Mrs. Friend smiled too.

"I hope so. If she will let me!"

"She is a radiant creature!" And for a moment he stood watching the girl, as she stood, goddess-like, amid her group of admirers. His eyes were deep-set and tired; his scanty grizzled hair fell untidily over a furrowed brow; and his clothes were neither fresh nor well-brushed. But there was something about him which attracted the lonely; and Mrs. Friend was glad when she found herself assigned to him.

But though her neighbour was not difficult to talk to, her surroundings were so absorbing to her that she talked very little at dinner. It was enough to listen and look--at Lady Cynthia on Lord Buntingford's right hand, and Helena Pitstone on his left; or at the handsome officer with whom Helena seemed to be happily flirting through a great part of dinner.

Lady Cynthia was extremely good-looking, and evidently agreeable, though it seemed to Mrs. Friend that Lord Buntingford only gave her divided attention. Meanwhile it was very evident that he himself was the centre of his own table, the person of whom everyone at it was fundamentally aware, however apparently busy with other people. She herself observed him much more closely than before, the mingling in his face of a kind of concealed impatience, an eagerness held in chains and expressed by his slight perpetual frown, with a courtesy and urbanity generally gay or bantering, but at times, and by flashes--or so it seemed to her--dipped in a sudden, profound melancholy, like a quenched light. He held himself sharply erect, and in his plain naval uniform, with the three Commander's stripes on the sleeve, made, in her eyes, an even more distinguished figure than the gallant and decorated hero on his left, with whom Helena seemed to be so particularly engaged, "prig" though she had dubbed him.

As to Lady Cynthia's effect upon her host, Mrs. Friend could not make up her mind. He seemed attentive or amused while she chatted to him; but towards the end their conversation languished a good deal, and Lady Cynthia must needs fall back on the stubby-haired boy to her right, who was learning agency business with Mr. Parish. She smiled at him also, for it was her business, Mrs. Friend thought, to smile at everybody, but it was an absent-minded smile.

"You don't know Lord Buntingford?" said Mr. Alcott's rather muffled voice beside her.

Mrs. Friend turned hastily.

"No--I never saw him till this afternoon."

"He isn't easy to know. I know him very little, though he gave me this living, and I have business with him, of course, occasionally. But this I do know, the world is uncommonly full of people--don't you find it so?--who say 'I go, Sir'--and don't go. Well, if Lord Buntingford says 'I go, Sir'--he does go!"

"Does he often say it?" asked Mrs. Friend. And the man beside her noticed the sudden gleam in her quiet little face, that rare or evanescent sprite of laughter or satire that even the dwellers in Lancaster Gate had occasionally noticed.

Mr. Alcott considered.

"Well, no," he said at last. "I admit he's difficult to catch. He likes his own ways a great deal better than other people's. But if you do catch him--if you do persuade him--well, then you can stake your bottom dollar on him. At least, that's my experience. He's been awfully generous about land here--put a lot in my hands to distribute long before the war ended. Some of the neighbours about--other landlords--were very sick--thought he'd given them away because of the terms. They sent him a round robin. I doubt if he read it. In a thing like that he's adamant. And he's adamant, too, when he's once taken a real dislike to anybody. There's no moving him."

"You make me afraid!" said Mrs. Friend.

"Oh, no, you needn't be--" Mr. Alcott turned almost eagerly to look at her. "I hope you won't be. He's the kindest of men. It's extraordinarily kind of him--don't you think?"--the speaker smilingly lowered his voice--"taking on Miss Pitstone like this? It's a great responsibility."

Mrs. Friend made the slightest timid gesture of assent.

"Ah, well, it's just like him. He was devoted to her mother--and for his friends he'll do anything. But I don't want to make a saint of him. He can be a dour man when he likes--and he and I fight about a good many things. I don't think he has much faith in the new England we're all talking about--though he tries to go with it. Have you?" He turned upon her suddenly.

Mrs. Friend felt a pang.

"I don't know anything," she said, and he was conscious of the agitation in her tone. "Since my husband died, I've been so out of everything."

And encouraged by the kind eyes in the plain face, she told her story, very simply and briefly. In the general clatter and hubbub of the table no one overheard or noticed.

"H'm--you're stepping out into the world again as one might step out of a nunnery--after five years. I rather envy you. You'll see things fresh.

Whereas we--who have been through the ferment and the horror--" He broke off--"I was at the front, you see, for nearly two years--then I got invalided. So you've hardly realized the war--hardly known there was a war--not since--since Festubert?"

"It's dreadful!" she said humbly--"I'm afraid I know just nothing about it."

He looked at her with a friendly wonder, and she, flushing deeper, was glad to see him claimed by a lively girl on his left, while she fell back on Mr. Parish, the agent, who, however, seemed to be absorbed in the amazing--and agreeable--fact that Lord Buntingford, though he drank no wine himself, had yet some Moet-et-Charidon of 1904 left to give to his guests. Mr. Parish, as he sipped it, realized that the war was indeed over.

But, all the time, he gave a certain amount of scrutiny to the little lady beside him. So she was to be "companion" to Miss Helena Pitstone--to prevent her getting into scrapes--if she could. Lord Buntingford had told him that his cousin, Lady Mary Chance, had chosen her. Lady Mary had reported that "companions" were almost as difficult to find as kitchenmaids, and that she had done her best for him in finding a person of gentle manners and quiet antecedents. "Such people will soon be as rare as snakes in Ireland"--had been the concluding sentence in Lady Mary's letter, according to Lord Buntingford's laughing account of it. Ah, well, Lady Mary was old-fashioned. He hoped the young widow might be useful; but he had his doubts. She looked a weak vessel to be matching herself with anything so handsome and so pronounced as the young lady opposite.

