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, and darkness closed with it on the gallery.

"A man would need to keep his head with that girl!" thought Captain
Lodge, with tantalized amusement. "But, my hat, what a beauty!"

Meanwhile in the library downstairs a good deal of thinking was going on.
Lord Buntingford was taking more serious stock of his new duties than he
had done yet. As he walked, smoking, up and down, his thoughts were full
of his poor little cousin Rachel Pitstone. She had always been a
favourite of his; and she had always known him better than any other
person among his kinsfolk. He had found it easy to tell her secrets, when
nobody else could have dragged a word from him; and as a matter of fact
she had known before she died practically all that there was to know
about him. And she had been so kind, and simple and wise. Had she perhaps
once had a _tendresse_ for him--before she met Ned Pitstone?--and if
things had gone--differently--might he not, perhaps, have married her?