Then Geoffrey said in an unsteady voice: "Philip!--there is one person you must tell--perhaps first of all. You must tell Helena--yourself." Buntingford stopped as though under a blow. "Of course, I shall tell Helena--but why?--" His voice spoke bewilderment and pain. "Tell her _yourself_--that's all," said Geoffrey, resolutely--"and, if you can, before she hears it from anybody else." CHAPTER XII Buntingford and French reached home between ten and eleven o'clock. When they entered the house, they heard sounds of music from the drawing-room. Peter Dale was playing fragments from the latest musical comedy, with a whistled accompaniment on the drawing-room piano. There seemed to be nothing else audible in the house, in spite of the large party it contained. Amid the general hush, unbroken by a voice or a laugh, the "funny bits" that Peter was defiantly thumping or whistling made a kind of goblin chorus round a crushed and weary man, as he pushed past the door of the drawing-room to the library. Geoffrey followed him. "No one knows it yet," said the young man, closing the door behind them. "I had no authority from you to say anything. But of course they all understood that something strange had happened. Can I be any help with the others, while--" "While I tell Helena?" said Buntingford, heavily. "Yes. Better get it over. Say, please--I should be grateful for no more talk than is inevitable." Geoffrey stood by awkwardly, not knowing how to express the painful sympathy he felt. His very pity made him abrupt. "I am to say--that you always believed--she was dead?" Under what name to speak of the woman lying at the Rectory puzzled him. The mere admission of the thought that however completely in the realm of morals she might have forfeited his name, she was still Buntingford's wife in the realm of law, seemed an outrage. At the question, Buntingford sprang up suddenly from the seat on which he had fallen; and Geoffrey, who was standing near him involuntarily retreated a few steps, in amazement at the passionate animation which for the moment had transformed the whole aspect of the elder man.