He seems to me to live in a fever of excitement and joy, as one step follows another, and the door opens a little wider for his poor prisoned soul. He adores his father, and will sit beside him, stroking his silky beard, with his tiny fingers, and looking at him with his large pathetic eyes ... They have taken him to Beechmark, as you know, and given him a set of rooms, where he and his wonderful little teacher, Miss Denison--trained in the Seguin method, they say--and the old _bonne_ Zelie live. The nurse has gone.

"I am so sorry for Lady Cynthia--she seems to miss him so. Of course she goes over to Beechmark a good deal, but it is not the same as having him under her own roof. And she was so good to him! She looks tired of late, and rather depressed. I wonder if her dragoon of a sister has been worrying her. Of course Lady Georgina is enchanted to have got rid of Arthur.

"I am very glad to hear Lord Buntingford is going to Wales. Miss Pitstone has been evidently a great deal on his mind. He said to John the other day that he had arranged everything at Beechmark so that, when you and she came back, he did not think you would find Arthur in the way. The boy's rooms are in a separate wing, and would not interfere at all with visitors. I said to him once that I was sure Miss Helena would be very fond of the little fellow. But he frowned and looked distressed. 'I should scarcely allow her to see him,' he said. I asked why. 'Because a young girl ought to be protected from anything irremediably sad. Life should be always bright for her. And I can still make it bright for Helena--I intend to make it bright.'

"Good-bye, my dear Mrs. Friend. John and I miss you very much."

A last sentence which gave Lucy Friend a quite peculiar pleasure. Her modest ministrations in the parish and the school had amply earned it.

But it amazed her that anyone should attach any value to them. And that Mr. Alcott should miss her--why, it was ridiculous!

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sight of Helena, returning to the inn along the river bank, with Bobby clinging to her skirt.

"Take him in tow, please," said Helena through the window. "I am going to walk a little way to meet Geoffrey."

Bobby's chubby hand held her so firmly that he could only be detached from her by main force. He was left howling in Mrs. Friend's grasp, till Helena, struck with compunction, turned back from the bend of the road, to stuff a chocolate into his open mouth, and then ran off again, laughing at the sudden silence which had descended on hill and stream.

Through the intermittent shade and sunshine of the day, Helena stepped on. She had never held herself so erect; never felt so conscious of an intense and boundless vitality. Yet she was quite uncertain as to what the next few hours would bring her. Peter had given a hint--that she was sure; and she was now, it seemed, to be wooed in earnest. On Geoffrey's former visit, she had teased him so continuously, and put so many petty obstacles of all kinds in his way, that he had finally taken his cue from her, and they had parted, in a last whirlwind of "chaff," but secretly angry, with each other or themselves.

"He might have held out a little longer," thought Helena. "When shall I ever get a serious word from her?" thought French.

Slowly she descended the long and winding hill leading to the village.

From the few scattered cottages and farms in sight, flags were fluttering out. Groups of school children were scattered along the road, waving little flags and singing. Over the wide valley below her, with its woody hills and silver river, floated great cloud-shadows, chasing and chased by the sun. There were wild roses in the hedges, and perfume in every gust of wind. The summer was at its height, and the fire and sap of it were running full-tilt in Helena's pulses.

Far down the winding road she saw at last a man on a motor bicycle--bare-headed, and long-bodied.

Up he came, and soon was near enough to wave to her, while Helena was still scolding her own emotions. When he flung himself off beside her, she saw at once that he had come in an exultant mood expecting triumph.

And immediately something perverse in her--or was it merely the old primeval instinct of the pursued maiden--set itself to baffle him.

"Very nice to see you!" she smiled, as she gave him a passive hand--"but why aren't you in the Mall?"

"My Sovereign had not expressed any burning desire for my presence. Can't we go to-night and feed a bonfire?"

"Several, if you like. I have watched the building of three. But it will rain."

"That won't matter," he said joyously. "Nothing will matter!" And again his ardent look challenged in her the Eternal Feminine.

"I don't agree. I hate a wet mackintosh dripping into my boots, and Cousin Philip won't see any fun in it if it rains."

