her into the conversation. A quiet
rather stony stare, a muttered "Ah" or "Oh," were all that such efforts
produced. Some of the frequenters of the cottage drawing-room were
convinced that Lady Georgina was "not quite all there." Others had the
impression of something watchful and sinister; and were accustomed to
pity "dear Cynthia" for having to live with so strange a being.

But in truth the sisters suited each other very fairly, and Lady Georgina
found a good deal more tongue when she was alone with Cynthia than at
other times.

To the lively account that Cynthia had been giving her of the evening at
Beechmark, and the behaviour of Helena Pitstone, Lady Georgina had
listened in a sardonic silence; and at the end of it she said--

"What ever made the man such a fool?"

"Who?--Buntingford? My dear, what could he do? Rachel Pitstone was his
greatest friend in the world, and when she asked him just the week before
she died, how could he say No?" Lady Georgina murmured that in that case
Rachel Pitstone also had been a fool--

"Unless, of course, she wanted the girl to marry Buntingford. Why,
Philip's only forty-four now. A nice age for a guardian! Of course it's
not proper. The neighbours will talk."

"Oh, no,--not with a chaperon. Besides nobody minds anything odd
nowadays."

Cynthia meanwhile as she lay stretched in a deep arm-chair, playing with
the tea-spoon in her shapely fingers, was a pleasant vision. Since coming
in from the village, she had changed her tweed coat and skirt for a
tea-frock of some soft silky stuff, hyacinth blue in colour; and
Georgina, for whom tea-frocks were a silly abomination, and who was
herself sitting bolt upright in a shabby blue serge some five springs
old, could not deny the delicate beauty of her sister's still fresh
complexion and pale gold hair, nor the effectiveness of the blue dress in
combination with them. She did not really want Cynthia to look older, nor
to see her ill-dressed; but all the same there were many days when
Cynthia's mature perfections roused a secret irritation in her sister--a
kind of secret triumph also in the thought that, in the end, Time would
be the master even of Cynthia. Perhaps after all she would marry. It did
look as though Sir Richard Watson, if properly encouraged, and
indemnified for earlier rebuffs, might still mean business. As for Philip
Buntingford, it was only Cynthia's vanity that had ever made her imagine
him in love with her. Lady Geo