eek, and corrected it with professional
sharpness when he reappeared.

And more important perhaps than either the riding or the drawing, was the
partial relaxation for her benefit of the reserve and taciturnity which
had for years veiled the real man from those who liked and respected him
most. He never indeed talked of himself or his past; but he would discuss
affairs, opinions, books--especially on their long rides together--with a
frankness, and a tone of gay and equal comradeship, which, or so Mrs.
Friend imagined, had had a disarming and rather bewildering effect on
Helena. The girl indeed seemed often surprised and excited. It was
evident that they had never got on during her mother's lifetime, and that
his habitual bantering or sarcastic tone towards her while she was still
in the school-room had roused an answering resentment in her. Hence the
aggressive mood in which, after two or three months of that half-mad
whirl of gaiety into which London had plunged after the Armistice, she
had come down to Beechmark.

They still jarred, sometimes seriously; Helena was often provocative and
aggressive; and Buntingford could make a remark sting without intending
it. But on the whole Lucy Friend felt that she was watching something
which had in it possibilities of beauty; indeed of a rather touching and
rare development. But not at all as the preliminary to a love-affair. In
Buntingford's whole relation to his ward, Lucy Friend, at least, had
never yet detected the smallest sign of male susceptibility. It suggested
something quite different. Julian Horne, who had taken a great fancy to
Helena's chaperon, was now recommending books to her instead of to
Helena, who always forgot or disobeyed his instructions. With a little
preliminary lecture, he had put the "Greville Memoirs" in her hands by
way of improving her mind; and she had been struck by a passage in which
Greville describes Lord Melbourne's training of the young Queen Victoria,
whose Prime Minister he was. The man of middle-age, accomplished, cynical
and witty, suddenly confronted with a responsibility which challenged
both his heart and his conscience--and that a responsibility towards an
attractive young girl whom he could neither court nor command, towards
whom his only instrument was the honesty and delicacy of his own
purpose:--there was something in this famous, historical situation which
seemed to throw a light on the humbler situation at Beechmark.

Four o'