He drew up suddenly.

"Philip!" he said, with a frown of irritation. "What has Philip to do with it?"

"He arrives to-night by the London train."

He resumed his walk beside her, in silence, pushing his bicycle. Had she done it of malice prepense? No--impossible! He had only telegraphed his own movements to her late on the previous evening, much too late to make any sudden arrangement with Philip, who was coming from an Eastern county.

"He is coming to find out your plans?"

"I suppose so. But I have no plans."

He stole a look at her. Yes--there was change in her, even since they had met last:--a richer, intenser personality, suggested by a new self-mastery. She seemed to him older--and a thought remote. Fears flew through him. What had been passing in her mind since he had seen her last? or in Philip's? Had he been fooled after all by those few wild words from Peter, which had reached him in Lancashire, bidding him catch his opportunity, or rue the loss of it for ever?

She saw the effervescence in him die down, and became gracious at once.

Especially because they were now in sight of the inn, and of Lucy Friend sitting in the little garden beside the road. Geoffrey pulled himself together, and prepared to play the game that Helena set him, until the afternoon and the walk she could not deny him, should give him his chance.

The little meal passed gaily, and after it Lucy Friend watched--not without trepidation--Helena's various devices for staving off the crisis.

She had two important letters to write; she must go and watch Mr.

McCready sketching, as she had promised to do, or the old fellow would never forgive her; and finally she invited the fuming M.P. to fish the preserved water with her, accompanied by the odd-man as gilly. At this Geoffrey's patience fairly broke. He faced her, crimson, in the inn parlour; forgetting Lucy altogether and standing in front of the door, so that Lucy could not escape and could only roll herself in a curtain and look out of the window.

"I didn't come here to fish, Helena--or to sketch--but simply and solely to talk to you! And I have come a long way. Suppose we take a walk?"

Helena eyed him. She was a little pale--but composed.

"At your service. Lead on, Sir Oracle!"

They went out together, Geoffrey taking command, and Lucy watched them depart, across the foot-bridge, and by a green path that would lead them before long to the ferny slopes of the mountain beyond the oak-wood. As Helena was mounting the bridge, a servant of the inn ran out with a telegram which had just arrived and gave it her.

Helena peered at the telegram, and then with a dancing smile thrust it into her pocket without a word.

Her mood, as they walked on, was now, it seemed, eagerly political. She insisted on hearing his own account of his successful speech in the House; she wished to discuss his relations with the Labour party, which were at the moment strained, on the question of Coal Nationalization; she asked for his views on the Austrian Treaty, and on the prospects of the Government. He lent himself to her caprice, so long as they were walking one behind the other through a crowded oak-wood and along a narrow path where she could throw her questions back over her shoulder, herself well out of reach. But presently they came out on a glorious stretch of fell, clothed with young green fern, and running up into a purple crag fringed with junipers. Then he sprang to her side, and Helena knew that the hour had come and the man. There was a flat rock on the slope below the crag, under a group of junipers, and Helena presently found herself sitting there, peremptorily guided by her companion, and feeling dizzily that she was beginning to lose control of the situation, as Geoffrey sank down into the fern beside her.

"At last!" he said, drawing a long breath--"_At last_!"

He lay looking up at her, his long face working with emotion--the face of an intellectual, with that deep scar on the temple, where a fragment of shrapnel had struck him on the first day of the Somme advance.

"Unkind Helena!" he said, in a low voice that shook--"_unkind Helena_!"

Her lips framed a retort. Then suddenly the tears rushed into her eyes, and she covered them with her hands.

"I'm not unkind. I'm afraid!"

"Afraid of what?"

"I told you," she said piteously, "I didn't want to marry--I didn't want to be bound!"

"And you haven't changed your mind at all?"

She didn't answer. There was silence a moment. Then she said abruptly:

"Do you want to hear secrets, Geoffrey?"

He pondered.

"I don't know. I expect I guess them."

"What do you guess?" She lifted a proud face. He touched her hand tenderly.

"I guess that when you came here--you were unhappy?"