stead--

Her blood boiled. How was she going to put up with this life? The irony
of the whole position was insufferable. Geoffrey's ejaculation for
instance when she had invited him to her sitting-room after breakfast
that he might look for a book he had lent her--"My word, Helena, what a
jolly place!--Why, this was the old school-room--I remember it
perfectly--the piggiest, shabbiest old den. And Philip has had it all
done up for you? Didn't know he had so much taste!" And then, Geoffrey's
roguish look at her, expressing the "chaff" he restrained for fear of
offending her. Lucy Friend, too, Captain Lodge, Peter--everybody--no one
had any sympathy with her. And lastly, Donald himself--coward!--had
refused to play up. Not that she cared one straw about him personally.
She knew very well that he was a poor creature. It was the _principle_
involved:--that a girl of nineteen is to be treated as a free and
responsible being, and not as though she were still a child in the
nursery. "Cousin Philip may have had the right to say he wouldn't have
Jim Donald in his house, if he felt that way--but he had no right
whatever to prevent my meeting him in town, if I chose to meet
him--that's _my_ affair!--that's the point! All these men here are in
league. It's _not_ Jim's character that's in question--I throw Jim's
character to the wolves--it's the freedom of women!"

So the tumult in her surged to and fro, mingled all through with a
certain unwilling preoccupation. That semi-circular bow-window on the
south side of the house, which she commanded from her seat under the
cedar, was one of the windows of the library. Hidden from her by the old
bureau at which he was writing, sat Buntingford at work. She could see
his feet under the bureau, and sometimes the top of his head. Oh, of
course, he had a way with him--a certain magnetism--for the people who
liked him, and whom he liked. Lady Maud, for instance--how well they had
got on at breakfast? Naturally, she thought him adorable. And Lady Maud's
girl. To see Buntingford showing her the butterfly collections in the
library--devoting himself to her--and the little thing blushing and
smiling--it was simply idyllic! And then to contrast the scene with that
other scene, in the same room, the day before!

"Well, now, what am I going to do here--or in town?" she asked herself in
exasperation. "If Cousin Philip and I liked each other it would be
pleasant enough to ride together, to talk and rea