"Did you watch Cynthia last night? She was playing for Cousin Philip with all her might. Why doesn't he marry her? She would suit his autocratic ideas very well. He is forty-four. She must be thirty-eight if she is a day. They have both got money--which Cynthia can't do without, for she is horribly extravagant. But I wouldn't give much for her chances. Cousin Philip is a tough proposition, as the American says. There is no getting at his real mind. All one knows is that it is a tyrannical mind!" All softness had died from the girl's face and sparkling eyes. She sat on the floor, her hands round her knees, defiance in every tense feature. Mrs. Friend was conscious of renewed alarm and astonishment, and at last found the nerve to express them. "How can you call it tyrannical when he spends all this time and thought upon you!" "The gilding of the cage," said Helena stubbornly. "That is the way women have always been taken in. Men fling them scraps to keep them quiet. But as to the _real_ feast--liberty to discover the world for themselves, make their own experiments--choose and test their own friends--no, thank you! And what is life worth if it is only to be lived at somebody's else's dictation?" "But you have only been here twenty-four hours--not so much! And you don't know Lord Buntingford's reasons--" "Oh, yes, I do know!" said Helena, undisturbed--"more or less. I told you last night. They don't matter to me. It's the principle involved that matters. Am I free, or am I not free? Anyway, I've just sent that telegram." "To whom?" cried Mrs. Friend. "To Lord Donald, of course, asking him to meet me at the Ritz next Wednesday. If you will be so good"--the brown head made her a ceremonial bow--"as to go up with me to town--we can go to my dressmaker's together--I have got heaps to do there--then I can leave you somewhere for lunch--and pick you up again afterwards!" "Of course, Miss Pitstone--Helena!--I can't do anything of the sort, unless your guardian agrees." "Well, we shall see," said Helena coolly, jumping up. "I mean to tell him after lunch. Don't please worry. And good-bye till lunch. This time I am really going to look after my horse!" A laugh, and a wave of the hand--she had disappeared. Mrs. Friend was left to reflect on the New Woman. Was it in truth the war that had produced her?--and if so, how and why? All that seemed probable was that in two or three weeks' time, perhaps, she would be again appealing to the same agency that had sent her to Beechmark. She believed she was entitled to a month's notice. Poor Lord Buntingford! Her sympathies were hotly on his side, so far as she had any understanding of the situation into which she had been plunged with so little warning. Yet when Helena was actually there at her feet, she was hypnotized. The most inscrutable thing of all was, how she could ever have supposed herself capable of undertaking such a charge!