"None of them can say I don't treat them nicely!"

"I daresay. But I warn you I shan't accept the position for long. I shall begin again."

"Well, but not yet!--not for a long time," she pleaded. Then she gave a little impatient stamp, as she walked beside him.

"I tell you--I don't want to be bound. I won't be bound! I want to be free."

"So you said--_a propos_ of Philip," he retorted drily.

He saw the shaft strike home--the involuntary dropping of the eyelids, the soft catch in the breath. But she rallied quickly.

"That was altogether different! You had no business to say that, Geoffrey."

"Well, then, forgive me--and keep me quiet--just--just one kiss, Helena!"

The last passionate words were hardly audible. They had passed into the deepest shadow of the avenue. No one was visible in all its green length.

They stood ensiled by summer; the great trees mounting guard. Helena threw a glance to right and left.

"Well, then--to keep you quiet--_sans prejudice_!"

She demurely offered her cheek. But his lips were scarcely allowed to touch it, she drew away so quickly.

"Now, then, that's quite settled!" she said in her most matter-of-fact voice. "Such a comfort! Let's go back."

They turned back along the avenue, a rather flushed pair, enjoying each other's society, and discussing the dance, and their respective partners.

It happened, however, that this little scene--at its most critical point--had only just escaped a spectator. Philip Buntingford passed across the further end of the avenue on his way to the Horne Farm, at the moment when Helena and Geoffrey turned their backs to him, walking towards the house. They were not aware of him; but he stopped a moment to watch the young figures disappearing under the green shade. A look of pleasure was in his blue eyes. It seemed to him that things were going well in that direction. And he wished them to go well. He had known Geoffrey since he was a little chap in his first breeches; had watched him through Winchester and Oxford, had taken as semi-paternal pride in the young man's distinguished war record, and had helped him with his election expenses. He himself was intimate with very few of the younger generation. His companions in the Admiralty work, and certain senior naval officers with whom that work had made him acquainted:--a certain intimacy, a certain real friendship had indeed grown up between him and some of them. But something old and tired in him made the effort of bridging the gulf between himself and men in their twenties--generally speaking--too difficult. Or he thought so. The truth was, perhaps, as Geoffrey had expressed it to Helena, that many of the younger men who had been brought into close official or business contact with him felt a real affection for him. Buntingford would have thought it strange that they should do so, and never for one moment assumed it.

After its languid morning, Beechmark revived with the afternoon. Its young men guests, whom the Dansworth rioters would probably have classed as parasites and idlers battening on the toil of the people, had in fact earned their holiday by a good many months of hard work, whether in the winding up of the war, or the re-starting of suspended businesses, or the renewed activities of the bar; and they were taking it whole-heartedly.

Golf, tennis, swimming, and sleep had filled the day, and it was a crowd in high spirits that gathered round Mrs. Friend for tea on the lawn, somewhere about five o'clock. Lucy, who had reached that stage of fatigue the night before when--like Peter Dale, only for different reasons--her bed became her worst enemy, had scarcely slept a wink, but was nevertheless presiding gaily over the tea-table. She looked particularly small and slight in a little dress of thin grey stuff that Helena had coaxed her to wear in lieu of her perennial black, but there was that expression in her pretty eyes as of a lifted burden, and a new friendship with life, which persons in Philip Buntingford's neighbourhood, when they belonged to the race of the meek and gentle, were apt to put on. Peter Dale hung about her, distributing tea and cake, and obedient to all her wishes. More than once in these later weeks he had found, in the dumb sympathy and understanding of the little widow, something that had been to him like shadow in the desert. He was known to fame as one of the smartest young aide-de-camps in the army, and fabulously rich besides.

His invitation cards, carelessly stacked in his Curzon Street rooms, were a sight to see. But Helena had crushed his manly spirit. Sitting under the shadow of Mrs. Friend, he liked to watch from a distance the beautiful and dazzling creature who would have none of him. He was very sorry for himself; but, all the same, he had had some rattling games of tennis; the weather was divine, and he could still gaze at Helena; so that although the world was evil, "the thrushes still sang in it."

Buntingford and Geoffrey were seen walking up from the lake when tea was nearly over.

All eyes were turned to them.

"Now, then," said Julian Horne--"for the mystery, and its key. What a pity mysteries are generally such frauds! They can't keep it up. They let you down when you least expect it."

"Well, what news?" cried Helena, as the two men approached. Buntingford shook his head.

"Not much to tell--very little, indeed."

It appeared to Horne that both men looked puzzled and vaguely excited.

But their story was soon told. They had seen Richard Stimson, a labourer, who reported having noticed a strange lady crossing the park in the direction of the wood, which, however, she had not entered, having finally changed her course so as to bear towards the Western Lodge and the allotments.

"That, you will observe, was about ten o'clock," interjected French, "and I saw my lady about eight." Buntingford found a chair, lit a cigarette, and resumed:

"She appeared in the village some time yesterday morning and went into the church. She told the woman who was cleaning there that she had come to look at an old window which was mentioned in her guide-book. The woman noticed that she stayed some time looking at the monuments in the church, and the tombs in the Buntingford chantry, which all the visitors go to see. She ordered some sandwiches at the Rose-and-Crown and got into talk with the landlord. He says she asked the questions strangers generally do ask--'Who lived in the neighbourhood?'--If she took a lodging in the village for August were there many nice places to go and see?--and so on.

