Helena was only pretending to read.  The telephone message which had reached her had been from Lord Donald’s butler—­not even from Lord Donald himself!—­and had been to the effect that “his lordship” asked him to say that he had been obliged to go to Scotland for a fortnight, and was very sorry he had not been able to answer Miss Pitstone’s telegram before starting.  Helena’s cheeks were positively smarting under the humiliation of it.  Donald daring to send her a message through a servant, when she had telegraphed to him!  For of course it was all a lie as to his having left town—­one could tell that from the butler’s voice.  He had been somehow frightened by Cousin Philip, and was revenging himself by rudeness to her.  She seemed to hear “Jim” and his intimates discussing the situation.  Of course it would only amuse them!—­everything amused them!—­that Buntingford should have put his foot down.  How she had boasted, both to Jim and to some of his friends, of the attitude she meant to take up with her guardian during her “imprisonment on parole.”  And this was the end of the first bout.  Cousin Philip had been easily master, and instead of making common cause with her against a ridiculous piece of tyranny, Lord Donald had backed out.  He might at least have been sympathetic and polite—­might have come himself to speak to her at the telephone, instead—­

Her blood boiled.  How was she going to put up with this life?  The irony of the whole position was insufferable.  Geoffrey’s ejaculation for instance when she had invited him to her sitting-room after breakfast that he might look for a book he had lent her—­“My word, Helena, what a jolly place!—­Why, this was the old school-room—­I remember it perfectly—­the piggiest, shabbiest old den.  And Philip has had it all done up for you?  Didn’t know he had so much taste!” And then, Geoffrey’s roguish look at her, expressing the “chaff” he restrained for fear of offending her.  Lucy Friend, too, Captain Lodge, Peter—­everybody—­no one had any sympathy with her.  And lastly, Donald himself—­coward!—­had refused to play up.  Not that she cared one straw about him personally.  She knew very well that he was a poor creature.  It was the principle involved:—­that a girl of nineteen is to be treated as a free and responsible being, and not as though she were still a child in the nursery.  “Cousin Philip may have had the right to say he wouldn’t have Jim Donald in his house, if he felt that way—­but he had no right whatever to prevent my meeting him in town, if I chose to meet him—­that’s my affair!—­that’s the point!  All these men here are in league.  It’s not Jim’s character that’s in question—­I throw Jim’s character to the wolves—­it’s the freedom of women!”