and they had learned that it was no use at all to show compassion and try to bring her into the conversation.  A quiet rather stony stare, a muttered “Ah” or “Oh,” were all that such efforts produced.  Some of the frequenters of the cottage drawing-room were convinced that Lady Georgina was “not quite all there.”  Others had the impression of something watchful and sinister; and were accustomed to pity “dear Cynthia” for having to live with so strange a being.

But in truth the sisters suited each other very fairly, and Lady Georgina found a good deal more tongue when she was alone with Cynthia than at other times.

To the lively account that Cynthia had been giving her of the evening at Beechmark, and the behaviour of Helena Pitstone, Lady Georgina had listened in a sardonic silence; and at the end of it she said—­

“What ever made the man such a fool?”

“Who?—­Buntingford?  My dear, what could he do?  Rachel Pitstone was his greatest friend in the world, and when she asked him just the week before she died, how could he say No?” Lady Georgina murmured that in that case Rachel Pitstone also had been a fool—­

“Unless, of course, she wanted the girl to marry Buntingford.  Why, Philip’s only forty-four now.  A nice age for a guardian!  Of course it’s not proper.  The neighbours will talk.”

“Oh, no,—­not with a chaperon.  Besides nobody minds anything odd nowadays.”

Cynthia meanwhile as she lay stretched in a deep arm-chair, playing with the tea-spoon in her shapely fingers, was a pleasant vision.  Since coming in from the village, she had changed her tweed coat and skirt for a tea-frock of some soft silky stuff, hyacinth blue in colour; and Georgina, for whom tea-frocks were a silly abomination, and who was herself sitting bolt upright in a shabby blue serge some five springs old, could not deny the delicate beauty of her sister’s still fresh complexion and pale gold hair, nor the effectiveness of the blue dress in combination with them.  She did not really want Cynthia to look older, nor to see her ill-dressed; but all the same there were many days when Cynthia’s mature perfections roused a secret irritation in her sister—­a kind of secret triumph also in the thought that, in the end, Time would be the master even of Cynthia.  Perhaps after all she would marry.  It did look as though Sir Richard Watson, if properly encouraged, and indemnified for earlier rebuffs, might still mean business.  As for Philip Buntingford, it was only Cynthia’s vanity that had ever made her imagine him in love with her.  Lady Georgina scoffed at the notion.

These fragmentary reflections, and others like them were passing rapidly and disconnectedly through the mind of the elder sister, when her ear caught the sound of footsteps in the drive.  Drawing aside a corner of the muslin curtain beside her, which draped one of the French windows of the low room, she perceived the tall figure and scarcely perceptible limp of Lord Buntingford.  Cynthia too saw him, and ceased to lounge.  She quietly re-lit the tea-kettle, and took a roll of knitting from a table near her.  Then as the front bell rang through the small house, she threw a scarcely perceptible look at her sister.  Would Georgie “show tact,” and leave her and Philip alone, or would she insist on her rights and spoil his visit?  Georgina made no sign.