om Dansworth station to the cottage, put up his
horse, and spend the long summer twilights in carrying his son about the
garden or the park, or watching Miss Denison at her work. The boy was
physically very frail, and soon tired. But his look was now placid; the
furrows in the white brow were smoothed away; his general nutrition was
much better; his delicate cheeks had filled out a little; and his ghostly
beauty fascinated Philip's artistic sense, while his helplessness
appealed to the tenderest instinct of a strong man. Buntingford had
discovered a new and potent reason for living; and for living happily.

And meanwhile with all this slowly growing joy, Cynthia was more and more
closely connected. She and Buntingford had a common topic, which was
endlessly interesting and delightful to them both. Philip was no longer
conscious of her conventionalities and limitations, as he had been
conscious of them on his first renewed acquaintance with her after the
preoccupations of the war. He saw her now as Arthur's fairy godmother,
and as his own daily companion and helper in an exquisite task.

But Georgina was growing impatient. One evening she came home tired and
out of temper. She had been collecting the rents of some cottages
belonging to her, and the periodical operation was always trying to
everybody concerned. Georgina's secret conviction that "the poor in a
loomp is bad" was stoutly met by her tenants' firm belief that all
landlords are extortionate thieves. She came home, irritated by a number
of petty annoyances, to find the immaculate little drawing-room, where
every book and paper-knife knew its own place and kept it, given up to
Arthur and Miss Denison, with coloured blocks, pictures and models used
in that lady's teaching, strewn all over the floor, while the furniture
had been pushed unceremoniously aside.

"I won't have this house made a bear-garden!" she said, angrily, to the
dismayed teacher; and she went off straightway to find her sister.

Cynthia was in her own little den on the first floor happily engaged in
trimming a new hat. Georgina swept in upon her, shut the door, and stood
with her back to it.

"Cynthia--is this house yours or mine?"

As a matter of fact the house was Buntingford's. But Georgina was
formally the tenant of it, while the furniture was partly hers and partly
Cynthia's. In fact, however, Georgina had been always tacitly held to be
the mistress.

Cynthia looked up in astonishment,