"

Mrs. Friend hesitated.

"I don't know--"

"But what do you think?"

She lifted her gentle face, under his compulsion, and slowly, pitifully
shook her head.

Geoffrey drew a long breath.

"Then she oughtn't to ask him here! The poor little fellow is going
through the tortures of the damned!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry. Isn't there anything we can do?" cried Mrs. Friend.

"Nothing--but keep him away. After all he's only the first victim."

Startled by the note in her companion's voice, Mrs. Friend turned to look
at him. He forced a smile, as their eyes met.

"Oh, we must all take our chance! But Peter's not the boy he was--before
the war. Things bowl him over easily."

"She likes him so much," murmured Lucy. "I'm sure she never means to
be unkind."

"She isn't unkind!" said Geoffrey with energy. "It's the natural fated
thing. We are all the slaves of her car and she knows it. When she was in
the stage of quarrelling with us all, it was just fun. But if Helena
grows as delicious--as she promised to be last week--" He shrugged his
shoulders, with a deep breath--"Well,--she'll have to marry somebody some
day--and the rest of us may drown! Only, if you're to be umpire--and she
likes you so much that I expect you will be--play fair!"

He held out his hand, and she put hers into it, astonished to realize
that her own eyes were full of tears.

"I'm a mass of dust--I must go and change before tea," he said abruptly.

He went into the house, and she was left to some agitated thinking.

An hour later, the broad lawns of Beechmark, burnt yellow by the May
drought, were alive with guests, men in khaki and red tabs, fresh from
their War Office work; two naval Commanders, and a resplendent
Flag-Lieutenant; a youth in tennis flannels, just released from a city
office, who seven months earlier had been fighting in the last advance of
the war, and a couple of cadets who had not been old enough to fight at
all; girls who had been "out" before the war, and two others, Helena's
juniors, who were just leaving the school-room and seemed to be all aglow
with the excitement and wonder of this peace-world; a formidable
grey-haired woman, who was Lady Mary Chance; Cynthia and Georgina Welwyn,
and the ill-dressed, arresting figure of Mr. Alcott. Not all were
Buntingford's guests; some were staying at the Cottage, some in another
neighbouring house; but Beechmark represented the headquarters of a
gathering of which Helena Pitstone and