The interview with the housekeeper was an ordeal to the gentle inexperienced woman.  But her entire lack of any sort of pretension was in itself ingratiating; and her manner had the timid charm of her character.  Mrs. Mawson, who might have bristled or sulked in stronger hands, in order to mark her distaste for the advent of a mistress in the house she had been long accustomed to rule, was soon melted by the docility of the little lady, and graciously consented to see her own plans approved en bloc, by one so frankly ignorant of how a country house party should be conducted.  Then it was the turn of old Fenn; a more difficult matter, since he did genuinely want instructions, and Mrs. Friend had none to give him.  But kind looks, and sympathetic murmurs, mingled with honest delight in the show of azaleas in the conservatory carried her through.  Old Fenn too, instead of resenting her, adopted her.  She went back to the house flushed with a little modest triumph.

Housewifely instincts revived in her.  Her hands wanted to be doing.  She had ventured to ask Fenn for some flowers, and would dare to arrange them herself if Mrs. Mawson would let her.

Then, as she re-entered the house, she came back at a bound to reality.  “If I can’t keep Miss Pitstone out of mischief, I shan’t be here a month!” she thought pitifully; and how was it to be done?

She found Helena sitting demurely in the sitting-room, pretending to read a magazine, but really, or so it seemed to Mrs. Friend, keeping both eyes and ears open for events.

“I’m trying to get ready for Julian—­” she said impatiently, throwing away her book.  “He sent me his article in the Market Place, but it’s so stiff that I can’t make head or tail of it.  I like to hear him talk—­but he doesn’t write English.”

Mrs. Friend took up the magazine, and perceived a marked item in the table of contents—­“A New Theory of Value.”

“What does it mean?” she asked.

“Oh, I wish I knew!” said Helena, with a little yawn.  “And then he changes so.  Last year he made me read Meredith—­the novels, I mean. One of Our Conquerors, he vowed, was the finest thing ever written.  He scoffed at me for liking Diana and Richard Feverel better, because they were easier.  And now, nothing’s bad enough for Meredith’s ’stilted nonsense’—­’characters without a spark of life in them’—­’horrible mannerisms’—­you should hear him.  Except the poems—­ah, except the poems!  He daren’t touch them.  I say—­do you know the ’Hymn to Colour’?” The girl’s eager eyes questioned her companion.  Her face in a moment was all softness and passion.

Mrs. Friend shook her head.  The nature and deficiencies of her own education were becoming terribly plain to her with every hour in Helena’s company.

Helena sprang up, fetched the book, put Mrs. Friend forcibly into an arm-chair, and read aloud.  Mrs. Friend listened with all her ears, and was at the end, like Faust, no wiser than before.  What did it all mean?  She groped, dazzled, among the Meredithian mists and splendours.  But Helena read with a growing excitement, as though the flashing mysterious verse were part of her very being.  When the last stanza was done, she flung herself fiercely down on a stool at Mrs. Friend’s feet, breathing fast: