than the real Helena.

"Why did you do it, Helena?" said Peter suddenly.

"Do what?"

"Why did you behave to me as you did, at the Arts Ball? Why did you cut me, not once—but twice—three times—for that beast Donald?"

Helena laughed.

"Now you're beginning!" she said, as she lazily trailed her hand in the water. "It's really comic!"

"What do you mean?"

"Only that I've already quarrelled with Cousin Philip—and Geoffrey—about Lord Donald—so if you insist on quarrelling too, I shall have no friends left."

"Damn Donald! It's like his impudence to ask you to dance at all. It made me sick to see you with him. He's the limit. Well, but—I'm not going to quarrel about Donald, Helena—I'm not going to quarrel about anything. I'm going to have my own say—and you can't escape this time—you witch!"

Helena looked round the pond.

"I can swim," she said tranquilly.

"I should jump in after you—and we'd both go down together. No, but—listen to me, dear Helena! Why won't you marry me? You say sometimes—that you care for me a little."

The boy's tone faltered.

"Why won't I marry you? Perhaps because you ask me so often," said Helena, laughing. "Neglect me—be rude to me—cut me at a dance, and then see."

"I couldn't—it matters too much."

"Dear Peter! But can't you understand that I don't want to commit myself just yet? I want to have my life to myself a bit. I'm like the miners and the railway men. I'm full of unrest! I can't and won't settle down just yet. I want to look at things—the world's like a great cinema show just now—everything passing so quick you can hardly take breath. I want to sample it where I please. I want to dance—and talk—and make experiments."

"Well—marrying me would be an experiment," said Peter stoutly. "I vow you'd never regret it, Helena!"

"But I can't vow that you wouldn't! Let me alone, Peter. I suppose some time I shall quiet down. It doesn't matter if I break my own heart. But I won't take the responsibility of anybody else's heart just yet."

"Well, of course, that means you're not in love with anybody. You'd soon chuck all that nonsense if you were."

The young, despairing voice thrilled her. It was all experience—life—drama—this floating over summer water—with a beautiful youth, whose heart seemed to be fluttering in her very hands. But she was only thrilled intellectually—as a spectator. Peter would soon get over it. She would be very kind to him, and let him down easily. They drifted silently a little. Then Peter said abruptly:

"Well, at least, Helena, you might promise me not to dance with Jim Donald again!"

"Peter—my promises of that kind—are worth nothing! ... I think it's getting late—we ought to be going home!" And she gave the rudder a turn for the shore.

He unwillingly complied, and after rowing through the shadow of the woods, they emerged on a moonlit slope of lawn, where was the usual landing-place. Two persons who had been strolling along the edge of the water approached them.

"Who is that with Buntingford?" asked Dale.

"My new chaperon. Aren't you sorry for her?"

"I jolly well am!" cried Peter. "She'll have a dog's life!"

"That's very rude of you, Peter. You may perhaps be surprised to hear that I like her very much. She's a little dear—and I'm going to be awfully good to her."

"Which means, of course, that she'll never dare to cross you!"

"Peter, don't be unkind! Dear Peter—make it up! I do want to be friends. There's just time for you to say something nice!"

For his vigorous strokes were bringing them rapidly to the bank.

"Oh, what's the good of talking!" said the boy impatiently. "I shall be friends, of course—take what you fling me. I can't do anything else."

Helena blew him a kiss, to which he made no response.

"All right!—I'll bring you in!" said Lord Buntingford from the shore.

He dragged the boat up on the sandy edge, and offered a hand to Helena. She stumbled out, and would have fallen into the shallow water but for his sudden grip upon her.

"That was stupid of me!" she said, vexed with herself.

He made no reply. It was left to Mrs. Friend to express a hope that she had not sprained her foot.

"Oh, dear no," said Helena. "But I'm cold. Peter, will you race me to the house? Give me a fair start!"

Peter eagerly placed her, and then—a maiden flying and a young god pursuing—they had soon drawn the eyes and laughter of all the other guests, who cheered as the panting Helena, winner by a foot, dashed through the drawing-room window into the house.

Helena and Mrs. Friend had been discussing the evening,—Helena on the floor, in a white dressing-gown, with her hair down her back. She had amused herself with a very shrewd analysis—not too favourable—of Geoffrey French's character and prospects, and had rushed through an eloquent account of Peter's performances in the war; she had mocked at Lady Maud's conventionalities, and mimicked the "babe's" simpering manner with young men; she had enquired pityingly how Mrs. Friend had got on with the old Canon who had taken her in to dinner, and had launched into rather caustic and, to Mrs. Friend's ear, astonishing criticisms of "Cousin Philip's wine"—which Mrs. Friend had never even dreamt of tasting. But of Cousin Philip himself there was not a word. Mrs. Friend knew there had been an interview between them; but she dared not ask questions. How to steer her way in the moral hurricane she foresaw, was what preoccupied her; so as both to do her duty to Lord B. and yet keep a hold on this strange being in whose good graces she still found herself—much to her astonishment.

Then with midnight Helena departed. But long after she was herself in bed, Mrs. Friend heard movements in the adjoining room, and was aware of a scent of tobacco stealing in through her own open window.

