made enough
of; the Triple Alliance want to burn up the country to cook their roast
pig--and as for you, Helena--"

He turned a laughing face upon her--but before she could reply, a
telephone was heard ringing, through the open windows of the house.

"For me, I expect," exclaimed Helena, springing up. She disappeared
within the drawing-room, returning presently, with flushed cheeks, and a
bearing of which Geoffrey French at once guessed the meaning.

"Donald has thrown her over?" he said to himself. "Of course Philip had
the trump card!"

Helena, however, said nothing. She took up a book she had left on the
grass, and withdrew with it to the solitary shelter of a cedar some yards
away. Quiet descended on the lawns. The men smoked or buried themselves
in a sleepy study of the Sunday papers. The old house lay steeped in
sunshine. Occasional bursts of talk arose and died away; a loud cuckoo in
a neighbouring plantation seemed determined to silence all its bird
rivals; while once or twice the hum of an aeroplane overhead awoke even
in the drowsiest listener dim memories of the war.

Helena was only pretending to read. The telephone message which had
reached her had been from Lord Donald's butler--not even from Lord Donald
himself!--and had been to the effect that "his lordship" asked him to say
that he had been obliged to go to Scotland for a fortnight, and was very
sorry he had not been able to answer Miss Pitstone's telegram before
starting. Helena's cheeks were positively smarting under the humiliation
of it. Donald _daring_ to send her a message through a servant, when she
had telegraphed to him! For of course it was all a lie as to his having
left town--one could tell that from the butler's voice. He had been
somehow frightened by Cousin Philip, and was revenging himself by
rudeness to _her_. She seemed to hear "Jim" and his intimates discussing
the situation. Of course it would only amuse them!--everything amused
them!--that Buntingford should have put his foot down. How she had
boasted, both to Jim and to some of his friends, of the attitude she
meant to take up with her guardian during her "imprisonment on parole."
And this was the end of the first bout. Cousin Philip had been easily
master, and instead of making common cause with her against a ridiculous
piece of tyranny, Lord Donald had backed out. He might at least have been
sympathetic and polite--might have come himself to speak to her at the
telephone, in