All eyes were turned to Helena as she entered, and she was soon surrounded, while Lord Buntingford took special care of Helena’s companion.  Mrs. Friend found herself introduced to Lady Cynthia Welwyn, the tall lady in black; to Mr. Parish, the grey-haired man, and to the clergyman.  Lady Cynthia bestowed on her a glance from a pair of prominent eyes, and a few civil remarks, Mr. Parish made her an old-fashioned bow, and hoped she had not found the journey too dusty, while the clergyman, whose name she caught as Mr. Alcott, showed a sudden animation as they shook hands, and had soon put her at her ease by a manner in which she at once divined a special sympathy for the stranger within the gates.

“You have just come, I gather?”

“I only arrived this afternoon.”

“And you are to look after Miss Helena?” he smiled.

Mrs. Friend smiled too.

“I hope so.  If she will let me!”

“She is a radiant creature!” And for a moment he stood watching the girl, as she stood, goddess-like, amid her group of admirers.  His eyes were deep-set and tired; his scanty grizzled hair fell untidily over a furrowed brow; and his clothes were neither fresh nor well-brushed.  But there was something about him which attracted the lonely; and Mrs. Friend was glad when she found herself assigned to him.

But though her neighbour was not difficult to talk to, her surroundings were so absorbing to her that she talked very little at dinner.  It was enough to listen and look—­at Lady Cynthia on Lord Buntingford’s right hand, and Helena Pitstone on his left; or at the handsome officer with whom Helena seemed to be happily flirting through a great part of dinner.  Lady Cynthia was extremely good-looking, and evidently agreeable, though it seemed to Mrs. Friend that Lord Buntingford only gave her divided attention.  Meanwhile it was very evident that he himself was the centre of his own table, the person of whom everyone at it was fundamentally aware, however apparently busy with other people.  She herself observed him much more closely than before, the mingling in his face of a kind of concealed impatience, an eagerness held in chains and expressed by his slight perpetual frown, with a courtesy and urbanity generally gay or bantering, but at times, and by flashes—­or so it seemed to her—­dipped in a sudden, profound melancholy, like a quenched light.  He held himself sharply erect, and in his plain naval uniform, with the three Commander’s stripes on the sleeve, made, in her eyes, an even more distinguished figure than the gallant and decorated hero on his left, with whom Helena seemed to be so particularly engaged, “prig” though she had dubbed him.

As to Lady Cynthia’s effect upon her host, Mrs. Friend could not make up her mind.  He seemed attentive or amused while she chatted to him; but towards the end their conversation languished a good deal, and Lady Cynthia must needs fall back on the stubby-haired boy to her right, who was learning agency business with Mr. Parish.  She smiled at him also, for it was her business, Mrs. Friend thought, to smile at everybody, but it was an absent-minded smile.