Helena, indeed, when she found herself alone was, for a time, too excited to sleep, and cigarettes were her only resource. She was conscious of an exaltation of will, a passionate self-assertion, beating through all her veins, which made sleep impossible. Cousin Philip had scarcely addressed a word to her during the evening, and had bade her a chilly good-night. Of course, if that was to be his attitude it was impossible she could go on living under his roof. Her mother could not for a moment have expected her to keep her word, under such conditions ... And yet—why retreat? Why not fight it out, temperately, but resolutely? "I lost my temper again like an idiot, this morning—I mustn't—mustn't—lose it. He had jolly well the best of it."

"Self-determination"—that was what she was bent on. If it was good for nations, it was good also for individuals. Liberty to make one's own mistakes, to face one's own risks—that was the minimum. And for one adult human being to accept the dictation of another human being was the only sin worth talking about. The test might come on some trivial thing, like this matter of Lord Donald. Well,—she must be content to "find quarrel in a straw, where honour is at stake." Yet, of course, her guardian was bound to resist. The fight between her will and his was natural and necessary. It was the clash of two generations, two views of life. She was not merely the wilful and insubordinate girl she would have been before the war; she saw herself, at any rate, as something much more interesting. All over the world there was the same breaking of bonds; and the same instinct towards violence. "The violent taketh by force." Was it the instinct that war leaves, and must leave, behind it—its most sinister, or its most pregnant, legacy? She was passionately conscious of it, and of a strange thirst to carry it into reckless action. The unrest in her was the same unrest that was driving men everywhere—and women, too—into industrial disturbance and moral revolt. The old is done with; and the Tree of Life needs to be well shaken before the new fruit will drop.

Wild thoughts like these ran through her mind. Then she scoffed at herself for such large notions, about so small a thing. And suddenly something checked her—the physical recollection, as it were, left tingling in her hand, of the grasp by which Buntingford had upheld her, as she was leaving the boat. With it went a vision of his face, his dark, furrowed face, in the moonlight.

"The saddest man I know." Why and wherefore? Long after she was in bed, she lay awake, absorbed in a dreamy yet intense gathering together of all that she could recollect of Cousin Philip, from her childhood up, through her school years, and down to her mother's death. Till now he had been part of the more or less pleasant furniture of life. She seemed to be on the way to realize him as a man—perhaps a force. It was unsuspected—and rather interesting.



CHAPTER VII

The drought continued; and under the hot sun the lilacs were already pyramids of purple, the oaks were nearly in full leaf, and the hawthorns in the park and along the hedges would soon replace with another white splendour the fading blossom of the wild cherries.

It was Sunday morning, and none of the Beechmark party except Mrs. Friend, Lady Luton and her seventeen-year-old daughter had shown any inclination to go to church. Geoffrey French and Helena had escorted the churchgoers the short way across the park, taking a laughing leave of them at the last stile, whence the old church was but a stone's throw. There was a circle of chairs on the lawn intermittently filled by talkers. Lord Buntingford was indoors and was reported to have had some ugly news that morning of a discharged soldiers' riot in a neighbouring town where he owned a good deal of property. The disturbance had been for the time being suppressed, but its renewal was expected, and Buntingford, according to Julian Horne, who had been in close consultation with him, was ready to go over at any moment, on a telephone call from the town authorities, and take what other "specials" he could gather with him.

"It's not at all a nice business," said Horne, looking up from his long chair, as Geoffrey French and Helena reappeared. "And if Philip is rung up, he'll sweep us all in. So don't be out of the way, Geoffrey."

"What's the matter? Somebody has been bungling as usual, I suppose," said Helena in her most confident and peremptory tone.

"The discharged men say that nobody pays any attention to them—and they mean to burn down something."

"On the principle of the Chinaman, and 'roast pig,'" said French, stretching himself at full length on the grass, where Helena was already sitting. "What an extraordinary state of mind we're all in! We all want to burn something. I want to burn the doctors, because some of the medical boards have been beasts to some of my friends; the soldiers over at Dansworth want to burn the town, because they haven't been made enough of; the Triple Alliance want to burn up the country to cook their roast pig—and as for you, Helena—"

He turned a laughing face upon her—but before she could reply, a telephone was heard ringing, through the open windows of the house.

"For me, I expect," exclaimed Helena, springing up. She disappeared within the drawing-room, returning presently, with flushed cheeks, and a bearing of which Geoffrey French at once guessed the meaning.

"Donald has thrown her over?" he said to himself. "Of course Philip had the trump card!"

Helena, however, said nothing. She took up a book she had left on the grass, and withdrew with it to the solitary shelter of a cedar some yards away. Quiet descended on the lawns. The men smoked or buried themselves in a sleepy study of the Sunday papers. The old house lay steeped in sunshine. Occasional bursts of talk arose and died away; a loud cuckoo in a neighbouring plantation seemed determined to silence all its bird rivals; while once or twice the hum of an aeroplane overhead awoke even in the drowsiest listener dim memories of the war.

