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."