,
were sometimes a little startled by her careless directness. Soame
Rivers once, when he was irritated by her, which occasionally happened,
though he generally kept his irritation to himself, said that she had a
'slap on the back' way of treating her friends. The remark was not kind,
but it happened to be fairly accurate, as unkind remarks sometimes are.

But from the first Helena did not treat the Dictator with the same
brusque spirit of _camaraderie_ which she showed to most of her friends.
Her admiration for the public man, if it had been very enthusiastic, was
very sincere. She had, from the first time that Ericson's name began to
appear in the daily papers, felt a keen interest in the adventurous
Englishman who was trying to introduce free institutions and advanced
civilisation into one of the worm-eaten republics of the New World. As
time went on, and Ericson's doings became more and more conspicuous, the
girl's admiration for the lonely pioneer waxed higher and higher, till
at last she conjured up for herself an image of heroic chivalry as
romantic in its way as anything that could be evolved from the dreams of
a sentimental schoolgirl. To reform the world--was not that always
England's mission, if not especially the mission of her own party?--and
here was an Englishman fighting for reform in that feverish place, and
endeavouring to make his people happy and prosperous and civilised, by
methods which certainly seemed to have more in common with the
benevolent despotism of the Tory Party than with the theories of the
Opposition. Bit by bit it came to pass that Helena Langley grew to look
upon Ericson over there in that queer, ebullient corner of new Spain, as
her ideal hero; and so it happened that when at last she met her hero in
the flesh for the first time her frank audacity seemed to desert her.

Not that she showed in the slightest degree embarrassment when Sir
Rupert first presented to her the grave man with the earnest eyes, whose
pointed beard and brown hair were both slightly touched with grey. Only
those who knew Helena well could possibly have told that she was not
absolutely at her ease in the presence of the Dictator. Ericson himself
thought her the most self-possessed young lady he had ever met, and to
him, familiar as he was with the exquisite effrontery belonging to the
New Castilian dames of Gloria, self-possession in young women was a
recognised fact. Even Sir Rupert himself scarcely noticed any