Helena was only pretending to read. The telephone message which had reached her had been from Lord Donald's butler—not even from Lord Donald himself!—and had been to the effect that "his lordship" asked him to say that he had been obliged to go to Scotland for a fortnight, and was very sorry he had not been able to answer Miss Pitstone's telegram before starting. Helena's cheeks were positively smarting under the humiliation of it. Donald daring to send her a message through a servant, when she had telegraphed to him! For of course it was all a lie as to his having left town—one could tell that from the butler's voice. He had been somehow frightened by Cousin Philip, and was revenging himself by rudeness to her. She seemed to hear "Jim" and his intimates discussing the situation. Of course it would only amuse them!—everything amused them!—that Buntingford should have put his foot down. How she had boasted, both to Jim and to some of his friends, of the attitude she meant to take up with her guardian during her "imprisonment on parole." And this was the end of the first bout. Cousin Philip had been easily master, and instead of making common cause with her against a ridiculous piece of tyranny, Lord Donald had backed out. He might at least have been sympathetic and polite—might have come himself to speak to her at the telephone, instead—

Her blood boiled. How was she going to put up with this life? The irony of the whole position was insufferable. Geoffrey's ejaculation for instance when she had invited him to her sitting-room after breakfast that he might look for a book he had lent her—"My word, Helena, what a jolly place!—Why, this was the old school-room—I remember it perfectly—the piggiest, shabbiest old den. And Philip has had it all done up for you? Didn't know he had so much taste!" And then, Geoffrey's roguish look at her, expressing the "chaff" he restrained for fear of offending her. Lucy Friend, too, Captain Lodge, Peter—everybody—no one had any sympathy with her. And lastly, Donald himself—coward!—had refused to play up. Not that she cared one straw about him personally. She knew very well that he was a poor creature. It was the principle involved:—that a girl of nineteen is to be treated as a free and responsible being, and not as though she were still a child in the nursery. "Cousin Philip may have had the right to say he wouldn't have Jim Donald in his house, if he felt that way—but he had no right whatever to prevent my meeting him in town, if I chose to meet him—that's my affair!—that's the point! All these men here are in league. It's not Jim's character that's in question—I throw Jim's character to the wolves—it's the freedom of women!"

So the tumult in her surged to and fro, mingled all through with a certain unwilling preoccupation. That semi-circular bow-window on the south side of the house, which she commanded from her seat under the cedar, was one of the windows of the library. Hidden from her by the old bureau at which he was writing, sat Buntingford at work. She could see his feet under the bureau, and sometimes the top of his head. Oh, of course, he had a way with him—a certain magnetism—for the people who liked him, and whom he liked. Lady Maud, for instance—how well they had got on at breakfast? Naturally, she thought him adorable. And Lady Maud's girl. To see Buntingford showing her the butterfly collections in the library—devoting himself to her—and the little thing blushing and smiling—it was simply idyllic! And then to contrast the scene with that other scene, in the same room, the day before!

"Well, now, what am I going to do here—or in town?" she asked herself in exasperation. "If Cousin Philip and I liked each other it would be pleasant enough to ride together, to talk and read and argue—his brain's all right!—with Lucy Friend to fall back upon between whiles—for just these few weeks, at any rate, before we go to town—and with the week-ends to help one out. But if we are to be at daggers-drawn—he determined to boss me—and I equally determined not to be bossed—why, the thing will be intolerable! Hullo!—is that Cynthia Welwyn? She seems to be making for me."

It was Lady Cynthia, very fresh and brilliant in airy black and white, with a purple sunshade. She came straight over the grass to Helena's shady corner.

"You look so cool! May I share?"

Helena rather ungraciously pushed forward a chair as they shook hands.

"The rest of your party seem to be asleep," said Cynthia, glancing at various prostrate forms belonging to the male sex that were visible on a distant slope of the lawn. "But you've heard of the Dansworth disturbances?—and that everybody here may have to go?"

"Yes. It's probably exaggerated—isn't it?"

"I don't know. Everybody coming out of church was talking of it. There was bad rioting last night—and a factory burnt down. They say it's begun again. Buntingford will probably have to go. Where is he?"

Helena pointed to the library and to the feet under the bureau.

"He's waiting indoors, no doubt, in case there's a summons."

"No doubt," said Helena.

Cynthia found her task difficult. She had come determined to make friends with this thorny young woman, and to smooth Philip's path for him if she could. But now face to face with Helena she was conscious that neither was Philip's ward at all in a forthcoming mood, nor was her own effort spontaneous or congenial. They were both Buntingford's kinswomen, Helena on his father's side, Cynthia on his mother's, and had been more or less acquainted with each other since Helena left the nursery. But there was nearly twenty years between them, and a critical spirit on both sides.

Conversation very soon languished. An instinctive antagonism that neither could have explained intelligibly would have been evident to any shrewd listener. Helena was not long in suspecting that Lady Cynthia was in some way Buntingford's envoy, and had been sent to make friends, with an ulterior object; while Cynthia was repelled by the girl's ungracious manner, and by the gulf which it implied between the outlook of forty, and that of nineteen. "She means to make me feel that I might have been her mother—and that we have nothing in common!"

The result was that Cynthia was driven into an intimate and possessive tone with regard to Buntingford, which was more than the facts warranted, and soon reduced Helena to monosyllables, and a sarcastic lip.

