"Don't interfere just at present, Georgie," she said imploringly, in a low voice.

The two sisters looked at each other--Georgina covered with the dust and cobwebs of her own cottages, her battered hat a little on one side, and her coat and skirt betraying at every seam its venerable antiquity; and Cynthia, in pale grey, her rose-pink complexion answering to the gold of her hair, with every detail of her summer dress as fresh and dainty as the toil of her maid could make it.

"Well, I suppose--I understand," said Georgina, at last, in her gruffest voice. "All the same, I warn you, I can't stand it much longer. I shall be saying something rude to Buntingford."

"No, no--don't do that!"

"I haven't your motive--you see."

Cynthia coloured indignantly.

"If you think I'm only pretending to care for the child, Georgie, you're very much mistaken!"

"I don't think so. You needn't put words into my mouth, or thoughts into my head. All the same, Cynthia,--cut it short!"

And with that she released the door and departed, leaving an anxious and meditative Cynthia behind her.

A little later, Buntingford's voice was heard below. Cynthia, descending, found him with Arthur in his arms. The day had been hot and rainy--an oppressive scirocco day--and the boy was languid and out of sorts. The nurse advised his being carried up early to bed, and Buntingford had arrived just in time.

When he came downstairs again, he found Cynthia in a garden hat, and they strolled out to look at the water-garden which was the common hobby of both the sisters. There, sitting among the rushes by the side of the little dammed-up stream, he produced a letter from Mrs. Friend, with the latest news of his ward.

"Evidently we shan't get Helena back just yet. I shall run up next week to see her, I think, Cynthia, if you will let me. I really will take Arthur to Beechmark this week. Mrs. Mawson has arranged everything. His rooms are all ready for him. Will you come and look at them to-morrow?"

Cynthia did not reply at once, and he watched her a little anxiously. He was well aware what giving up the boy would mean to her. Her devotion had been amazing. But the wrench must come some time.

"Yes, of course--you must take him," said Cynthia, at last. "If only--I hadn't come to love him so!"

She didn't cry. She was perfectly self-possessed. But there was something in her pensive, sorrowful look that affected Philip more than any vehement emotion could have done. The thought of all her devotion--their long friendship--her womanly ways--came upon him overwhelmingly.

But another thought checked it--Helena!--and his promise to her dead mother. If he now made Cynthia the mistress of Beechmark, Helena would never return to it. For they were incompatible. He saw it plainly. And to Helena he was bound; while she needed the shelter of his roof.

So that the words that were actually on Philip's lips remained unspoken.

They walked back rather silently to the cottage.

At supper Cynthia told her sister that the boy, with Zelie and his teacher, would soon trouble her no more. Georgina expressed an ungracious satisfaction, adding abruptly--"You'll be able to see him there, Cynthy, just as well as here."

Cynthia made no reply.

CHAPTER XVI

Mrs. Friend was sitting in the bow-window of the "Fisherman's Rest," a small Welsh inn in the heart of Snowdonia. The window was open, and a smell of damp earth and grass beat upon Lucy in gusts from outside, carried by a rainy west wind. Beyond the road, a full stream, white and foaming after rain, was dashing over a rocky bed towards some rapids which closed the view. The stream was crossed by a little bridge, and beyond it rose a hill covered with oak-wood. Above the oak-wood and along the road to the right--mountain forms, deep blue and purple, were emerging from the mists which had shrouded them all day. The sun was breaking through. A fierce northwest wind which had been tearing the young leaf of the oak-woods all day, and strewing it abroad, had just died away. Peace was returning, and light. The figure of Helena had just disappeared through the oak-wood; Lucy would follow her later.

Behind Mrs. Friend, the walls of the inn parlour were covered deep in sketches of the surrounding scenery--both oil and water-colour, bad and good, framed and unframed, left there by the artists who haunted the inn.

