who had to live in the room. She had something to do with the School, and
of course wanted jobs for her workers.

"I hope that good woman's train will be punctual," he thought to himself,
presently, as he went to a window and drew up a blind. "Otherwise I shall
have no time to look at her before Helena arrives."

He stood awhile absently surveying the prospect outside. There was first
of all a garden with some pleasant terraces, and flights of stone steps,
planned originally in the grand style, but now rather dilapidated and
ill-kept, suggesting either a general shortage of pelf on the part of the
owner--or perhaps mere neglect and indifference.

Beyond the garden stretched a green rim of park, with a gleam of water in
the middle distance which seemed to mean either a river or a pond, many
fine scattered trees, and, girdling the whole, a line of wooded hill.
Just such a view as any county--almost--in this beautiful England can
produce. It was one of the first warm days of a belated spring. A
fortnight before, park and hills and garden had been deep in snow. Now
Nature, eager, and one might think ashamed, was rushing at her neglected
work, determined to set the full spring going in a minimum of hours. The
grass seemed to be growing, and the trees leafing under the spectator's
eyes. There was already a din of cuckoos in the park, and the nesting
birds were busy.

The scene was both familiar and unfamiliar to Lord Buntingford. He had
been brought up in it as a child. But he had only inherited the Beechmark
property from his uncle just before the war, and during almost the whole
of the war he had been so hard at work, as a volunteer in the Admiralty,
that he had never been able to do more than run down once or twice a year
to see his agent, go over his home farm, and settle what timber was to be
cut before the Government commandeered it. He was not yet demobilized, as
his naval uniform showed. There was a good deal of work still to do in
his particular office, and he was more than willing to do it. But in a
few months' time at any rate--he was just now taking a fortnight's
leave--he would be once more at a loose end. That condition of things
must be altered as soon as possible. When he looked back over the years
of driving work through which he had just passed to the years of
semi-occupation before them, he shrank from those old conditions in
disgust. Something must be found to which he could enslave himself again.
Libe