"You can't think," said Cynthia effusively—"how good he is to us two. It is so like him. He never forgets us. But indeed he never forgets anybody."

Helena raised her eyebrows, as though the news astonished her, but she was too polite to contradict.

"He sends you flowers, doesn't he?" she said carelessly.

"He sends us all kinds of things. But that's not what makes him so charming. He's always so considerate for everybody! The day you were coming, for instance, he thought of nothing but how to get your room finished and your books in order. I hope you liked it?"

"Very much." The tone was noncommittal.

"I don't suppose he told you how he worked," said Cynthia, smiling. "Oh, he's a great dear, Philip! Only he takes a good deal of knowing."

"Did you ever see his wife?" said Helena abruptly.

Cynthia's movement showed her unpleasantly startled. She looked instinctively towards the library window, where Buntingford was now standing with his back to them. No, he couldn't have heard.

"No, never," she said hurriedly, in a low voice. "Nobody ever speaks to him about her. She was of course not his equal socially."

"Is that the reason why nobody speaks of her?"

Cynthia flushed indignantly.

"Not that I know of. Why do you ask?"

"I thought you put the two things together," said Helena in her most detached tone. "And she was an artist?"

"A very good one, I believe. A man who had seen her in Paris before her marriage told me long ago—oh, years ago—that she was extraordinarily clever, and very ambitious."

"And beautiful?" said Helena eagerly.

"I don't know. I never saw a picture of her."

"I'll bet anything she was beautiful!"

"Most likely. Philip's very fastidious."

Helena meditated.

"I wonder if she had a good time?" she said at last.

"If she didn't, it couldn't have been Philip's fault!" said Cynthia, with some vigour.

"No, really?"

The girl's note of interrogation was curiously provoking, and Cynthia could have shaken her.

Suddenly through the open French windows of the library, a shrill telephone call rang out. It came from the instrument on Buntingford's desk, and the two outside could see him take up the receiver.

"Hullo!"

"It's a message from Dansworth," said Cynthia, springing to her feet. "They've sent for him."

"Yes—yes—" came to them in Buntingford's deep assenting voice, as he stood with the receiver to his ear. "All right—In an hour?—That's it. Less, if possible? Well, I think we can do it in less. Good-bye."

Helena had also risen. Buntingford emerged.

"Geoffrey!—Peter!—Horne!—all of you!"

From different parts of the lawn, men appeared running. Geoffrey French, Captain Lodge, Peter, and Julian Horne, were in a few instants grouped round their host, with Helena and Cynthia just behind.

"The Dansworth mob's out of hand," said Buntingford briefly. "They've set fire to another building, and the police are hard pressed. They want specials at once. Who'll come? I've just had a most annoying message from my chauffeur. His wife's been in to say that he's got a temperature—since eight o'clock this morning—and has gone to bed. She won't hear of his coming."

"Funk?" said French quietly,—"or Bolshevism?"

Buntingford shrugged his shoulders. "We'll enquire into that later. There are two cars—a Vauxhall and a small Renault—a two-seater. Who can drive?"

"I think I can drive the Renault," said Dale. "I'll go and get it at once. Hope I shan't kill anybody."

He ran off. The other men looked at each other in perplexity. None of them knew enough about the business to drive a high-powered car without serious risk to their own lives and the car's.

"I'll go and telephone to a man I know near here," said Buntingford, turning towards the house. "He'll lend us his chauffeur."

"Why not let me drive?" said a girl's half-sarcastic voice. "I've driven a Vauxhall most of the winter."

Buntingford turned, smiling but uncertain.

"Of course! I had forgotten! But I don't like taking you into danger, Helena. It sounds like an ugly affair!"

"Lodge and I will go with her," said French, eagerly. "We can stop the car outside the town. Horne can go with Dale."

The eyes of the men were on the girl in white—men half humiliated, half admiring. Helena, radiant, was looking at Buntingford, and at his reluctant word of assent, she began joyously taking the hat-pins out of her white lace hat.

"Give me five minutes to change. Lucky I've got my uniform here! Then I'll go for the car."

Within the five minutes she was in the garage in full uniform, looking over and tuning up the car, without an unnecessary word. She was the professional, alert, cheerful, efficient—and handsomer than ever, thought French, in her close-fitting khaki.

"One word, Helena," said Buntingford, laying a hand on her arm, when all was ready, and she was about to climb into her seat. "Remember I am in command of the expedition—and for all our sakes there must be no divided authority. You agree?"

She looked up quietly.

"I agree."

He made way for her, and she took her seat with him beside her. French, Lodge, Jones the butler, and Tomline the odd man, got in behind her. Mrs. Friend appeared with a food hamper that she and Mrs. Mawson had been rapidly packing. Her delicate little face was very pale, and Buntingford stooped to reassure her.

"We'll take every care of her. Don't be alarmed. It's always a woman comes to the rescue, isn't it? We're all ashamed. I shall take some lessons next week!"

Helena, with her hand on the steering wheel, nodded and smiled to her, and in another minute the splendid car was gliding out of the garage yard, and flying through the park.

