The sounds in the next room seemed to communicate their rhythm of pain to Lucy's own heart. She could not bear it after a while. She noiselessly opened her own door, and went to Helena's. To her scarcely audible knock there was no answer. After an interval she knocked again--a pause. Then there were movements inside, and Helena's muffled voice through the door.

"Please, Lucy, go to sleep! I am all right."

"I can't sleep. Won't you let me in?"

Helena seemed to consider. But after an interval which seemed interminable to Lucy Friend, the key was slowly turned and the door yielded.

Helena was standing inside, but there was so little light in the room that Lucy could only see her dimly. The moon was full outside, but the curtains had been drawn across the open window, and only a few faint rays came through. As Mrs. Friend entered Helena turned from her, and groping her way back to the bed, threw herself upon it, face downwards. It was evidently the attitude from which she had risen.

Lucy Friend followed her, trembling, and sat down beside her. Helena was still fully dressed, except for her hair, which had escaped from combs and hairpins. As her eyes grew used to the darkness, Lucy could see it lying, a dim mass on the white pillow, also a limp hand upturned. She seized the hand and cherished it in hers.

"You are so cold, dear! Mayn't I cover you up and help you into bed?"

No answer. She found a light eiderdown that had been thrown aside, and covered the prone figure, gently chafing the cold hands and feet. After what seemed a long time, Helena, who had been quite still, said in a voice she had to stoop to hear:

"I suppose you heard me crying. Please, Lucy, go back to bed. I won't cry any more."

"Dear--mayn't I stay?"

"Well, then--you must come and lie beside me. I am a brute to keep you awake."

"Won't you undress?"

"Please let me be! I'll try and go to sleep."

Lucy slipped her own slight form under the wide eiderdown. There was a long silence, at the end of which Helena said:

"I'm only--sorry--it's all come to an end--here."

But with the words the girl's self-control again failed her. A deep sob shook her from head to foot. Lucy with the tears on her own cheeks, hung over her, soothing and murmuring to her as a mother might have done. But the sob had no successor, and presently Helena said faintly--"Good-night, Lucy. I'm warm now. I'm going to sleep."

Lucy listened for the first long breaths of sleep, and seemed to hear them, just as the dawn was showing itself, and the dawn-wind was pushing at the curtains. But she herself did not sleep. This young creature lying beside her, with her full passionate life, seemed to have absolutely absorbed her own. She felt and saw with Helena. Through the night, visions came and went--of "Cousin Philip,"--the handsome, melancholy, courteous man, and of all his winning ways with the girl under his care, when once she had dropped her first foolish quarrel with him, and made it possible for him to show without reserve the natural sweetness and chivalry of his character. Buntingford and Helena riding, their well-matched figures disappearing under the trees, the sun glancing from the glossy coats of their horses; Helena, drawing in some nook of the park, her face flushed with the effort to satisfy her teacher, and Buntingford bending over her; or again, Helena dancing, in pale green and apple-blossom, while Buntingford leaned against the wall, watching her with folded arms, and eyes that smiled over her conquests.

It all grew clear to Lucy--Helena's gradual capture, and the innocence, the unconsciousness, of her captor. Her own shrewdness, nevertheless, put the same question as Buntingford's conscience. Could he ever have been quite sure of his freedom? Yet he had taken the risks of a free man. But she could not, she did not blame him. She could only ask herself the breathless question that French had already asked:

"How far has it gone with her? How deep is the wound?"

CHAPTER XIII

Cynthia and Georgina Welwyn were dining at Beechmark on the eventful evening. They took their departure immediately after the scene in the drawing-room when Geoffrey French, at his cousin's wish, gathered Buntingford's guests together, and revealed the identity of the woman in the wood. In the hurried conversation that followed, Cynthia scarcely joined, and she was more than ready when Georgina proposed to go. Julian Horne found them their wraps, and saw them off. It was a beautiful night, and they were to walk home through the park.

"Shall I bring you any news there is to-morrow?" said Horne from the doorstep--"Geoffrey has asked me to stay till the evening. Everybody else of course is going early. It will be some time, won't it,"--he lowered his voice--"before we shall see the bearing of all this?"

Cynthia assented, rather coldly; and when she and her sister were walking through the moonlit path leading to the cottage, her silence was still marked, whereas Georgina in her grim way was excited and eager to talk.

