"No!"

"He is. It's very slight--an accident, I believe--somewhere abroad. But they wouldn't have him for the Army, and he was awfully cut up. He used to come and sit with Mummy every day and pour out his woes. I suppose she was the only person to whom he ever talked about his private affairs--he knew she was safe. Of course you know he is a widower?"

Mrs. Friend knew nothing. But she was vaguely surprised.

"Oh, well, a good many people know that--though Mummy always said she never came across anybody who had ever seen his wife. He married her when he was quite a boy---abroad somewhere--when there seemed no chance of his ever being Lord Buntingford--he had two elder brothers who died--and she was an art student on her own. An old uncle of Mummy's once told me that when Cousin Philip came back from abroad--she died abroad--after her death, he seemed altogether changed somehow. But he never, _never_ speaks of her"--the girl swayed her slim body backwards and forwards for emphasis--"and I wouldn't advise you or anybody else to try. Most people think he's just a bachelor. I never talk about it to people--Mummy said I wasn't to--and as he was very nice to Mummy--well, I don't. But I thought you'd better know. And now I think we'd better dress."

But instead of moving, she looked down affectionately at her uniform and her neat brown leggings.

"What a bore! I suppose I've no right to them any more."

"What is your uniform?"

"Women Ambulance Drivers. Don't you know the hostel in Ruby Square? I bargained with Cousin Philip after Mummy's death I should stay out my time, till I was demobbed. Awfully jolly time I had--on the whole--though the girls were a mixed lot. Well--let's get a move on." She sprang up.

"Your room's next door."

Mrs. Friend was departing when Helena enquired:

"By the way--have you ever heard of Cynthia Welwyn?"

Mrs. Friend turned at the door, and shook her head.

"Oh, well, I can tot her up very quickly--just to give you an idea--as she's coming to dinner. She's fair and forty--just about Buntingford's age--quite good-looking--quite clever--lives by herself, reads a great deal--runs the parish--you know the kind of thing. They swarm! I think she would like to marry Cousin Philip, if he would let her."

Mrs. Friend hurriedly shut the door at her back, which had been slightly ajar. Helena laughed--the merry but very soft laugh Mrs. Friend had first heard in the hall--a laugh which seemed somehow out of keeping with the rest of its owner's personality.

"Don't be alarmed. I doubt whether that would be news to anybody in this house! But Buntingford's quite her match. Well, ta-ta. Shall I come and help you dress?"

"The idea!" cried Mrs. Friend. "Shall I help you?" She looked round the room and at Helena vigorously tackling the boxes. "I thought you had a maid?"

"Not at all. I couldn't be bored with one."

"Do let me help you!"

"Then you'd be my maid, and I should bully you and detest you. You must go and dress."

And Mrs. Friend found herself gently pushed out of the room. She went to her own in some bewilderment. After having been immured for some three years in close attendance on an invalided woman shut up in two rooms, she was like a person walking along a dark road and suddenly caught in the glare of motor lamps. Brought into contact with such a personality as Helena Pitstone promised to be, she felt helpless and half blind. A survival, too; for this world into which she had now stepped was one quite new to her. Yet when she had first shut herself up in Lancaster Gate she had never been conscious of any great difference between herself and other women or girls. She had lived a very quiet life in a quiet home before the war. Her father, a hard-working Civil Servant on a small income, and her mother, the daughter of a Wesleyan Minister, had brought her up strictly, yet with affection. The ways of the house were old-fashioned, dictated by an instinctive dislike of persons who went often to theatres and dances, of women who smoked, or played bridge, or indulged in loud, slangy talk. Dictated, too, by a pervading "worship of ancestors," of a preceding generation of plain evangelical men and women, whose books survived in the little house, and whose portraits hung upon its walls.

Then, in the first year of the war, she had married a young soldier, the son of family friends, like-minded with her own people, a modest, inarticulate fellow, who had been killed at Festubert. She had loved him--oh, yes, she had loved him. But sometimes, looking back, she was troubled to feel how shadowy he had become to her. Not in the region of emotion. She had pined for his fondness all these years; she pined for it still. But intellectually. If he had lived, how would he have felt towards all these strange things that the war had brought about--the revolutionary spirit everywhere, the changes come and coming? She did not know; she could not imagine. And it troubled her that she could not find any guidance for herself in her memories of him.

And as to the changes in her own sex, they seemed to have all come about while she was sitting in a twilight room reading aloud to an old woman.

Only a few months after her husband's death her parents had both died, and she found herself alone in the world, and almost penniless. She was not strong enough for war work, the doctor said, and so she had let the doors of Lancaster Gate close upon her, only looking for something quiet and settled--even if it were a settled slavery.

After which, suddenly, just about the time of the Armistice, she had become aware that nothing was the same; that the women and the girls--so many of them in uniform!--that she met in the streets when she took her daily walk--were new creatures; not attractive to her as a whole, but surprising and formidable, because of the sheer life there was in them.

And she herself began to get restive; to realize that she was not herself so very old, and to want to know--a hundred things! It had taken her five months, however, to make up her mind; and then at last she had gone to an agency--the only way she knew--and had braved the cold and purely selfish wrath of the household she was leaving. And now here she was in Lord Buntingford's house--Miss Helena Pitstone's chaperon. As she stood before her looking-glass, fastening her little black dress with shaking fingers, the first impression of Helena's personality was upon her, running through her, like wine to the unaccustomed. She supposed that now girls were all like this--all such free, wild, uncurbed creatures, a law to themselves. One moment she repeated that she was a fool to have come; and the next, she would not have found herself back in Lancaster Gate for the world.

