lking. If Cousin Philip
were still up, he was alone.

Her anger came back upon her, and then curiosity. What was he thinking
about, as he paced his room like a caged squirrel? About the trouble she
was likely to give him--and what a fool he had been to take the job? She
would like to go and reason with him. The excess of vitality that was in
her, sighing for fresh worlds to conquer, urged her to vehement and
self-confident action,--action for its own sake, for the mere joy of the
heat and movement that go with it. Part of the impulse depended on the
new light in which the gentleman walking about downstairs had begun to
appear to her. She had known him hitherto as "Mummy's friend," always to
be counted upon when any practical difficulty arose, and ready on
occasion to put in a sharp word in defence of an invalid's peace, when a
girl's unruliness threatened it. Remembering one or two such collisions,
Helena felt her cheeks burn, as she hung over the hall, in the darkness.
But those had been such passing matters. Now, as she recalled the
expression of his eyes, during their clash at the dinner-table, she
realized, with an excitement which was not disagreeable, that something
much more prolonged and serious might lie before her. Accomplished
modern, as she knew him to be in most things, he was going to be "stuffy"
and "stupid" in some. Lord Donald's proceedings in the matter of Lady
Preston evidently seemed to him--she had been made to feel it--frankly
abominable. And he was not going to ask the man capable of them within
his own doors. Well and good. "But as I don't agree with him--Donald was
only larking!--I shall take my own way. A telegram goes anyway to Donald
to-morrow morning--and we shall see. So good-night, Cousin Philip!" And
blowing a kiss towards the empty hall, she gathered her white skirts
round her, and fled laughing towards her own room.

But just as she neared it, a door in front of her, leading to a
staircase, opened, and a man in khaki appeared, carrying a candle. It was
Captain Lodge, her neighbour at the dinner-table. The young man stared
with amazement at the apparition rushing along the gallery towards
him,--the girl's floating hair, and flushed loveliness as his candle
revealed it. Helena evidently enjoyed his astonishment, and his sudden
look of admiration. But before he could speak, she had vanished within
her own door, just holding it open long enough to give him a laughing nod
before it shut, an