Cynthia, with Mrs. Friend, Lady Maud Luton, and Mrs. Mawson, were left looking after them. Cynthia's expression was hard to read; she seemed to be rushing on with the car, watching the face beside Buntingford, the young hands on the wheel, the keen eyes looking ahead, the play of talk between them.

"What a splendid creature!" said Lady Maud half-unwillingly, as she and Cynthia walked back to the lawn. "I'm afraid I don't at all approve of her in ordinary life. But just now—she was in her element."

"Mother, you must let me learn motoring!" cried the girl of seventeen, hanging on her mother's arm. She was flushed with innocent envy. Helena driving Lord Buntingford seemed to her at the top of creation.

"Goose! It wouldn't suit you at all," said the mother, smiling. "Please take my prayer-book indoors."

The babe went obediently.

The miles ran past. Helena, on her mettle, was driving her best, and Buntingford had already paid her one or two brief compliments, which she had taken in silence. Presently they topped a ridge, and there lay Dansworth in a hollow, a column of smoke gashed with occasional flame rising above the town.

"A big blaze," said Buntingford, examining it through a field-glass. "It's the large brewery in the market-place. Hullo, you there!" He hailed a country cart, full of excited occupants, which was being driven rapidly towards them. The driver pulled up with difficulty.

Buntingford jumped out and went to make enquiries.

"It's a bad business, Sir," said the man in charge of the cart, a small farmer whom Buntingford recognized. "The men in it are just mad—they don't know what they've done, nor why they've done it. But the soldiers will be there directly. There's far too few police, and I'm afraid there's some people hurt. I wouldn't take ladies into the town if I was you, Sir." He glanced at Helena.

Buntingford nodded, and returned to the car.

"You see that farm-house down there on the right?" he said to Helena as they started again. "We'll stop there."

They ran down the long slope to the town, the smoke carried towards them by a westerly wind beginning to beat in their faces,—the roar of the great bonfire in their ears.

Helena drew up at the entrance of a short lane leading to a farm on the outskirts of the small country town—the centre of an active furniture-making industry, for which the material lay handy in the large beechwoods which covered the districts round it. The people of the farm were all standing outside the house-door, watching the fire and talking.

"You're going to leave me here?" said Helena wistfully, looking at Buntingford.

"Please. You've brought us splendidly! I'll send Geoffrey back to you as soon as possible, with instructions."

She drove the car up to the farm. An elderly man came forward with whom Buntingford made arrangements. The car was to be locked up. "And you'll take care of the lady, till I send?"

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"I'll come back to you, as soon as I can," said French to Helena. "Don't be anxious about us. We shall get into the market-hall by a back way and find out what's going on. They've probably got the hose on by now. Nothing like a hose-pipe for this kind of thing! Congratters on a splendid bit of driving!"

"Hear, hear," said Buntingford.

They went off, and Helena was left alone with the farm people, who made much of her, and poured into her ears more or less coherent accounts of the rioting and its causes. A few discontented soldiers, an unpopular factory manager, and a badly-handled strike:—the tale was a common one throughout England at the moment, and behind and beneath the surface events lay the heaving of that "tide in the affairs of men," a tide of change, of restlessness, of revolt, set in motion by the great war. Helena paced up and down the orchard slope behind the house, watching the conflagration which was beginning to die down, startled every now and then by what seemed to be the sound of shots, and once by the rush past of a squadron of mounted police coming evidently from the big country town some ten miles away. Hunger asserted itself, and she made a raid on the hamper in the car, sharing some of its contents with the black-eyed children of the farm. Every now and then news came from persons passing along the road, and for a time things seemed to be mending. The police were getting the upper hand; the Mayor had made a plucky speech to the crowd in the market-place, with good results; the rioters were wavering; and the soldiers had been stopped by telephone. Then following hard on the last rumour came a sudden rush of worse news. A policeman had been killed—two injured—the rioters had gained a footing in the market-hall, and driven out both the police and the specials—and after all, the soldiers had been sent for.

Helena wandered down to the gate of the farm lane opening on the main road, consumed with restlessness and anxiety. If only they had let her go with them! Buntingford's last look as he raised his hat to her before departing, haunted her memory—the appeal in it, the unspoken message. Might they not, after all, be friends? There seemed to be an exquisite relaxation in the thought.

Another hour passed. Geoffrey French at last! He came on a motor bicycle, and threw himself off beside her, breathless.

"Please get the car, Helena, and I'll go on with you. The town's safe. The troops have arrived, and the rioters are scattering. The police have made some arrests, and Philip believes the thing is over—or I shouldn't have been allowed to come for you!"

"Why not?" said Helena half-indignantly, as they hurried towards the barn in which the car had been driven. "Perhaps I might have been of some use!"

"No—you helped us best by staying here. The last hour's been pretty bad. And now Philip wants you to take two wounded police to the Smeaton Hospital—five miles. He'll go with you. They're badly hurt, I'm afraid—there was some vicious stone-throwing."

"All right! Perhaps you don't know that's my job!"

French helped her get out the car.

"We shall want mattresses and stretcher boards," said Helena, surveying it thoughtfully. "A doctor too and a nurse."

