“Cousin Philip, I want to speak to you.”

He looked up at once.

“All right, Helena.  Will you come into the library?”

He ushered her in, shut the door behind her, and pushed forward an arm-chair.

“You’ll find that comfortable, I think?”

“Thank you, I’d rather stand.  Cousin Philip, did you send that telegram this morning?”

“Certainly.  I told you I should.”

“Then you won’t be surprised that I too sent mine.”

“I don’t understand what you mean?”

“When this morning you said there would be seven for dinner to-night, I of course realized that you meant to stick to what you had said about Lord Donald yesterday; and as I particularly want to see Lord Donald, I sent the new groom to the village this morning with a wire to him to say that I should be glad if he would arrange to give me luncheon at the Ritz next Wednesday.  I have to go up to try a dress on.”

Lord Buntingford paused a moment, looking apparently at the cigarette with which his fingers were playing.

“You proposed, I imagine, that Mrs. Friend should go with you?”

“Oh, yes, to my dressmaker’s.  Then I would arrange for her to go somewhere to lunch—­Debenham’s, perhaps.”

“And it was your idea then to go alone—­to meet Lord Donald?” He looked up.

“He would wait for me in the lounge at the Ritz.  It’s quite simple!”

Philip Buntingford laughed—­good-humouredly.

“Well, it is very kind of you to have told me so frankly, Helena—­because now I shall prevent it.  It is the last thing in the world that your mother would have wished, that you should be seen at the Ritz alone with Lord Donald.  I therefore have her authority with me in asking you either to write or telegraph to him again to-night, giving up the plan.  Better still if you would depute me to do it.  It is really a very foolish plan—­if I may say so.”

“Why?”

“Because—­well, there are certain things a girl of nineteen can’t do without spoiling her chances in life—­and one of them is to be seen about alone with a man like Lord Donald.”

“And again I ask—­why?”

“I really can’t discuss his misdoings with you, Helena.  Won’t you trust me in the matter?  I thought I had made it plain that having been devoted to your mother, I was prepared to be equally devoted to you, and wished you to be as happy and free as possible.”

“That’s an appeal to sentiment,” said Helena, resolutely.  “Of course I know it all sounds horrid.  You’ve been as nice as possible; and anybody who didn’t sympathize with my views would think me a nasty, ungrateful toad.  But I’m not going to be coaxed into giving them up, any more than I’m going to be bullied.”

Lord Buntingford surveyed her.  The habitual slight pucker—­as though of anxiety or doubt—­in his brow was much in evidence.  It might have meant the chronic effort of a short-sighted man to see.  But the fine candid eyes were not short-sighted.  The pucker meant something deeper.