The room was also adorned by a glass case full of stuffed birds, badly moth-eaten, a book-case containing some battered books mostly about fishing, and a large Visitors' Book lying on a centre-table, between a Bradshaw and an old guide-book. Shut up, in winter, the little room would smell intolerably close and musty. But with the windows open, and a rainy sun streaming in, it spoke pleasantly of holidays for plain hard-working folk, and of that "passion for the beauty flown," which distils, from the summer hours of rest, strength for the winter to come.

Lucy had let Helena go out alone, of set purpose. For she knew, or guessed, what Nature and Earth had done for Helena during the month they had passed together in this mountain-land, since that night at Beechmark.

Helena had made no moan--revealed nothing. Only a certain paleness in her bright cheek, a certain dreamy habit that Lucy had not before noticed in her; a restlessness at night which the thin partitions of the old inn sometimes made audible, betrayed that the youth in her was fighting its first suffering, and fighting to win. Lucy had never dared to speak--still less to pity. But her love was always at hand, and Helena had repaid it, and the silence it dictated, with an answering love. Lucy believed--though with trembling--that the worst was now over, and that new horizons were opening on the stout soul that had earned them. But now, as before, she held her peace.

Her diary lay on her lap, and she was thoughtfully turning it over. It contained nothing but the barest entries of facts. But they meant a good deal to her, as she looked through them. Every letter, for instance, from Beechmark had been noted. Lord Buntingford had written three times to Helena, and twice to herself. She had seen Helena's letters; and Helena had read hers. It seemed to her that Helena had deliberately shown her own; that the act was part of the conflict which Lucy guessed at, but must not comment on, by word or look. All the letters were the true expression of the man. The first, in which he described in words, few; but singularly poignant, the death of his wife, his recognition of his son, and the faint beginnings of hope for the boy's maimed life, had forced tears from Lucy. Helena had read it dry-eyed. But for several hours afterwards, on an evening of tempest, she had vanished out of ken, on the mountainside; coming back as night fell, her hair and clothes, dripping with rain, her cheeks glowing from her battle with the storm, her eyes strangely bright.

Her answers to her guardian's letters had been, to Lucy's way of thinking, rather cruelly brief; at least after the first letter written in her own room, and posted by herself. Thenceforward, only a few post-cards, laid with Lucy's letters, for her or any one else to read, if they chose. And meanwhile Lucy was tolerably sure that she was slowly but resolutely making her own plans for the months ahead.

The little diary contained also the entry of Geoffrey French's visit--a long week-end, during which as far as Lucy could remember, Helena and he had never ceased "chaffing" from morning till night, and Helena had certainly never given him any opportunity for love-making. She, Lucy, had had a few short moments alone with him, moments in which his gaiety had dropped from him, like a ragged cloak, and a despondent word or two had given her a glimpse of the lover he was not permitted to be, beneath the role of friend he was tired of playing. He was coming again soon. Helena had neither invited nor repelled him. Whereas she had peremptorily bidden Peter Dale for this particular Sunday, and he had thrown over half a dozen engagements to obey her.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Friend. Is Miss Pitstone at home?"

The speaker was a shaggy old fellow in an Inverness cape and an ancient wide-awake, carrying a portfolio and a camp-stool. He had stopped in his walk outside the open window, and his disappointed look searched the inn parlour for a person who was not there.

"Oh, Mr. McCready, I'm so sorry!--but Miss Pitstone is out, and I don't know when she will be back."

The artist undid his portfolio, and laid a half-finished sketch--a sketch of Helena's--on the window-sill.

"Will you kindly give her this? I have corrected it--made some notes on the side. Do you think Miss Helena will be likely to be sketching to-morrow?"

"I'm afraid I can't promise for her. She seems to like walking better than anything else just now."

"Yes, she's a splendid walker," said the old man, with a sigh. "I envy her strength. Well, if she wants me, she knows where to find me--just beyond that bend there." He pointed to the river.

"I'll tell her--and I'll give her the sketch. Good-bye."