The truth was that Cynthia was not only agitated by the news of the evening. She was hurt--bitterly hurt. Could not Buntingford have spared her a word in private? She was his kinswoman, his old and particular friend, neglectful as he had shown himself during the war. Had he not only a few weeks before come to ask her help with the trouble-some girl whose charge he had assumed? She had been no good, she knew. Helena had not been ready to make friends; and Cynthia's correctness had always been repelled by the reckless note in Helena. Yet she had done her best on that and other occasions and she had been rewarded by being treated in this most critical, most agitated moment like any other of Buntingford's week-end guests. Not a special message even--just the news that everybody might now know, and--Julian Horne to see them off! Yet Helena had been sent for at once. Helena had been closeted with Philip for half an hour.

No doubt he had a special responsibility towards her. But what use could she possibly be? Whereas Cynthia felt herself the practical, experienced woman, able to give an old friend any help he might want in a grave emergency.

"Of course we must all hope she will die--and die quickly!" said Lady Georgina, with energy, after some remarks to which Cynthia paid small attention. "It would be the only sensible course for Providence--after making such a terrible mistake."

"Is there any idea of her dying?" Cynthia looked down upon her sister with astonishment. "Geoffrey didn't say so."

"He said she was 'very ill,' and from her conduct she must be crazy. So there's hope."

"You mean, for Philip?"

"For the world in general," said Georgina, cautiously, with an unnoticed glance at her companion. "But of course Philip has only himself to blame.

Why did he marry such a woman?"

"She may have been very beautiful--or charming--you don't know."

Lady Georgina shrugged her shoulders.

"Well, of course there must have been something to bait the hook! But when a man marries out of his own class, unless the woman dies, the man goes to pieces."

"Philip has not gone to pieces!" cried Cynthia indignantly.

"Because she removed herself. For practical purposes that was as good as dying. He has much to be grateful for. Suppose she had come home with him! She would have ruined him socially and morally."

"And if she doesn't die," said Cynthia slowly, "what will Philip do then?"

"Ship her off to America, as she asks him, and prove a few little facts in the divorce court--simple enough! It oughtn't to take him much more than six months to get free--which he never has been yet!" added Georgina, with particular emphasis.

"It's a mercy, my dear, that you didn't just happen to be Lady Buntingford!"

"As if I had ever expected to be!" said Cynthia, much nettled.

"Well, you would, and you wouldn't have been!" said Georgina obstinately. "It's very complicated. You would have had to be married again--after the divorce."

"I don't know why you are so unkind, Georgie!" There was a little quaver in Cynthia's voice. "Philip's a very old friend of mine, and I'm very sorry and troubled about him. Why do you smirch it all with these horrid remarks?"

"I won't make any more, if you don't like them," said Georgina, unabashed--"except just to say this, Cynthia--for the first time I begin to believe in your chance. There was always something not cleared up about Philip, and it might have turned out to be something past mending. Now it is cleared up; and it's bad--but it might have been worse. However--we'll change the subject. What about that handsome young woman, Helena?"

"Now, if you'd chanced to say it was a mercy _she_ didn't happen to be Lady Buntingford, there'd have been some sense in it!" Cynthia's tone betrayed the soreness within.

Lady Georgina laughed, or rather chuckled.

"I know Philip a great deal better than you do, my dear, though he is your friend. He has made himself, I suspect, as usual, much too nice to that child; and he may think himself lucky if he hasn't broken her heart. He isn't a flirt--I agree. But he produces the same effect--without meaning it. Without meaning anything indeed--except to be good and kind to a young thing. The men with Philip's manners and Philip's charm--thank goodness, there aren't many of them!--have an abominable responsibility. The poor moth flops into the candle before she knows where she is. But as to marrying her--it has never entered his head for a moment, and never would."

"And why shouldn't it, please?"

"Because she is much too young for him--and Philip is a tired man.

Haven't you seen that, Cynthy? Before you knew him, Philip had exhausted his emotions--that's my reading of him. I don't for a moment believe his wife was the only one, if what Geoffrey said of her, and what one guesses, is true. She would never have contented him. And now it's done. If he ever marries now, it will be for peace--not passion.

As I said before, Cynthy--and I mean no offence--your chances are better than they were."