"I had no authority from you to say anything. But of course they all understood that something strange had happened. Can I be any help with the others, while--"

"While I tell Helena?" said Buntingford, heavily. "Yes. Better get it over. Say, please--I should be grateful for no more talk than is inevitable."

Geoffrey stood by awkwardly, not knowing how to express the painful sympathy he felt. His very pity made him abrupt.

"I am to say--that you always believed--she was dead?"

Under what name to speak of the woman lying at the Rectory puzzled him.

The mere admission of the thought that however completely in the realm of morals she might have forfeited his name, she was still Buntingford's wife in the realm of law, seemed an outrage.

At the question, Buntingford sprang up suddenly from the seat on which he had fallen; and Geoffrey, who was standing near him involuntarily retreated a few steps, in amazement at the passionate animation which for the moment had transformed the whole aspect of the elder man.

"Yes, you may say so--you must say so! There is no other account you can give of it!--no other account I can authorize you to give it. It is four-fifths true--and no one in this house--not even you--has any right to press me further. At the same time, I am not going to put even the fraction of a lie between myself and you, Geoffrey, for you have been--a dear fellow--to me!" He put his hand a moment on Geoffrey's shoulder, withdrawing it instantly. "The point is--what would have come about--if this had not happened? That is the test. And I can't give a perfectly clear answer." He began to pace the room--thinking aloud. "I have been very anxious--lately--to marry. I have been so many years alone; and I--well, there it is!--I have suffered from it, physically and morally; more perhaps than other men might have suffered. And lately--you must try and understand me, Geoffrey!--although I had doubts--yes, deep down, I still had doubts--whether I was really free--I have been much more ready to believe than I used to be, that I might now disregard the doubts--silence them!--for good and all. It has been my obsession--you may say now my temptation. Oh! the divorce court would probably have freed me--have allowed me to presume my wife's death after these fifteen years. But the difficulty lay in my own conscience. Was I certain? No! I was not certain! Anna's ways and standards were well known to me. I could imagine various motives which might have induced her to deceive me. At the same time"--he stopped and pointed to his writing-table--"these drawers are stuffed full of reports and correspondence, from agents all over Europe, whom I employed in the years before the war to find out anything they could. I cannot accuse myself of any deliberate or wilful ignorance. I made effort after effort--in vain. I was entitled--at last--it often seemed to me to give up the effort, to take my freedom.

But then"--his voice dropped--"I thought of the woman I might love--and wish to marry. I should indeed have told her everything, and the law might have been ready to protect us. But if Anna still lived, and were suddenly to reappear in my life--what a situation!--for a sensitive, scrupulous woman!"

"It would have broken--spoiled--everything!" said Geoffrey, under his breath, but with emphasis. He was leaning against the mantelpiece, and his face was hidden from his companion. Buntingford threw him a strange, deprecating look.

"You are right--you are quite right. Yet I believe, Geoffrey, I might have committed that wrong--but for this--what shall I call it?--this 'act of God' that has happened to me. Don't misunderstand me!" He came to stand beside his nephew, and spoke with intensity. "It was _only_ a possibility--and there is no guilt on my conscience. I have no real person in my mind. But any day I might have failed my own sense of justice--my own sense of honour--sufficiently--to let a woman risk it!"

Geoffrey thought of one woman--if not two women--who would have risked it. His heart was full of Helena. It was as though he could only appreciate the situation as it affected her. How deep would the blow strike, when she knew? He turned to look at Buntingford, who had resumed his restless walk up and down the room, realizing with mingled affection and reluctance the charm of his physical presence, the dark head, the kind deep eyes, the melancholy selfishness that seemed to enwrap him.

Yet all the time he had not been selfless! There had been no individual woman in the case. But none the less, he had been consumed with the same personal longing--the same love of loving; the _amor amandi_--as other men. That was a discovery. It brought him nearer to the young man's tenderness; but it made the chance of a misunderstanding on Helena's part greater.

"Shall I tell Helena you would like to speak to her?" he said, breaking the silence.

Buntingford assented.

Philip, left alone, tried to collect his thoughts. He did not conceal from himself what had been implied rather than said by Geoffrey. The hint had startled and disquieted him. But he could not believe it had any real substance; and certainly he felt himself blameless. A creature so radiant, with the world at her feet!--and he, prematurely aged, who had seemed to her, only a few weeks ago, a mere old fogy in her path! That she should have reconsidered her attitude towards him, was surely natural, considering all the pains he had taken to please her. But as to anything else--absurd!

Latterly, indeed, since she had come to that tacit truce with Jim, he was well aware how much her presence in his house had added to the pleasant moments of daily life. In winning her good will, in thinking for her, in trying to teach her, in watching the movements of her quick untrained intelligence and the various phases of her enchanting beauty, he had found not only a new occupation, but a new joy. Rachel's prophecy for him had begun to realize itself. And, all the time, his hopes as to Geoffrey's success with her had been steadily rising. He and Geoffrey had indeed been at cross-purposes, if Geoffrey really believed what he seemed to believe! But it was nothing--it could be nothing--but the fantasy of a lover, starting at a shadow.