Meanwhile, in the adjoining room, Helena was putting on a tea-gown, a white and silver "confection," with a little tail like a fish, and a short skirt tapering down to a pair of slim legs and shapely feet. After all her protestations, she had allowed the housemaid to help her unpack, and when the dress was on she had sent Mary flying down to the drawing-room to bring up some carnations she had noticed there. When these had been tucked into her belt, and the waves of her brown hair had been somehow pinned and coiled into a kind of order, and she had discovered and put on her mother's pearls, she was pleased with herself, or rather with as much of herself as she could see in the inadequate looking-glass on the toilet-table. A pier-glass from somewhere was of course the prime necessity, and must be got immediately. Meanwhile she had to be content with seeing herself in the eyes of the housemaid, who was clearly dazzled by her appearance.

Then there were a few minutes before dinner, and she ran along the passage to Mrs. Friend's room.

"May I come in? Oh, let me tie that for you?" And before Mrs. Friend could interpose, the girl's nimble fingers had tied the narrow velvet carrying a round locket which was her chaperon's only ornament. Drawing back a little, she looked critically at the general effect. Mrs. Friend flushed, and presently started in alarm, when Helena took up the comb lying on the dressing-table.

"What are you going to do?"

"Only just to alter your hair a little. Do you mind? Do let me. You look so nice in black. But your hair is too tight."

Mrs. Friend stood paralysed, while with a few soft touches Helena applied the comb.

"Now, isn't that nice! I declare it's charming! Now look at yourself. Why should you make yourself look dowdy? It's all very well--but you can't be much older than I am!"

And dancing round her victim, Helena effected first one slight improvement and then another in Mrs. Friend's toilette, till the little woman, standing in uneasy astonishment before the glass to which Helena had dragged her, plucked up courage at last to put an end to the proceedings.

"No, please don't!" she said, with decision, warding off the girl's meddling hand, and putting back some of the quiet bands of hair. "You mustn't make me look so unlike myself. And besides--I couldn't live up to it!" Her shy smile broke out.

"Oh, yes, you could. You're quite nice-looking. I wonder if you'd mind telling me how old you are? And must I always call you 'Mrs. Friend'? It is so odd--when everybody calls each other by their Christian names."

"I don't mind--I don't mind at all. But don't you think--for both our sakes--you'd better leave me all the dignity you can?" Laughter was playing round the speaker's small pale lips, and Helena answered it with interest.

"Does that mean that you'll have to manage me? Did Cousin Philip tell you you must? But that--I may as well tell you at once--is a vain delusion. Nobody ever managed me! Oh, yes, my superior officer in the Women's Corps--she was master. But that was because I chose to make her so. Now I'm on my own--and all I can offer--I'm afraid!--is an alliance--offensive and defensive."

Mrs. Friend looked at the radiant vision opposite to her with its hands on its sides, and slowly shook her head.

"Offensive--against whom?"

"Cousin Philip--if necessary."

Mrs. Friend again shook her head.

"Oh, you're in his pocket already!" cried Helena with a grimace. "But never mind. I'm sure I shall like you. You'll come over to my side soon."

"Why should I take any side?" asked Mrs. Friend, drawing on a pair of black gloves.

"Well, because"--said Helena slowly--"Cousin Philip doesn't like some of my pals--some of the men, I mean--I go about with--and we _may_ quarrel about it. The question is which of them I'm going to marry--if I marry any of them. And some of them are married. Don't look shocked! Oh, heavens, there's the gong! But we'll sit up to-night, if you're not sleepy, and I'll give you a complete catalogue of some of their qualifications--physical, intellectual, financial. Then you'll have the _carte du pays_. Two of them are coming to-morrow for the Sunday. There's nobody coming to-night of the least interest. Cynthia Welwyn, Captain Vivian Lodge, Buntingford's cousin--rather a prig--but good-looking. A girl or two, no doubt--probably the parson--probably the agent. Now you know. Shall we go down?"

The library was already full when the two ladies entered. Mrs. Friend was aware of a tall fair woman, beautifully dressed in black, standing by Lord Buntingford; of an officer in uniform, resplendent in red tabs and decorations, talking to a spare grey-haired man, who might be supposed to be the agent; of a man in a round collar and clerical coat, standing awkward and silent by the tall lady in black; and of various other girls and young men.

All eyes were turned to Helena as she entered, and she was soon surrounded, while Lord Buntingford took special care of Helena's companion. Mrs. Friend found herself introduced to Lady Cynthia Welwyn, the tall lady in black; to Mr. Parish, the grey-haired man, and to the clergyman. Lady Cynthia bestowed on her a glance from a pair of prominent eyes, and a few civil remarks, Mr. Parish made her an old-fashioned bow, and hoped she had not found the journey too dusty, while the clergyman, whose name she caught as Mr. Alcott, showed a sudden animation as they shook hands, and had soon put her at her ease by a manner in which she at once divined a special sympathy for the stranger within the gates.

"You have just come, I gather?"

"I only arrived this afternoon."

"And you are to look after Miss Helena?" he smiled.