is lip, to meet her.

"Many, many thanks," he said, looking at what she had brought. "It is
awfully good of you. I will take them in--but I ask myself--will she ever
live through the day? Lord Buntingford and Ramsay hurried off by the
first train this morning. She has enquired for the boy, and they will
bring him back as soon as they can. She gives herself no chance! She is
so weak--but her will is terribly strong! We can't get her to obey the
doctor's orders. Of course, it is partly the restlessness of the
condition."

Cynthia's eyes travelled to the upper window above the study.
Buntingford's wife lay there! It seemed to her that the little room held
all the secrets of Buntingford's past. The dying woman knew them, and she
alone. A new jealousy entered into Cynthia--a despairing sense of the
irrevocable. Helena was forgotten.

At noon Julian Horne arrived, bringing a book that Cynthia had lent him.
He stayed to gossip about the break-up of the party.

"Everybody has cleared out except myself and Geoffrey. Miss Helena and
her chaperon went this morning before lunch. Buntingford of course had
gone before they came down. French tells me they have gone to a little
inn in Wales he recommended. Miss Helena said she wanted something to
draw, and a quiet place. I must say she looked pretty knocked up!--I
suppose by the dance?"

His sharp greenish eyes perused Cynthia's countenance. She made no reply.
His remark did not interest a preoccupied woman. Yet she did not fail to
remember, with a curious pleasure, that there was no mention of Helena in
Buntingford's letter.

Between five and six that afternoon a party of four descended at a
station some fifteen miles from Beechmark, where Buntingford was not very
likely to be recognized. It consisted of Buntingford, the doctor, a
wrinkled French _bonne_, in a black stuff dress, and black bonnet, and a
frail little boy whom a spectator would have guessed to be eleven or
twelve years old. Buntingford carried him, and the whole party passed
rapidly to a motor standing outside. Then through a rainy evening they
sped on at a great pace towards the Beechmark park and village. The boy
sat next to Buntingford who had his arm round him. But he was never
still. He had a perpetual restless motion of the head and the emaciated
right hand, as though something oppressed the head, and he were trying to
brush it away. His eyes wandered round the faces in the car,--from his
father to the docto