“Do you think Buntingford’s going to marry Lady Cynthia?” asked Peter suddenly.

Horne laughed.  “That’s not my guess, at present,” he said after a moment.

As he spoke, a boat on the lake came into the track of the searchlight, and the two persons in it were clearly visible—­Buntingford rowing, and Helena, in the stern.  The vision passed in a flash; and Horne turned a pair of eyes alive with satirical meaning on his companion.

“Well!” said Peter, troubled, he scarcely knew why—­“what do you mean?”

Horne seemed to hesitate.  His loose-limbed ease of bearing in his shabby clothes, his rugged head, and pile of reddish hair, above a thinker’s brow, made him an impressive figure in the half light—­gave him a kind of seer’s significance.

“Isn’t it one of the stock situations?” he said at last—­“this situation of guardian and ward?—­romantic situations, I mean?  Of course the note of romance must be applicable.  But it certainly is applicable, in this case.”

Peter stared.  Julian Horne caught the change in the boy’s delicate face and repented him—­too late.

“What rubbish you talk, Julian!  In the first place it would be dishonourable!”

“Why?”

“It would, I tell you,—­damned dishonourable!  And in the next, why, a few weeks ago—­Helena hated him!”

“Yes—­she began with ‘a little aversion’!  One of the stock openings,” laughed Horne.

“Well, ta-ta.  I’m not going to stay to listen to you talking bosh any more,” said Peter roughly.  “There’s the next dance beginning.”

He flung away.  Horne resumed his pacing.  He was very sorry for Peter, whose plight was plain to all the world.  But it was better he should be warned.  As for himself, he too had been under the spell.  But he had soon emerged.  A philosopher and economist, holding on to Helena’s skirts in her rush through the world, would cut too sorry a figure.  Besides, could she ever have married him—­which was of course impossible, in spite of the courses in Meredith and Modern Literature through which he had taken her—­she would have tired of him in a year, by which time both their fortunes would have been spent.  For he knew himself to be a spendthrift on a small income, and suspected a similar propensity in Helena, on the grand scale.  He returned, therefore, more or less contentedly, to his musings upon an article he was to contribute to The Market Place, on “The Influence of Temperament in Economics.”  The sounds of dance music in the distance made an agreeable accompaniment.

Meanwhile a scene—­indisputably sentimental—­was passing on the lake.  Helena and Geoffrey French going down to the water’s edge to find a boat, had met halfway with Cynthia Welwyn, in some distress.  She had just heard that Lady Georgina had been taken suddenly ill, and must go home.  She understood that Mawson was looking after her sister, who was liable to slight fainting attacks at inconvenient moments.  But how to find their carriage!  She had looked for a servant in vain, and Buntingford was nowhere to be seen.  French could do no less than offer to assist; and Helena, biting her lip, despatched him.  “I will wait for you at the boathouse.”