afraid you never took to her!" he said lightly.

"She never took to me!"

"I wonder if that was my fault? She suspected that I had called you in to
help me to keep her in order!"

"What was it brought her to reason--so suddenly?" said Cynthia, seeking
light at last on a problem that had long puzzled her.

"Two things, I imagine. First that she was the better man of us all, that
day of the Dansworth riot. She could drive my big car, and none of the
rest of us could! That seemed to put her right with us all. And
secondly--the reports of that abominable trial. She told me so. I only
hope she didn't read much of it!"

They had just passed the corner of the house, and come out on the sloping
lawn of Beechmark, with the lake, and the wood beyond it. All that had
happened behind that dark screen of yew, on the distant edge of the
water, came rushing back on Philip's imagination, so that he fell silent.
Cynthia on her side was thinking of the moment when she came down to the
edge of the lake to carry off Geoffrey French, and saw Buntingford and
Helena push off into the puckish rays of the searchlight. She tasted
again the jealous bitterness of it--and the sense of defeat by something
beyond her fighting--the arrogance of Helena's young beauty. Philip was
not in love with Helena; that she now knew. So far she, Cynthia, had
marvellously escaped the many chances that might have undone her. But if
Helena came back?

Meanwhile there were some uneasy thoughts at the back of Philip's mind;
and some touching and tender recollections which he kept sacred to
himself. Helena's confession and penitence--there, on that still
water--how pretty they were, how gracious! Nor could he ever forget her
sweetness, her pity on that first tragic evening. Geoffrey's alarms were
absurd. Yet when he thought of merely reproducing the situation as it had
existed before the night of the ball, something made him hesitate. And
besides, how could he reproduce it? All his real mind was now absorbed in
this overwhelming problem of his son; of the helpless, appealing creature
to whose aid the whole energies of his nature had been summoned.

He walked back some way with Cynthia, talking of the boy, with an
intensity of hope that frightened her.

"Don't, or don't be too certain--yet!" she pleaded. "We have only just
seen the first sign--the first flicker. If it were all to vanish again!"

"Could I bear it?" he said, under his breath--"Could I?"

"Anyway