"Right you are. They've thought of all that. You'll find everything at the market-hall,—where the two men are."

They drove away together, and into the outer streets of the town, where now scarcely a soul was to be seen, though as the car passed, the windows were crowded with heads. Police were everywhere, and the market-place—a sorry sight of smoky wreck and ruin—was held by a cordon of soldiers, behind which a crowd still looked on. French, sitting beside her, watched the erect girl-driver, the excellence of her driving, the brain and skill she was bringing to bear upon her "job." Here was the "new woman" indeed, in her best aspect. He could not but compare the Helena of this adventure—this competent and admirable Helena—with the girl of the night before. Had the war produced the same dual personality in thousands of English men and English women?—in the English nation itself?

They drew up at the steps of the market-hall, where a group of persons were standing, including a nurse in uniform. Buntingford came forward, and bending over the side of the car, said to Helena:

"Do you want to be relieved? There are several people here who could drive the car."

She flushed.

"I want to take these men to hospital."

He smiled at her.

"You shall."

He turned back to speak to the doctor who was to accompany the car. Helena jumped out, and went to consult with the nurse. In a very short time, the car had been turned as far as possible into an ambulance, and the wounded men were brought out.

"As gently as you can," said the doctor to Helena. "Are your springs good?"

"The car's first-rate, and I'll do my best. I've been driving for nearly a year, up to the other day." She pointed to her badge. The doctor nodded approval, and he and the nurse took their places. Then Buntingford jumped into the car, beside Helena.

"I'll show you the way. It won't take long."

In a few minutes, the car was in country lanes, and all the smoking tumult of the town had vanished from sight and hearing. It had become already indeed almost incredible, in the glow of the May afternoon, and amid the hawthorn white of the hedges, the chattering birds that fled before them, the marvellous green of the fields. Helena drove with the deftness of a practised hand, avoiding ruts, going softly over rough places.

"Good!" said Buntingford to her more than once—"that was excellent!"

But the suffering of the men behind overshadowed everything else, and it was with a big breath of relief that Buntingford at last perceived the walls of the county hospital rising out of a group of trees in front of them. Helena brought the car gently to a standstill, and, jumping out, was ready to help as a V. A. D. in the moving of the men. The hospital had been warned by telephone, and all preparations had been made. When the two unconscious men were safely in bed, the Dansworth doctor turned warmly to Helena:

"I don't know what we should have done without you, Miss Pitstone! But you look awfully tired. I hope you'll go home at once, and rest."

"I'm going to take her home—at once," said Buntingford. "We can't do anything more, can we?"

"Nothing. And here's the matron with a message."

The message was from the mayor of Dansworth. "Situation well in hand. No more trouble feared. Best thanks."

"All right!" said Buntingford. He turned smiling to Helena. "Now we'll go home and get some dinner!"

The Dansworth doctor and nurse remained behind. Once more Buntingford got into the car beside his ward.

"What an ass I am!" he said, in disgust—"not to be able to drive the car. But I should probably kill you and myself."

Helena laughed at him, a new sweetness in the sound, and they started.

Presently Buntingford said gently:

"I want to thank you,—for one thing especially—for having waited so patiently—while we got the thing under."

"I wasn't patient at all! I wanted desperately to be in it!"

"All the more credit! It would have been a terrible anxiety if you had been there. A policeman was killed just beside us. There was a man with a revolver running amuck. He just missed French by a hair-breadth."

Helena exclaimed in horror.

"You see—one puts the best face on it—but it might have been a terrible business. But what I shall always remember most—is your part in it"

Their eyes met, hers half shy, half repentant, his full of a kindness she had never yet seen there.



CHAPTER VIII

"Oh, what a jolly day! We've had a glorious ride," said Helena, throwing herself down on the grass beside Mrs. Friend. "And how are you? Have you been resting—or slaving—as you were expressly forbidden to do?"

For Mrs. Friend had been enjoying a particularly bad cold and had not long emerged from her bedroom, looking such a pitiful little wreck, that both Lord Buntingford and Helena had been greatly concerned. In the five weeks that had now elapsed since her arrival at Beechmark she had stolen her quiet way into the liking of everybody in the house to such an extent that, during the days she had been in bed with a high temperature, she had been seriously missed in the daily life of the place, and the whole household had actively combined to get her well again. Mrs. Mawson had fed her; and Lucy Friend was aghast to think how much her convalescence must be costing her employer in milk, eggs, butter, cream and chickens, when all such foods were still so frightfully, abominably dear. But they were forced down her throat by Helena and the housekeeper; while Lord Buntingford enquired after her every morning, and sent her a reckless supply of illustrated papers and novels. To see her now in the library or on the lawn again, with her white shawl round her, and the usual needlework on her knee, was a pleasant sight to everybody in the house.

The little lady had not only won this place for herself by the sweet and selfless gift which was her natural endowment; she was becoming the practical helper of everybody, of Mrs. Mawson in the house, of old Fenn in the garden, even of Buntingford himself, who was gradually falling into the habit of letting her copy important letters for him, and keep some order in the library. She was not in the least clever or accomplished; but her small fingers seemed to have magic in them; and her good will was inexhaustible.