She said she had visited the Buntingford tombs in the chantry, and asked some questions about the family, and myself--Was I married?--Who was the heir? etc. Then when she had paid her bill, she enquired the way across the park to Feetham Station, and said she would have a walk and catch a six o'clock train back to London. She loved the country, she said--and liked walking. And that really is--all!"

"Except about her appearance," put in Geoffrey. "The landlord said he thought she must be an actress, or 'summat o' that sort.' She had such a strange way of looking at you. But when we asked what that meant, he scratched his head and couldn't tell us. All that we got out of him was he wouldn't like to have her for a lodger--'she'd frighten his missus.'

Oh, and he did say that she looked dead-tired, and that he advised her not to walk to Feetham, but to wait for the five o'clock bus that goes from the village to the station. But she said she liked walking, and would find some cool place in the park to sit in--till it was time to catch the train."

"She was well-dressed, he said," added Buntingford, addressing himself to Cynthia Welwyn, who sat beside him; "and his description of her hat and veil, etc., quite agreed with old Stimson's account."

There was a silence, in which everybody seemed to be trying to piece the evidence together as to the mysterious onlooker of the night, and make a collected whole of it. Buntingford and Geoffrey were especially thoughtful and preoccupied. At last the former, after smoking a while without speaking, got up with the remark that he must see to some letters before post.

"Oh, no!"--pleaded Helena, intercepting him, and speaking so that he only should hear. "To-morrow's Whitsunday, and Monday's Bank Holiday. What's the use of writing letters? Don't you remember--you promised to show me those drawings before dinner--and may Geoffrey come, too?"

A sudden look of reluctance and impatience crossed Buntingford's face.

Helena perceived it at once, and drew back. But Buntingford said immediately:

"Oh, certainly. In half an hour, I'll have the portfolios ready."

He walked away. Helena sat flushed and silent, her eyes on the ground, twisting and untwisting the handkerchief on her lap. And, presently, she too disappeared. The rest of the party were left to discuss with Geoffrey French the ins and outs of the evidence, and to put up various theories as to the motives of the woman of the yew trees; an occupation that lasted them till dressing-time.

Cynthia Welwyn took but little share in it. She was sitting rather apart from the rest, under a blue parasol which made an attractive combination with her semi-transparent black dress and the bright gold of her hair. In reality, her thoughts were busy with quite other matters than the lady of the yews. It did not seem to her of any real importance that a half-crazy stranger, attracted by the sounds and sights of the ball, on such a beautiful night, should have tried to watch it from the lake. The whole tale was curious, but--to her--irrelevant. The mystery she burned to find out was nearer home. Was Helena Pitstone falling in love with Philip? And if so, what was the effect on Philip? Cynthia had not much enjoyed her dance. The dazzling, the unfair ascendency of youth, as embodied in Helena, had been rather more galling than usual; and the "sittings out"

she had arranged with Philip during the supper dances had been all cancelled by her sister's tiresome attack. Julian Horne, who generally got on with her, chivalrously moved his seat near to her, and tried to talk. But he found her in a rather dry and caustic mood. The ball had seemed to her "badly managed"; and the guests, outside the house-party, "an odd set."

Meanwhile, exactly at the hour named by Buntingford, he heard a knock at the library door. Helena appeared.

She stood just inside the door, looking absurdly young and childish in her white frock. But her face was grave.

"I thought just now"--she said, almost timidly,--"that you were bored by my asking you to show us those things. Are you? Please tell me. I didn't mean to get in the way of anything you were doing."

"Bored! Not in the least. Here they are, all ready for you. Come in."

She saw two or three large portfolios distributed on chairs, and one or two drawings already on exhibition. Her face cleared.

"Oh, what a heavenly thing!"

She made straight for a large drawing of the Val d'Arno in spring, and the gap in the mountains that leads to Lucca, taken from some high point above Fiesole. She knelt down before it in an ecstasy of pleasure.

"Mummy and I were there two years before the war. I do believe you came too?" She looked up, smiling, at the face above her.

It was the first time she had ever appealed to her childish recollections of him in any other than a provocative or half-resentful tone. He could remember a good many tussles with her in her frail mother's interest, when she was a long-legged, insubordinate child of twelve. And when Helena first arrived at Beechmark, it had hurt him to realize how bitterly she remembered such things, how grossly she had exaggerated them. The change indicated in her present manner, soothed his tired, nervous mood. His smile answered her.

"Yes, I was there with you two or three days. Do you remember the wild tulips we gathered at Settignano?"

"And the wild cherries--and the pear-blossoms! Italy in the spring is _Heaven_!" she said, under her breath, as she dropped to a sitting posture on the floor while he put the drawings before her.

"Well!--shall we go there next spring?"

"Don't tempt me--and then back out!"

"If I did," he said, laughing, "you could still go with Mrs. Friend."

She made no answer. Another knock at the door.