spaced by answering columns which carried the roof. The bedrooms ran
round the hall, and opened into the gallery. The columns were of yellow
marble brought from Italy, and faded blue curtains hung between them.
Helena went cautiously to the balustrade, drew one of the blue curtains
round her, and looked down into the hall. Was everybody gone to bed? No.
There were movements in a distant room. Somebody coughed, and seemed to
be walking about. But she couldn't hear any talking. 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