Helena had grown amazingly fond of her. She appealed to something maternal and protecting in the girl's strong nature. Since her mother's death, there had been a big streak of loneliness in Helena's heart, though she would have suffered tortures rather than confess it; and little Lucy Friend's companionship filled a void. She must needs respect Lucy's conscience, Lucy's instincts had more than once shamed her own.

"What are you going to wear to-night?" said Mrs. Friend, softly smoothing back the brown hair from the girl's hot brow.

"Pale green and apple-blossom."

Lucy Friend smiled, as though already she had a vision of the full-dress result.

"That'll be delicious," she said, with enthusiasm.

"Lucy!—am I good-looking?"

The girl spoke half wistfully, half defiantly, her eyes fixed on Lucy.

Mrs. Friend laughed.

"I asked that question before I had seen you."

"Of whom?" said Helena eagerly. "You didn't see anybody but Cousin Philip before I arrived. Tell me, Lucy—tell me at once."

Mrs. Friend kept a smiling silence for a minute. At last she said—"Lord Buntingford showed me a portrait of you before you arrived."

"A portrait of me? There isn't one in the house! Lucy, you deceiver, what do you mean?"

"I was taken to see one in the hall."

A sudden light dawned on Helena.

"The Romney? No! And I've been showing it to everybody as the loveliest thing going!"

"There—you see!"

Helena's face composed itself.

"I don't know why I should be flattered. She was a horrid minx. That no doubt was what the likeness consisted in!"

Mrs. Friend laughed, but said nothing. Helena rose from the grass, pausing to say as she turned towards the house:

"We're going to dance in the drawing-room, Mawson says. They've cleared it."

"Doesn't it look nice?"

Helena assented. "Let me see—" she added slowly—"this is the third dance, isn't it, since I came?"

"Yes—the third."

"I don't think we need have another"—the tone was decided, almost impatient—"at least when this party's over."

Mrs. Friend opened her eyes.

"I thought you liked to dance every week-end?"

"Well—ye-es—amongst ourselves. I didn't mean to turn the house upside-down every week."

"Well, you see—the house-parties have been so large. And besides there have been neighbours."

"I didn't ask them," said Helena. "But—we won't have another—till we go to Town."

"Very well. It might be wise. The servants are rather tired, and if they give warning, we shall never get any more!"

Mrs. Friend watched the retreating figure of Helena. There had indeed been a dizzy succession of week-end parties, and it seemed to her that Lord Buntingford's patience under the infliction had been simply miraculous. For they rarely contained friends of his own; his lameness cut him off from dancing; and it had been clear to Lucy Friend that in many cases Helena's friends had been sharply distasteful to him. He was, in Mrs. Friend's eyes, a strange mixture as far as social standards were concerned. A boundless leniency in some cases; the sternest judgment in others.

For instance, a woman he had known from childhood had lately left her husband, carried off her children, and joined her lover. Lord Buntingford was standing, stoutly by her, helping her in her divorce proceedings, paying for the education of the children, and defending her whenever he heard her attacked. On the other hand, his will had been iron in the matter of Lord Donald, whose exposure as co-respondent in the particularly disreputable case had been lately filling the newspapers. Mrs. Friend had seen Helena take up the Times on one of the days on which the evidence in this case had appeared, and fling it down again with a flush and a look of disgust. But since the day of the Dansworth riot, she had never mentioned Lord Donald's name.

Certainly the relations between her and her guardian had curiously changed. In the first place, since her Dansworth adventure, Helena had found something to do to think about other than quarrelling with "Cousin Philip." Her curiosity as to how the two wounded police, whom she had driven to the County Hospital that day, might be faring had led to her going over there two or three times a week, either to relieve an overworked staff, or to drive convalescent soldiers, still under treatment in the wards.

The occupation had been a godsend to her, and everybody else. She still talked revolution, and she was always ready to spar with Lord Buntingford, or other people. But all the same Lucy Friend was often aware of a much more tractable temper, a kind of hesitancy—and appeasement—which, even if it passed away, made her beauty, for the moment, doubly attractive.

Was it, after all, the influence of Lord Buntingford—and was the event justifying her mother's strange provision for her? He had certainly treated her with a wonderful kindness and indulgence. Of late he had returned to his work at the Admiralty, only coming down to Beechmark for long week-ends from Friday to Monday. But in these later week-ends he had gradually abandoned the detached and half-sarcastic attitude which he had originally assumed towards Helena, and it seemed to Lucy Friend that he was taking his function towards her with a new seriousness. If so, it had affected himself at least as much as the proud and difficult girl whose guidance had been so hurriedly thrust upon him. His new role had brought out in him unexpected resources, or revived old habits. For instance he had not ridden for years; though, as a young man, and before his accident, he had been a fine horseman. But he now rode whenever he was at Beechmark, to show Helena the country; and they both looked so well on horseback that it was a pleasure of which Lucy Friend never tired to watch them go and to welcome them home.

Then the fact that he was a trained artist, which most of his friends had forgotten, became significant again for Helena's benefit. She had some aptitude, and more ambition—would indeed, but for the war, have been a South Kensington student, and had long cherished yearnings for the Slade. He set her work to do during the week, and corrected it with professional sharpness when he reappeared.

