had been rather more galling than usual; and the “sittings out” she had arranged with Philip during the supper dances had been all cancelled by her sister’s tiresome attack.  Julian Horne, who generally got on with her, chivalrously moved his seat near to her, and tried to talk.  But he found her in a rather dry and caustic mood.  The ball had seemed to her “badly managed”; and the guests, outside the house-party, “an odd set.”

Meanwhile, exactly at the hour named by Buntingford, he heard a knock at the library door.  Helena appeared.

She stood just inside the door, looking absurdly young and childish in her white frock.  But her face was grave.

“I thought just now”—­she said, almost timidly,—­“that you were bored by my asking you to show us those things.  Are you?  Please tell me.  I didn’t mean to get in the way of anything you were doing.”

“Bored!  Not in the least.  Here they are, all ready for you.  Come in.”

She saw two or three large portfolios distributed on chairs, and one or two drawings already on exhibition.  Her face cleared.

“Oh, what a heavenly thing!”

She made straight for a large drawing of the Val d’Arno in spring, and the gap in the mountains that leads to Lucca, taken from some high point above Fiesole.  She knelt down before it in an ecstasy of pleasure.

“Mummy and I were there two years before the war.  I do believe you came too?” She looked up, smiling, at the face above her.

It was the first time she had ever appealed to her childish recollections of him in any other than a provocative or half-resentful tone.  He could remember a good many tussles with her in her frail mother’s interest, when she was a long-legged, insubordinate child of twelve.  And when Helena first arrived at Beechmark, it had hurt him to realize how bitterly she remembered such things, how grossly she had exaggerated them.  The change indicated in her present manner, soothed his tired, nervous mood.  His smile answered her.

“Yes, I was there with you two or three days.  Do you remember the wild tulips we gathered at Settignano?”

“And the wild cherries—­and the pear-blossoms!  Italy in the spring is Heaven!” she said, under her breath, as she dropped to a sitting posture on the floor while he put the drawings before her.

“Well!—­shall we go there next spring?”

“Don’t tempt me—­and then back out!”

“If I did,” he said, laughing, “you could still go with Mrs. Friend.”

She made no answer.  Another knock at the door.

“There’s Geoffrey.  Come in, old boy.  We’ve only just begun.”

Half an hour’s exhibition followed.  Both Helena and French were intelligent spectators, and their amazement at the quality and variety of the work shown them seemed half-welcome, half-embarrassing to their host.

“Why don’t you go on with it?  Why don’t you exhibit?” cried Helena.