d and argue--his brain's
all right!--with Lucy Friend to fall back upon between whiles--for just
these few weeks, at any rate, before we go to town--and with the
week-ends to help one out. But if we are to be at daggers-drawn--he
determined to boss me--and I equally determined not to be bossed--why,
the thing will be _intolerable_! Hullo!--is that Cynthia Welwyn? She
seems to be making for me."

It was Lady Cynthia, very fresh and brilliant in airy black and white,
with a purple sunshade. She came straight over the grass to Helena's
shady corner.

"You look so cool! May I share?"

Helena rather ungraciously pushed forward a chair as they shook hands.

"The rest of your party seem to be asleep," said Cynthia, glancing at
various prostrate forms belonging to the male sex that were visible on a
distant slope of the lawn. "But you've heard of the Dansworth
disturbances?--and that everybody here may have to go?"

"Yes. It's probably exaggerated--isn't it?"

"I don't know. Everybody coming out of church was talking of it. There
was bad rioting last night--and a factory burnt down. They say it's begun
again. Buntingford will probably have to go. Where is he?"

Helena pointed to the library and to the feet under the bureau.

"He's waiting indoors, no doubt, in case there's a summons."

"No doubt," said Helena.

Cynthia found her task difficult. She had come determined to make friends
with this thorny young woman, and to smooth Philip's path for him if she
could. But now face to face with Helena she was conscious that neither
was Philip's ward at all in a forthcoming mood, nor was her own effort
spontaneous or congenial. They were both Buntingford's kinswomen, Helena
on his father's side, Cynthia on his mother's, and had been more or less
acquainted with each other since Helena left the nursery. But there was
nearly twenty years between them, and a critical spirit on both sides.

Conversation very soon languished. An instinctive antagonism that neither
could have explained intelligibly would have been evident to any shrewd
listener. Helena was not long in suspecting that Lady Cynthia was in some
way Buntingford's envoy, and had been sent to make friends, with an
ulterior object; while Cynthia was repelled by the girl's ungracious
manner, and by the gulf which it implied between the outlook of forty,
and that of nineteen. "She means to make me feel that I might have been
her mother--and that we have nothing in common!