ssessed her that she would
remain Cynthia Welwyn to the end. She knew very well that in the opinion
of her friends she had fallen between two stools. Her neighbour, Sir
Richard Watson, had proposed to her twice,--on the last occasion some two
years before the war. She had not been able to make up her mind to accept
him, because on the whole she was more in love with her cousin, Philip
Buntingford, and still hoped that his old friendship for her might turn
to something deeper. But the war had intervened, and during its four
years she and Buntingford had very much lost sight of each other. She had
taken her full share in the county war work; while he was absorbed body
and soul by the Admiralty.

And now that they were meeting again as of old, she was very conscious,
in some undefined way, that she had lost ground with him. Uneasily she
felt that her talk sometimes bored him; yet she could not help talking.
In the pre-war days, when they met in a drawing-room full of people, he
had generally ended his evening beside her. Now his manner, for all its
courtesy, seemed to tell her that those times were done; that she was
four years older; that she had lost the first brilliance of her looks;
and that he himself had grown out of her ken. Helena's young unfriendly
eyes had read her rightly. She did wish fervently to recapture Philip
Buntingford; and saw no means of doing so. Meanwhile Sir Richard, now
demobilized, had come back from the war bringing great glory with him, as
one of the business men whom the Army had roped in to help in its vast
labour and transport organization behind the lines. He too had reappeared
at Beechmark Cottage. But he too was four years older--and dreadfully
preoccupied, it seemed to her, with a thousand interests which had
mattered nothing to him in the old easy days.

Yet Cynthia Welwyn was still an extremely attractive and desirable
woman, and was quite aware of it, as was her elder sister, Lady
Georgina, who spent her silent life in alternately admiring and
despising the younger. Lady Georgina was short, thin, and nearly
white-haired. She had a deep voice, which she used with a harsh
abruptness, startling to the newcomer. But she used it very little.
Cynthia's friends, were used to see her sitting absolutely silent behind
the tea-urn at breakfast or tea, filling the cups while Cynthia handed
them and Cynthia talked; and they had learned that it was no use at all
to show compassion and try to bring