But Geoffrey’s eyes could not tear themselves from Helena.  He saw her bathed in light, from top to toe, now gold, now scarlet, a fire-goddess, inimitably beautiful.  They danced hand in hand, intoxicated by the music, and by the movement of their young swaying bodies.  He felt Helena unconsciously leaning on him, her soft breath on his cheek.  Her eyes were his now, and her smiling lips, just parted over her white teeth, tempted him beyond his powers of resistance.

“Come!” he whispered to her, and with a quick turn of the hand he had swung her out of the fiery circle, and drawn her towards the surrounding dark.  A few steps and they were on the mountainside again, while behind them the top was still aflame, and black forms still danced round the drooping fire.

But they were safely curtained by night and the rising storm.  After the first stage of the descent, suddenly he flung his arms round her, his mouth found hers, and all Helena’s youth rushed at last to meet him as he gathered her to his breast.

“Geoffrey—­my Tyrant!—­let me go!” she panted.

“Are you mine—­are you mine, at last?—­you wild thing!”

“I suppose so—­” she said, demurely.  “Only, let me breathe!”

She escaped, and he heard her say with low sweet laughter as though to herself: 

“I seem at any rate to be following my guardian’s advice!”

“What advice?  Tell me! you darling, tell me everything.  I have a right now to all your secrets.”

“Some day—­perhaps.”

Darkness hid her eyes.  Hand in hand they went down the hillside, while the Mount of Victory still blazed behind them.

Philip and Lucy were waiting for them.  And then, at last, Helena remembered her telegram of the afternoon, and read it to a group of laughing hearers.

“Right you are.  I proposed last night to Jennie Dumbarton.  Wedding, October—­Await reply.  PETER.”

“He shall have his reply,” said Helena.  And she wrote it with Geoffrey looking on.

Not quite twenty-four hours later, Buntingford was walking up through the late twilight to Beechmark.  After the glad excitement kindled in him by Helena’s and Geoffrey’s happiness, his spirits had dropped steadily all the way home.  There before him across the park, rose his large barrack of a house, so empty, but for that frail life which seemed now part of his own.

He walked on, his eyes fixed on the lights in the rooms where his boy was.  When he reached the gate into the gardens, a figure came suddenly out of the shrubbery towards him.

“Cynthia!”

“Philip!  We didn’t expect you till to-morrow.”

He turned back with her, inexpressibly comforted by her companionship.  The first item in his news was of course the news of Helena’s engagement.  Cynthia’s surprise was great, as she showed; so also was her relief, which she did not show.

“And the wedding is to be soon?”