the sob had no successor, and presently Helena said faintly--"Good-night,
Lucy. I'm warm now. I'm going to sleep."

Lucy listened for the first long breaths of sleep, and seemed to hear
them, just as the dawn was showing itself, and the dawn-wind was pushing
at the curtains. But she herself did not sleep. This young creature lying
beside her, with her full passionate life, seemed to have absolutely
absorbed her own. She felt and saw with Helena. Through the night,
visions came and went--of "Cousin Philip,"--the handsome, melancholy,
courteous man, and of all his winning ways with the girl under his care,
when once she had dropped her first foolish quarrel with him, and made it
possible for him to show without reserve the natural sweetness and
chivalry of his character. Buntingford and Helena riding, their
well-matched figures disappearing under the trees, the sun glancing from
the glossy coats of their horses; Helena, drawing in some nook of the
park, her face flushed with the effort to satisfy her teacher, and
Buntingford bending over her; or again, Helena dancing, in pale green and
apple-blossom, while Buntingford leaned against the wall, watching her
with folded arms, and eyes that smiled over her conquests.

It all grew clear to Lucy--Helena's gradual capture, and the innocence,
the unconsciousness, of her captor. Her own shrewdness, nevertheless, put
the same question as Buntingford's conscience. Could he ever have been
quite sure of his freedom? Yet he had taken the risks of a free man. But
she could not, she did not blame him. She could only ask herself the
breathless question that French had already asked:

"How far has it gone with her? How deep is the wound?"

CHAPTER XIII

Cynthia and Georgina Welwyn were dining at Beechmark on the eventful
evening. They took their departure immediately after the scene in the
drawing-room when Geoffrey French, at his cousin's wish, gathered
Buntingford's guests together, and revealed the identity of the woman in
the wood. In the hurried conversation that followed, Cynthia scarcely
joined, and she was more than ready when Georgina proposed to go. Julian
Horne found them their wraps, and saw them off. It was a beautiful night,
and they were to walk home through the park.

"Shall I bring you any news there is to-morrow?" said Horne from the
doorstep--"Geoffrey has asked me to stay till the evening. Everybody else
of course is going early. It will be some time, won't