Why, the young lady was already quarrelling with her guardian! For the whole table had suddenly become aware of a gust in the neighbourhood of Lord Buntingford--a gust of heated talk--although the only heated person seemed to be Miss Pitstone. Lord Buntingford was saying very little; but whatever he did say was having a remarkable effect on his neighbour.

Then, before the table knew what it was all about, it was over. Lord Buntingford had turned resolutely away, and was devoting himself to conversation with Lady Cynthia, while his ward was waging a fresh war of repartee with the distinguished soldier beside her, in which her sharpened tones and quick breathing suggested the swell after a storm.

Mrs. Friend too had noticed. She had been struck with the sudden tightening of the guardian's lip, the sudden stiffening of his hand lying on the table. She wondered anxiously what was the matter.

In the library afterwards, Lady Cynthia, Mrs. Friend, and the two girls--his daughter and his guest--who had come with Mr. Parish, settled into a little circle near the wood-fire which the chilliness of the May evening made pleasant.

Helena Pitstone meanwhile walked away by herself to a distant part of the room and turned over photographs, with what seemed to Mrs. Friend a stormy hand. And as she did so, everyone in the room was aware of her, of the brilliance and power of the girl's beauty, and of the energy that like an aura seemed to envelop her personality. Lady Cynthia made several attempts to capture her, but in vain. Helena would only answer in monosyllables, and if approached, retreated further into the dim room, ostensibly in search of a book on a distant shelf, really in flight. Lady Cynthia, with a shrug, gave it up.

Mrs. Friend felt too strange to the whole situation to make any move. She could only watch for the entry of the gentlemen. Lord Buntingford, who came in last, evidently looked round for his ward. But Helena had already flitted back to the rest of the company, and admirably set off by a deep red chair into which she had thrown herself, was soon flirting unashamedly with the two young men, with Mr. Parish and the Rector, taking them all on in turn, and suiting the bait to the fish with the instinctive art of her kind. Lord Buntingford got not a word with her, and when the guests departed she had vanished upstairs before anyone knew that she had gone.

"Have a cigar in the garden, Vivian, before you turn in? There is a moon, and it is warmer outside than in," said Lord Buntingford to his cousin, when they were left alone.

"By all means."

So presently they found themselves pacing a flagged path outside a long conservatory which covered one side of the house. The moon was cloudy, and the temperature low. But the scents of summer were already in the air--of grass and young leaf, and the first lilac. The old grey house with its haphazard outline and ugly detail acquired a certain dignity from the night, and round it stretched dim slopes of pasture, with oaks rising here and there from bands of white mist.

"Is that tale true you told me before dinner about Jim Donald?" said Lord Buntingford abruptly. "You're sure it's true--honour bright?"

The other laughed.

"Why, I had it from Jim himself!" He laughed. "He just made a joke of it.

But he is a mean skunk! I've found out since that he wanted to buy Preston out for the part Preston had taken in another affair. There's a pretty case coming on directly, with Jim for hero. You have heard of it."

"No," said Buntingford curtly; "but in any case nothing would have induced me to have him here. Preston's a friend of mine. So when Helena told me at dinner she had asked him for Saturday, I had to tell her I should telegraph to him to-morrow morning not to come. She was angry, of course."

Captain Lodge gave a low whistle. "Of course she doesn't know. But I think you would be wise to stop it. And I remember now she danced all night with him at the Arts Ball!"

CHAPTER III

There was a light tap on Mrs. Friend's door. She said "Come in" rather unwillingly. Some time had elapsed since she had seen Helena's fluttering white disappear into the corridor beyond her room; and she had nourished a secret hope that the appointment had been forgotten. But the door opened slightly. Mrs. Friend saw first a smiling face, finger on lip.

Then the girl slipped in, and closed the door with caution.

"I don't want that 'very magnificent three-tailed Bashaw' to know we are discussing him. He's somewhere still."

"What did you say?" asked Mrs. Friend, puzzled.

"Oh, it's only a line of an old poem--I don't know by whom--my father used to quote it. Well, now--did you see what happened at dinner?"

Helena had established herself comfortably in a capacious arm-chair opposite Mrs. Friend, tucking her feet under her. She was in a white dressing-gown, and she had hastily tied a white scarf round her loosened hair. In the dim light of a couple of candles her beauty made an even more exciting impression on the woman watching her than it had done in the lamp-lit drawing-room.

"It's war!" she said firmly, "war between Buntingford and me. I'm sorry it's come so soon--the very first evening!--and I know it'll be beastly for you--but I can't help it. I _won't_ be dictated to. If I'm not twenty-one, I'm old enough to choose my own friends; and if Buntingford chooses to boycott them, he must take the consequences." And throwing her white arms above her head, her eyes looked out from the frame of them--eyes sparkling with pride and will.

Mrs. Friend begged for an explanation.

"Well, I happened to tell him that I had invited Lord Donald for Sunday.

I'll tell you about Lord Donald presently--and he simply--behaved like a brute! He said he was sorry I hadn't told him, that he couldn't have Donald here, and would telegraph to him to-morrow--not to come. Just think of that! So then I said--why? And he said he didn't approve of Donald--or some nonsense of that sort. I was quite calm. I reminded him he had promised to let me invite my friends--that was part of the bargain. Yes--he said--but within limits--and Donald was the limit. That made me savage--so I upped and said, very well, if I couldn't see Donald here, I should see him somewhere else--and he wouldn't prevent me. I wasn't going to desert my friends for a lot of silly tales. So then he said I didn't know what I was talking about, and turned his back on me.

He kept his temper provokingly--and I lost mine--which was idiotic of me.