"Well, then, I must write to Donald myself. I happen to possess the means of making it impossible for him to meet you at the Ritz next Wednesday, Helena; and I shall use them. You must make some other arrangement." "What means?" she demanded. She had turned very pale. "Ah, no!--that you must leave to me. Look here, Helena"--his tone softened--"can't we shake hands on it, and make up? I do hate quarrelling with your mother's daughter." Involuntarily, through all her rage, Helena was struck by the extreme sensitiveness of the face opposite her--a sensitiveness often disguised by the powerful general effect of the man's head and eyes. In a calmer mood she might have said to herself that only some past suffering could have produced it. At the moment, however, she was incapable of anything but passionate resentment. All the same there was present in her own mind an ideal of what the action and bearing of a girl in her position should be, which, with the help of pride, would not allow her to drift into mere temper. She put her hands firmly behind her; so that Buntingford was forced to withdraw his; but she kept her self-possession. "I don't see what there is but quarrelling before us, Cousin Philip, if you are to proceed on these lines. Are you really going to keep me to my promise?" "To let me take care of you--for these two years? It was not a promise to me, Helena." The girl's calm a little broke down. "Mummy would never have made me give it," she said fiercely, "if she had known--" "Well, you can't ask her now," he said gently. "Hadn't we better make the best of it?" She scorned to reply. He opened the door for her, and she swept through it. Left to himself, Buntingford gave a great stretch. "That was strenuous!"--he said to himself--"uncommonly strenuous. How many times a week shall I have to do it? Can't Cynthia Welwyn do anything? I'll go and see Cynthia this afternoon." With which very natural, but quite foolish resolution, he at last succeeded in quieting his own irritation, and turning his mind to a political speech he had to make next week in his own village. CHAPTER V