"Yet perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps Cynthia isn't as mean-spirited as I think.

"It's wonderful about the boy. I envy Cynthia--I can't help it. I would have given my whole life to it. I would have been trained--perhaps abroad. No one should have taught him but me. But then--if Philip had loved me--only that was never possible!--he would have been jealous of the boy--and I should have lost him. I never do things in moderation. I go at them so blindly. But I shall learn some day."

Thoughts like these, and many others, were rushing through Helena's mind, as after a long walk she found her seat again over the swollen stream.

The evening had shaken itself free of the storm, and was pouring an incredible beauty on wood and river. The intoxication of it ran through Helena's veins. For she possessed in perfection that earth-sense, that passionate sense of kinship, kinship both of the senses and the spirit, with the eternal beauty of the natural world, which the gods implant in a blest minority of mortals. No one who has it can ever be wholly forlorn, while sense and feeling remain.

Suddenly:--a little figure on the opposite bank, and a child's cry.

Helena sprang to her feet in dismay. She saw the landlord's small son, a child of five, who had evidently lost his footing on the green bank above the crag which faced her, and was sliding down, unable to help himself, towards the point where nothing could prevent his falling headlong into the stream below. The bank, however, was not wholly bare. There were some thin gnarled oaks upon it, which might stop him.

"Catch hold of the trees, Bobby!" she shouted to him, in an agony.

The child heard, turned a white face to her, and tried to obey. He was already a stalwart little mountaineer, accustomed to trot over the fells after his father's sheep, and the physical instinct in his, sturdy limbs saved him. He caught a jutting root, held on, and gradually dragged himself up to the cushion of moss from which the tree grew, sitting astride the root, and clasping the tree with both arms. The position was still extremely dangerous, but for the moment he was saved.

"All right, Bobby--clever boy! Hold tight--I'm coming!"

And she rushed towards a little bridge at the head of the ravine. But before she could reach it, she saw the lad's father, cautiously descending the bank, helped by a rope tied to an oak tree at the top. He reached the child, tied the rope to the stem of the tree where the little fellow was sitting, and then with the boy under one arm and hauling on the rope with the other hand, he made his way up the few perilous yards that divided them from safety. At the top he relieved his parental feelings by a good deal of smacking and scolding. For Bobby was a notorious "limb," the terror of his mother and the inn generally. He roared vociferously under the smacking. But when Helena arrived on the scene, he stopped at once, and put out a slim red tongue at her. Helena laughed, congratulated the father on his skill, and returned to her seat.

"That's a parable of me!" she thought, as she sat with her elbows on her knees, staring at the bank opposite.

"I very nearly slipped in!--like Bobby--but not quite. I'm sound--though bruised. No desperate harm done." She drew a long breath--laughing to herself--though her eyes were rather wet. "Well, now, then--what am I going to do? I'm not going into a convent. I don't think I'm even going to college. I'm going to take my guardian's advice. 'Marry--my dear child--and bring up children.' 'Marry?'--Very well!"--she sprang to her feet--"I shall marry!--that's settled. As to the children--that remains to be seen!"

And with her hands behind her, she paced the little path, in a strange excitement and exaltation. Presently from the tower of the little church, half a mile down the river, a bell began to strike the hour. "Six o'clock!--Peter will be here directly. Now, _he's_ got to be lectured--for his good. I'm tired of lecturing myself. It's somebody else's turn--"

And taking a letter from her pocket, she read and pondered it with smiling eyes. "Peter will think I'm a witch. Dear old Peter! ... Hullo!"

For the sound of her name, shouted by some one still invisible, caught her ear. She shouted back, and in another minute the boyish form of Peter Dale emerged among the oaks above her. Three leaps, and he was at her side.

"I say, Helena, this is jolly! You were a brick to write. How I got here I'm sure I don't know. I seem to have broken every rule, and put everybody out. My boss will sack me, I expect. Never mind!--I'd do it again!"

