“How can you call it tyrannical when he spends all this time and thought upon you!”

“The gilding of the cage,” said Helena stubbornly.  “That is the way women have always been taken in.  Men fling them scraps to keep them quiet.  But as to the real feast—­liberty to discover the world for themselves, make their own experiments—­choose and test their own friends—­no, thank you!  And what is life worth if it is only to be lived at somebody’s else’s dictation?”

“But you have only been here twenty-four hours—­not so much!  And you don’t know Lord Buntingford’s reasons—­”

“Oh, yes, I do know!” said Helena, undisturbed—­“more or less.  I told you last night.  They don’t matter to me.  It’s the principle involved that matters.  Am I free, or am I not free?  Anyway, I’ve just sent that telegram.”

“To whom?” cried Mrs. Friend.

“To Lord Donald, of course, asking him to meet me at the Ritz next Wednesday.  If you will be so good”—­the brown head made her a ceremonial bow—­“as to go up with me to town—­we can go to my dressmaker’s together—­I have got heaps to do there—­then I can leave you somewhere for lunch—­and pick you up again afterwards!”

“Of course, Miss Pitstone—­Helena!—­I can’t do anything of the sort, unless your guardian agrees.”

“Well, we shall see,” said Helena coolly, jumping up.  “I mean to tell him after lunch.  Don’t please worry.  And good-bye till lunch.  This time I am really going to look after my horse!”

A laugh, and a wave of the hand—­she had disappeared.  Mrs. Friend was left to reflect on the New Woman.  Was it in truth the war that had produced her?—­and if so, how and why?  All that seemed probable was that in two or three weeks’ time, perhaps, she would be again appealing to the same agency that had sent her to Beechmark.  She believed she was entitled to a month’s notice.

Poor Lord Buntingford!  Her sympathies were hotly on his side, so far as she had any understanding of the situation into which she had been plunged with so little warning.  Yet when Helena was actually there at her feet, she was hypnotized.  The most inscrutable thing of all was, how she could ever have supposed herself capable of undertaking such a charge!

The two ladies were already lunching when Lord Buntingford appeared, bringing with him another neighbouring squire, come to consult him on certain local affairs.  Sir Henry Bostock, one of those solid, grey-haired pillars of Church and State in which rural England abounds, was first dazzled by Miss Pitstone’s beauty, and then clearly scandalized by some of her conversation, and perhaps—­or so Mrs. Friend imagined—­by the rather astonishing “make-up” which disfigured lips and cheeks Nature had already done her best with.

He departed immediately after lunch.  Lord Buntingford accompanied him to the front door, saw him mount his horse, and was returning to the library, when a white figure crossed his path.