"Well--that if she was going to recommend somebody to Cousin Philip--to look after me, she would never have been content with anything short of a Prussian grenadier in petticoats. She thinks me a demon. She won't let her daughters go about with me. I can't imagine how she ever fixed upon anyone so--" "So what?" said Mrs. Friend, after a moment, nervously. Lost in the big white arm-chair, her small hand propping her small face and head, she looked even frailer than she had looked in the library. "Well, nobody would ever take you for my jailer, would they?" said Helena, surveying her. Mrs. Friend laughed--a ghost of a laugh, which yet seemed to have some fun in it, far away. "Does this seem to you like prison?" "This house? Oh, no. Of course I shall do just as I like in it. I have only come because--well, my poor Mummy made a great point of it when she was ill, and I couldn't be a brute to her, so I promised. But I wonder whether I ought to have promised. It is a great tyranny, you know--the tyranny of sick people. I wonder whether one ought to give in to her?" The girl looked up coolly. Mrs. Friend felt as though she had been struck. "But your _mother_!" she said involuntarily. "Oh, I know, that's what most people would say. But the question is, what's reasonable. Well, I wasn't reasonable, and here I am. But I make my conditions. We are not to be more than four months in the year in this old hole"--she looked round her in not unkindly amusement at the bare old-fashioned room; "we are to have four or five months in London, _at least_; and when travelling abroad gets decent again, we are to go abroad--Rome, perhaps, next winter. And I am jolly well to ask my friends here, or in town--male and female--and Cousin Philip promised to be nice to them. He said, of course, 'Within limits.' But that we shall see. I'm not a pauper, you know. My trustees pay Lord Buntingford whatever I cost him, and I shall have a good deal to spend. I shall have a horse--and perhaps a little motor. The chauffeur here is a fractious idiot. He has done that Rolls-Royce car of Cousin Philip's balmy, and cut up quite rough when I spoke to him about it." "Done it what?" said Mrs. Friend faintly. "Balmy. Don't you know that expression?" Helena, on the floor with her hands under her knees, watched her companion's looks with a grin. "It's _our_ language now, you know--English--the language of us young people. The old ones have got to learn it, as _we_ speak it! Well, what do you think of Cousin Philip?" Mrs. Friend roused herself. "I've only seen him for half an hour. But he was very kind." "And isn't he good-looking?" said the girl before her, with enthusiasm. "I just adore that combination of black hair and blue eyes--don't you? But he isn't by any means as innocent as he looks." "I never said--"