And dropping to a seat beside her, on a fallen branch that had somehow escaped the deluge of the day, he feasted his eyes upon her. She had clambered back into her seat, and taken off her water-proof hat. Her hair was tumbling about her ears, and her bright cheeks were moist with rain, or rather with the intermittent showers that the wind shook every now and then from the still dripping oak trees above her. Peter thought her lovelier than ever--a wood-nymph, half divine. Yet, obscurely, he felt a change in her, from the beginning of their talk. Why had she sent for him? The wildest notions had possessed him, ever since her letter reached him. Yet, now that he saw her, they seemed to float away from him, like thistle-down on the wind.

"Helena!--why did you send for me?"

"I was very dull, Peter,--I wanted you to amuse me!"

The boy laughed indignantly.

"That's all very well, Helena--but it won't wash. You're jolly well used to getting all you want, I know--but you wouldn't have ordered me up from Town--twelve hours in a beastly train--packed like sardines--just to tell me that."

Helena looked at him thoughtfully. She began to eat some unripe bilberries which she had gathered from the bank beside her, and they made little blue stains on her white teeth.

"Old boy--I wanted to give you some advice."

"Well, give it quick," said Peter impatiently.

"No--you must let me take my time. Have you been to a great many dances lately, Peter?"

"You bet!" The young Adonis shrugged his shoulders. "I seem to have been through a London season, which I haven't done, of course, since 1914.

Never went to so many dances in my life!"

"Somebody tells me, Peter, that--you're a dreadful flirt!" said Helena, still with those grave, considering eyes.

Peter laughed--but rather angrily.

"All very well for you to talk, Miss Helena! Please--how many men were you making fools of--including your humble servant--before you went down to Beechmark? You have no conscience, Helena! You are the 'Belle Dame sans merci.'"

"All that is most unjust--and ridiculous!" said Helena mildly.

Peter went off into a peal of laughter. Helena persisted.

"What do you call flirting, Peter?"

"Turning a man's head--making him believe that you're gone on him--when, in fact, you don't care a rap!"

"Peter!--then of course you _know_ I never flirted with you!" said Helena, with vigour. Peter hesitated, and Helena at once pursued her advantage.

"Let's talk of something more to the point. I'm told, Peter, that you've been paying great attentions--marked attentions--to a very nice girl--that everybody's talking about it,--and that you ought long ago either to have fixed it up,--or cleared out. What do you say to that, Peter?"

Peter flushed.

"I suppose you mean--Jenny Dumbarton," he said slowly. "Of course, she's a very dear, pretty, little thing. But do you know why I first took to her?" He looked defiantly at his companion.

"No."

"Because--she's rather like you. She's your colour--she has your hair--she's a way with her that's something like you. When I'm dancing with her, if I shut my eyes, I can sometimes fancy--it's you!"

"Oh, goodness!" cried Helena, burying her face in her hands. It was a cry of genuine distress. Peter was silent a moment. Then he came closer.

"Just look at me, please, Helena!"

She raised her eyes unwillingly. In the boy's beautiful clear-cut face the sudden intensity of expression compelled her--held her guiltily silent.

"Once more, Helena"--he said, in a voice that shook--"is there no chance for me?"

"No, no, dear Peter!" she cried, stretching out her hands to him. "Oh, I thought that was all over. I sent for you because I wanted just to say to you--don't trifle!--don't shilly-shally! I know Jenny Dumbarton a little.

She's charming--she's got a delicate, beautiful character--and such a warm heart! Don't break anybody's heart, Peter--for my silly sake!"

The surge of emotion in Peter subsided slowly. He began to study the moss at his feet, poking at it with his stick.

"What makes you think I've been breaking Jenny's heart?" he said at last in another voice.

"Some of your friends, Peter, yours and mine--have been writing to me. She's--she's very fond of you, they say, and lately she's been looking a little limp ghost--all along of you, Mr. Peter! What have you been doing?"

"What any other man in my position would have been doing--wishing to Heaven I knew _what_ to do!" said Peter, still poking vigorously at the moss.

Helena bent forward from the oak tree, and just whispered--"Go back to-morrow, Peter,--and propose to Jenny Dumbarton!"

Peter could not trust himself to look up at what he knew must be the smiling seduction of her eyes and lips. He was silent; and Helena withdrew--dryad-like--into the hollow made by the intertwined stems of the oak, threw her head back against the main trunk, dropped her eyelids, and waited.