“I have no doubt you could help her in a great many things.  Young people, who know her better than I do, say she’s very clever.  But her mother and she were always wandering about—­before the war—­for her mother’s health.  I don’t believe she’s been properly educated in anything.  Of course one can’t expect a girl of nineteen to behave like a schoolgirl.  If you can induce her to take up some serious reading—­Oh, I don’t mean anything tremendous!—­and to keep up her music—–­I expect that’s all her poor mother would have wanted.  When we go up to town you must take her to concerts—­the opera—­that kind of thing.  I dare say it will go all right!” But the tone was one of resignation, rather than certainty.

“I’ll do my best—­” began Mrs. Friend.

“I’m sure you will.  But—­well, we’d better be frank with each other.  Helena’s very handsome—­very self-willed—­and a good bit of an heiress.  The difficulty will be—­quite candidly—­lovers!”

They both laughed.  Lord Buntingford took out his cigarette case.

“You don’t mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all.”

“Won’t you have one yourself?” He held out the case.  Mrs. Friend did not smoke.  But she inwardly compared the gesture and the man with the forbidding figure of the old woman in Lancaster Gate with whom she had just completed two years of solitary imprisonment, and some much-baffled vitality in her began to revive.

Lord Buntingford threw himself back in his arm-chair, and watched the curls of smoke for a short space—­apparently in meditation.

“Of course it’s no good trying the old kind of thing—­strict chaperonage and that sort of business,” he said at last.  “The modern girl won’t stand it.”

“No, indeed she won’t!” said Mrs. Friend fervently.  “I should like to tell you—­I’ve just come from ——­” She named a university.  “I went to see a cousin of mine, who’s in one of the colleges there.  She’s going to teach.  She went up just before the war.  Then she left to do some war work, and now she’s back again.  She says nobody knows what to do with the girls.  All the old rules have just—­gone!” The gesture of the small hand was expressive.  “Authority—­means nothing.  The girls are entering for the sports—­just like the men.  They want to run the colleges—­as they please—­and make all the rules themselves.”

“Oh, I know—­” broke in her companion.  “They’ll just allow the wretched teachers and professors to teach—­what their majesties choose to learn.  Otherwise—­they run the show.”

“Of course, they’re awfully nice girls—­most of them,” said Mrs. Friend, with a little, puzzled wrinkling of the brow.