She watched him heavily cross the foot-bridge to the other side of the river. Her quick pity went with him, for she herself knew well what it meant to be solitary and neglected. He seldom sold a picture, and nobody knew what he lived on. The few lessons he had given Helena had been as a golden gleam in a very grey day. But alack, Helena had soon tired of her lessons, as she had tired of the mile of coveted trout-fishing that Mr.

Evans of the farm beyond the oak-wood had pressed upon her--or of the books the young Welsh-speaking curate of the little mountain church near by was so eager to lend her. Through and behind a much gentler manner, the girl's familiar self was to be felt--by Lucy at least--as clearly as before. She was neither to be held nor bound. Attempt to lay any fetter upon her--of hours, or habit--and she was gone; into the heart of the mountains where no one could follow her. Lucy would often compare with it the eager docility of those last weeks at Beechmark.

Helena's walk had taken her through the dripping oak-wood and over the crest of the hill to a ravine beyond, where the river, swollen now by the abundant rains which had made an end of weeks of drought, ran, noisily full, between two steep banks of mossy crag. From the crag, oaks hung over the water, at fantastic angles, holding on, as it seemed, by one foot and springing from the rock itself; while delicate rock plants, and fern fringed every ledge down to the water. A seat on the twisted roots of an overhanging oak, from which, to either side, a little green path, as though marked for pacing, ran along the stream, was one of her favourite haunts. From up-stream a mountain peak now kerchiefed in wisps of sunlit cloud peered in upon her. Above it, a lake of purest blue from which the wind, which had brought them, was now chasing the clouds; and everywhere the glory of the returning sun, striking the oaks to gold, and flinging a chequer of light on the green floor of the wood.

Helena sat down to wait for Peter, who would be sure to find her wherever she hid herself. This spot was dear to her, as those places where life has consciously grown to a nobler stature are dear to men and women. It was here that within twenty-four hours of her last words with Philip Buntingford, she had sat wrestling with something which threatened vital forces in her that her will consciously, desperately, set itself to maintain. Through her whole ripened being, the passion of that inner debate was still echoing; though she knew that the fight was really won.

It had run something like this:

"Why am I suffering like this?

"Because I am relaxed--unstrung. Why should I have everything I want--when others go bare? Philip went bare for years. He endured--and suffered. Why not I?

"But it is worse for me--who am young! I have a right to give way to what I feel--to feel it to the utmost.

"That was the doctrine for women before the war--the old-fashioned women.

The modern woman is stronger. She is not merely nerves and feeling. She must _never_ let feeling--pain--destroy her will! Everything depends upon her will. If I choose I _can_ put this feeling down. I have no right to it. Philip has done me no wrong. If I yield to it, if it darkens my life, it will be another grief added to those he has already suffered. It shan't darken my life. I will--and can master it. There is so much still to learn, to do, to feel. I must wrench myself free--and go forward. How I chattered to Philip about the modern woman!--and how much older I feel, than I was then! If one can't master oneself, one is a slave--all the same. I didn't know--how could I know?--that the test was so near. If women are to play a greater and grander part in the world, they must be much, much greater in soul, firmer in will.

"Yet--I must cry a little. No one could forbid me that. But it must be over soon."

Then the letters from Beechmark had begun to arrive, each of them bringing its own salutary smart as part of a general cautery. No guardian could write more kindly, more considerately. But it was easy to see that Philip's whole being was, and would be, concentrated on his unfortunate son. And in that ministry Cynthia Welwyn was his natural partner, had indeed already stepped into the post; so that gratitude, if not passion, would give her sooner or later all that she desired.

"Cynthia has got the boy into her hands--and Philip with him. Well, that was natural. Shouldn't I have done the same? Why should I feel like a jealous beast, because Cynthia has had her chance, and taken it? I won't feel like this! It's vile!--it's degrading! Only I wish Cynthia was bigger, more generous--because he'll find it out some day. She'll never like me, just because he cares for me--or did. I mean, as my guardian, or an elder brother. For it was never--no never!--anything else. So when she comes in at the front door, I shall go out at the back. I shall have to give up even the little I now have. Let me just face what it means.