And suddenly his mind, as he stood waiting, plunged into matters which were not shadows--but palpitating realities. _His son_!--whom he was to see on the morrow. He believed the word of the woman who had been his wife. Looking back on her character with all its faults, he did not think she would have been capable of a malicious lie, at such a moment. Forty miles away then, there was a human being waiting and suffering, to whom his life had given life. Excitement--yearning--beat through his pulses.

He already felt the boy in his arms; was already conscious of the ardour with which every device of science should be called in, to help restore to him, not only his son's body, but his mind.

There was a low tap at the door. He recalled his thoughts and went to open it.

"Helena!--my dear!"

He took her hand and led her in. She had changed her white dress of the afternoon for a little black frock, one of her mourning dresses for her mother, with a bunch of flame-coloured roses at her waist. The semi-transparent folds of the black brought out the brilliance of the white neck and shoulders, the pale carnations of the face, the beautiful hair, following closely the contours of the white brow. Even through all his pain and preoccupation, Buntingford admired; was instantly conscious of the sheer pleasure of her beauty. But it was the pleasure of an artist, an elder brother--a father even. Her mother was in his mind, and the strong affection he had begun to feel for his ward was shot through and through by the older tenderness.

"Sit there, dear," he said, pushing forward a chair. "Has Geoffrey told you anything?"

"No. He said you wanted to tell me something yourself, and he would speak to the others."

She was very pale, and the hand he touched was cold. But she was perfectly self-possessed.

He sat down in front of her collecting his thoughts.

"Something has happened, Helena, to-day--this very evening--which must--I fear--alter all your plans and mine. The poor woman whom Geoffrey saw in the wood, whose bag you found, was just able to make her escape, when you and Geoffrey landed. She wandered about the rest of the night, and in the early morning she asked for shelter--being evidently ill--at the Rectory, but it was not till this evening that she made a statement which induced them to send for me. Helena!--what did your mother ever tell you about my marriage?"

"She told me very little--only that you had married someone abroad--when you were studying in Paris--and that she was dead."

Buntingford covered his eyes with his hand.

"I told your mother, Helena, all I knew. I concealed nothing from her--both what I knew--and what I didn't know."

He paused, to take from his pocket a small leather case and to extract from it a newspaper cutting. He handed it to her. It was from the first column of the _Times_, was dated 1907, and contained the words:--"On July 19th at Lyons, France, Anna, wife of Philip Bliss, aged 28."

Helena read it, and looked up. Buntingford anticipated the words that were on her lips.

"Wait a moment!--let me go on. I read that announcement in the _Times_, Helena, three years after my wife had deserted me. I had spent those three years, first in recovering from a bad accident, and then in wandering about trying to trace her. Naturally, I went off to Lyons at once, and could discover--nothing! The police there did all they could to help me--our own Embassy in Paris got at the Ministry of the Interior--useless! I recovered the original notice and envelope from the _Times_. Both were typewritten, and the Lyons postmark told us no more than the notice had already told. I could only carry on my search, and for some years afterwards, even after I had returned to London, I spent the greater part of all I earned and possessed upon it. About that time my friendship with your mother began. She was already ill, and spent most of her life--as you remember--except for those two or three invalid winters in Italy--in that little drawing-room, I knew so well. I could always be sure of finding her at home; and gradually--as you recollect--she became my best friend. She was the only person in England who knew the true story of my marriage. She always suspected, from the time she first heard of it, that the notice in the _Times_--"

Helena made a quick movement forward. Her lips parted.

"--was not true?"

Buntingford took her hand again, and they looked at each other, she trembling involuntarily.

"And the woman last night?" she said, breathlessly--"was she someone who knew--who could tell you the truth?"

"She was my wife--herself!"

Helena withdrew her hand.

"How strange!--how strange!" She covered her eyes. There was a silence.

After it, Buntingford resumed:

"Has Geoffrey told you the first warning of it--you left this room?"

"No."

He described the incident of the sketch.

"It was a drawing I had made of her only a few weeks before she left me.

I had no idea it was in that portfolio. We had scarcely time to put it away before Mr. Alcott's note arrived--sending for me at once."

Helena's hands had dropped, while she hung upon his story. And a wonderful unconscious sweetness had stolen into her expression. Her young heart was in her eyes.

"Oh, I am so glad--so glad--you had that warning!"

Buntingford was deeply touched.

"You dear child!" he said in a rather choked voice, and, rising, he walked away from her to the further end of the room. When he returned, he found a pale and thoughtful Helena.

"Of course, Cousin Philip, this will make a great change--in your life--and in mine."

He stood silently before her--preferring that she should make her own suggestions.

"I think--I ought to go away at once. Thanks to you--I have Mrs.

Friend--who is such a dear."