“You are early!” she said, as they greeted.

“I came down by motor-bike.  London is hateful, and I was in a hurry to get out of it.  Where is Helena?”

“Gone to change her dress.  She has been riding.”

Frank mopped his brow in silence for a little.  Then he said with the half-mischievous smile which in Lucy Friend’s eyes was one of his chief physical “points.”

“How you and Philip have toned her down!”

“Oh, not I!” said Lucy, her modesty distressed.  “I’ve always admired her so!  Of course—­I was sometimes surprised—­”

Geoffrey laughed.

“I daresay we shall all be surprised a good many times yet?” Then he moved a little closer to the small person, who was becoming everybody’s confidante.  “Do you mind telling me something—­if you know it?” he said, lowering his voice.

“Ask me—­but I can’t promise!”

“Do you think Helena has quite made up her mind not to marry Dale?”

Mrs. Friend hesitated.

“I don’t know—­”

“But what do you think?”

She lifted her gentle face, under his compulsion, and slowly, pitifully shook her head.

Geoffrey drew a long breath.

“Then she oughtn’t to ask him here!  The poor little fellow is going through the tortures of the damned!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.  Isn’t there anything we can do?” cried Mrs. Friend.

“Nothing—­but keep him away.  After all he’s only the first victim.”

Startled by the note in her companion’s voice, Mrs. Friend turned to look at him.  He forced a smile, as their eyes met.

“Oh, we must all take our chance!  But Peter’s not the boy he was—­before the war.  Things bowl him over easily.”

“She likes him so much,” murmured Lucy.  “I’m sure she never means to be unkind.”

“She isn’t unkind!” said Geoffrey with energy.  “It’s the natural fated thing.  We are all the slaves of her car and she knows it.  When she was in the stage of quarrelling with us all, it was just fun.  But if Helena grows as delicious—­as she promised to be last week—­” He shrugged his shoulders, with a deep breath—­“Well,—­she’ll have to marry somebody some day—­and the rest of us may drown!  Only, if you’re to be umpire—­and she likes you so much that I expect you will be—­play fair!”

He held out his hand, and she put hers into it, astonished to realize that her own eyes were full of tears.

“I’m a mass of dust—­I must go and change before tea,” he said abruptly.

He went into the house, and she was left to some agitated thinking.