And more important perhaps than either the riding or the drawing, was the partial relaxation for her benefit of the reserve and taciturnity which had for years veiled the real man from those who liked and respected him most. He never indeed talked of himself or his past; but he would discuss affairs, opinions, books—especially on their long rides together—with a frankness, and a tone of gay and equal comradeship, which, or so Mrs. Friend imagined, had had a disarming and rather bewildering effect on Helena. The girl indeed seemed often surprised and excited. It was evident that they had never got on during her mother's lifetime, and that his habitual bantering or sarcastic tone towards her while she was still in the school-room had roused an answering resentment in her. Hence the aggressive mood in which, after two or three months of that half-mad whirl of gaiety into which London had plunged after the Armistice, she had come down to Beechmark.

They still jarred, sometimes seriously; Helena was often provocative and aggressive; and Buntingford could make a remark sting without intending it. But on the whole Lucy Friend felt that she was watching something which had in it possibilities of beauty; indeed of a rather touching and rare development. But not at all as the preliminary to a love-affair. In Buntingford's whole relation to his ward, Lucy Friend, at least, had never yet detected the smallest sign of male susceptibility. It suggested something quite different. Julian Horne, who had taken a great fancy to Helena's chaperon, was now recommending books to her instead of to Helena, who always forgot or disobeyed his instructions. With a little preliminary lecture, he had put the "Greville Memoirs" in her hands by way of improving her mind; and she had been struck by a passage in which Greville describes Lord Melbourne's training of the young Queen Victoria, whose Prime Minister he was. The man of middle-age, accomplished, cynical and witty, suddenly confronted with a responsibility which challenged both his heart and his conscience—and that a responsibility towards an attractive young girl whom he could neither court nor command, towards whom his only instrument was the honesty and delicacy of his own purpose:—there was something in this famous, historical situation which seemed to throw a light on the humbler situation at Beechmark.

Four o'clock! In another hour the Whitsuntide party for which the house stood ready would have arrived. Helena's particular "pals" were all coming, and various friends and kinsfolk of Lord Buntingford's; including Lady Mary Chance, a general or two, some Admiralty officials, and one or two distinguished sailors with the halo of Zeebrugge about them. The gathering was to last nearly a week. Mrs. Mawson had engaged two extra servants, and the master of the house had resigned himself. But he had laid it down that the fare was to be simple—and "no champagne." And though of course there would be plenty of bridge, he had given a hint to Vivian Lodge, who, as his heir-apparent, was his natural aide-de-camp in the management of the party, that anything like high play would be unwelcome. Some of Helena's friends during the latter week-ends of May had carried things to extremes.

Meanwhile the social and political sky was darkening in the June England. Peace was on the point of being signed in Paris; but the industrial war at home weighed on every thinking mind. London was dancing night after night; money was being spent like water; and yet every man and woman of sense knew that the only hope for Britain lay in work and saving. Buntingford's habitual frown—the frown not of temper but of oppression—had grown deeper; and on their long rides together he had shown a great deal of his mind to Helena—the mind of a patriot full of fear for his country.

A man came across the lawn. Lucy Friend was glad to recognize Geoffrey French, who was a great favourite with her.

"You are early!" she said, as they greeted.

"I came down by motor-bike. London is hateful, and I was in a hurry to get out of it. Where is Helena?"

"Gone to change her dress. She has been riding."

Frank mopped his brow in silence for a little. Then he said with the half-mischievous smile which in Lucy Friend's eyes was one of his chief physical "points."

"How you and Philip have toned her down!"

"Oh, not I!" said Lucy, her modesty distressed. "I've always admired her so! Of course—I was sometimes surprised—"

Geoffrey laughed.

"I daresay we shall all be surprised a good many times yet?" Then he moved a little closer to the small person, who was becoming everybody's confidante. "Do you mind telling me something—if you know it?" he said, lowering his voice.

"Ask me—but I can't promise!"

"Do you think Helena has quite made up her mind not to marry Dale?"

Mrs. Friend hesitated.

"I don't know—"

"But what do you think?"

She lifted her gentle face, under his compulsion, and slowly, pitifully shook her head.

Geoffrey drew a long breath.

"Then she oughtn't to ask him here! The poor little fellow is going through the tortures of the damned!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry. Isn't there anything we can do?" cried Mrs. Friend.

"Nothing—but keep him away. After all he's only the first victim."

Startled by the note in her companion's voice, Mrs. Friend turned to look at him. He forced a smile, as their eyes met.

"Oh, we must all take our chance! But Peter's not the boy he was—before the war. Things bowl him over easily."

"She likes him so much," murmured Lucy. "I'm sure she never means to be unkind."

"She isn't unkind!" said Geoffrey with energy. "It's the natural fated thing. We are all the slaves of her car and she knows it. When she was in the stage of quarrelling with us all, it was just fun. But if Helena grows as delicious—as she promised to be last week—" He shrugged his shoulders, with a deep breath—"Well,—she'll have to marry somebody some day—and the rest of us may drown! Only, if you're to be umpire—and she likes you so much that I expect you will be—play fair!"