Startled by the note in her companion's voice, Mrs. Friend turned to look at him. He forced a smile, as their eyes met. "Oh, we must all take our chance! But Peter's not the boy he was--before the war. Things bowl him over easily." "She likes him so much," murmured Lucy. "I'm sure she never means to be unkind." "She isn't unkind!" said Geoffrey with energy. "It's the natural fated thing. We are all the slaves of her car and she knows it. When she was in the stage of quarrelling with us all, it was just fun. But if Helena grows as delicious--as she promised to be last week--" He shrugged his shoulders, with a deep breath--"Well,--she'll have to marry somebody some day--and the rest of us may drown! Only, if you're to be umpire--and she likes you so much that I expect you will be--play fair!" He held out his hand, and she put hers into it, astonished to realize that her own eyes were full of tears. "I'm a mass of dust--I must go and change before tea," he said abruptly. He went into the house, and she was left to some agitated thinking. An hour later, the broad lawns of Beechmark, burnt yellow by the May drought, were alive with guests, men in khaki and red tabs, fresh from their War Office work; two naval Commanders, and a resplendent Flag-Lieutenant; a youth in tennis flannels, just released from a city office, who seven months earlier had been fighting in the last advance of the war, and a couple of cadets who had not been old enough to fight at all; girls who had been "out" before the war, and two others, Helena's juniors, who were just leaving the school-room and seemed to be all aglow with the excitement and wonder of this peace-world; a formidable grey-haired woman, who was Lady Mary Chance; Cynthia and Georgina Welwyn, and the ill-dressed, arresting figure of Mr. Alcott. Not all were Buntingford's guests; some were staying at the Cottage, some in another neighbouring house; but Beechmark represented the headquarters of a gathering of which Helena Pitstone and her guardian were in truth the central figures. Helena in white, playing tennis; Helena with a cigarette, resting between her sets, and chaffing with a ring of dazzled young men; Helena talking wild nonsense with Geoffrey French, for the express purpose of shocking Lady Mary Chance; and the next minute listening with a deference graceful enough to turn even the seasoned head of a warrior to a grey-haired general describing the taking of the Vimy Ridge; and finally, Helena, holding a dancing class under the cedars on the yellow smoothness of the lawn, after tea, for such young men as panted to conquer the mysteries of "hesitation" or jazzing, and were ardently courting instruction in the desperate hope of capturing their teacher for a dance that night:--it was on these various avatars of Helena that the whole party turned; and Lady Mary indignantly felt that there was no escaping the young woman.