ought I had made it plain that having been devoted
to your mother, I was prepared to be equally devoted to you, and wished
you to be as happy and free as possible."

"That's an appeal to sentiment," said Helena, resolutely. "Of course I
know it all sounds horrid. You've been as nice as possible; and anybody
who didn't sympathize with my views would think me a nasty, ungrateful
toad. But I'm not going to be coaxed into giving them up, any more than
I'm going to be bullied."

Lord Buntingford surveyed her. The habitual slight pucker--as though of
anxiety or doubt--in his brow was much in evidence. It might have meant
the chronic effort of a short-sighted man to see. But the fine candid
eyes were not short-sighted. The pucker meant something deeper.

"Of course I should like to understand what your views are," he said at
last, throwing away one cigarette, and lighting another.

Helena's look kindled. She looked handsomer and more maenad-like than
ever, as she stood leaning against Buntingford's writing-table, her arms
folded, one slim foot crossed over the other.

"The gist of them is," she said eagerly, "that _we_--the women of the
present day--are not going to accept our principles--moral--or
political--or economic--on anybody's authority. You seem, Cousin Philip,
in my case at any rate, to divide the world into two sets of people,
moral and immoral, good and bad--desirable and undesirable--that kind of
thing! And you expect me to know the one set, and ignore the other set.
Well, we don't see it that way at all. We think that everybody is a
pretty mixed lot. I know I am myself. At any rate I'm not going to begin
my life by laying down a heap of rules about things I don't
understand--or by accepting them from you, or anybody. If Lord Donald's a
bad man, I want to know why he is a bad man--and then I'll decide. If he
revolts my moral sense, of course I'll cut him. But I won't take anybody
else's moral sense for judge. We've got to overhaul that sort of thing
from top to bottom."

Buntingford looked thoughtfully at the passionate speaker. Should
he--could he argue with her? Could he show her, for instance, a letter,
or parts of it, which he had received that very morning from poor Luke
Preston, his old Eton and Oxford friend? No!--it would be useless. In her
present mood she might treat it so as to rouse his own temper--let alone
the unseemliness of the discussion it must raise between them. Or should
he give her a fa