“It would have broken—­spoiled—­everything!” said Geoffrey, under his breath, but with emphasis.  He was leaning against the mantelpiece, and his face was hidden from his companion.  Buntingford threw him a strange, deprecating look.

“You are right—­you are quite right.  Yet I believe, Geoffrey, I might have committed that wrong—­but for this—­what shall I call it?—­this ’act of God’ that has happened to me.  Don’t misunderstand me!” He came to stand beside his nephew, and spoke with intensity.  “It was only a possibility—­and there is no guilt on my conscience.  I have no real person in my mind.  But any day I might have failed my own sense of justice—­my own sense of honour—­sufficiently—­to let a woman risk it!”

Geoffrey thought of one woman—­if not two women—­who would have risked it.  His heart was full of Helena.  It was as though he could only appreciate the situation as it affected her.  How deep would the blow strike, when she knew?  He turned to look at Buntingford, who had resumed his restless walk up and down the room, realizing with mingled affection and reluctance the charm of his physical presence, the dark head, the kind deep eyes, the melancholy selfishness that seemed to enwrap him.  Yet all the time he had not been selfless!  There had been no individual woman in the case.  But none the less, he had been consumed with the same personal longing—­the same love of loving; the amor amandi—­as other men.  That was a discovery.  It brought him nearer to the young man’s tenderness; but it made the chance of a misunderstanding on Helena’s part greater.

“Shall I tell Helena you would like to speak to her?” he said, breaking the silence.

Buntingford assented.

Philip, left alone, tried to collect his thoughts.  He did not conceal from himself what had been implied rather than said by Geoffrey.  The hint had startled and disquieted him.  But he could not believe it had any real substance; and certainly he felt himself blameless.  A creature so radiant, with the world at her feet!—­and he, prematurely aged, who had seemed to her, only a few weeks ago, a mere old fogy in her path!  That she should have reconsidered her attitude towards him, was surely natural, considering all the pains he had taken to please her.  But as to anything else—­absurd!

Latterly, indeed, since she had come to that tacit truce with Jim, he was well aware how much her presence in his house had added to the pleasant moments of daily life.  In winning her good will, in thinking for her, in trying to teach her, in watching the movements of her quick untrained intelligence and the various phases of her enchanting beauty, he had found not only a new occupation, but a new joy.  Rachel’s prophecy for him had begun to realize itself.  And, all the time, his hopes as to Geoffrey’s success with her had been steadily rising.  He and Geoffrey had indeed been at cross-purposes, if Geoffrey really believed what he seemed to believe!  But it was nothing—­it could be nothing—­but the fantasy of a lover, starting at a shadow.