“You are a most undutiful wife,” Helen pronounced severely.  “I am sure Henry is a delightful person, even if he is a little irresponsible, and it is almost pathetic to remember how much you were in love with him, a year or two ago.”

Some of the lightness vanished from Philippa’s face.

“That was before the war,” she sighed.

“I still think Henry is a dear, though I don’t altogether understand him,” Helen said thoughtfully.

“No doubt,” Philippa assented, “but you’d find the not understanding him a little more galling, if you were his wife.  You see, I didn’t know that I was marrying a sort of sporting Mr. Skimpole.”

“I wonder,” Helen reflected, “how Henry and Mr. Lessingham will get on when they see more of one another.”

“I really don’t care,” Philippa observed indifferently.

“I used to notice sometimes—­that was soon after you were married,” Helen continued, “that Henry was just a little inclined to be jealous.”

Philippa withdrew her eyes from the sea.  There was a queer little smile upon her lips.

“Well, if he still is,” she said, “I’ll give him something to be jealous about.”

“Poor Mr. Lessingham!” Helen murmured.

Philippa’s eyebrows were raised.

“Poor Mr. Lessingham?” she repeated.  “I don’t think you’ll find that he’ll be in the least sorry for himself.”

“He may be in earnest,” Helen reminded her friend.  “You can be horribly attractive when you like, you know, Philippa.”

Philippa smiled sweetly.

“It is just possible,” she said, “that I may be in earnest myself.  I’ve quarrelled pretty desperately with Henry, you know, and I’m a helpless creature without a little admiration.”

Helen rose suddenly to her feet.  Her eyes were fixed upon a figure approaching through the wood.

“You really aren’t respectable, Philippa,” she declared.  “Throw away your cigarette, for heaven’s sake, and sit up.  Some one is coming.”

Philippa only moved her head lazily.  The sunlight, which came down in a thousand little zigzags through the wind-tossed trees, fell straight upon her rather pale, defiant little face, with its unexpressed evasive charm, and seemed to find a new depth of colour in the red-gold of her disordered hair.  Her slim, perfect body was stretched almost at full length, one leg drawn a little up, her hands carelessly drooping towards the grass.  The cigarette was still burning in the corner of her lips.

“I decline,” she said, “to throw away my cigarette for any one.”

“Least of all, I trust,” a familiar voice interposed, “for me.”

Philippa sat upright at once, smoothed her hair and looked a little resentfully at Lessingham.  He was wearing a brown tweed knickerbocker suit, and he carried a gun under his arm.

“Whatever are you doing up here,” she demanded, “and do you know anything about our game laws?  You can’t come out into the woods here and shoot things just because you feel like it.”