Helen turned a radiant face on him. “Ah, that is good of you,” she said; “and it is really angelic of me to feel that, as I shall be left here all alone.” “But the scheme includes you. Lady Sunningdale is writing to you to ask you to come up with him and stay with her for a week or two. I hope you will say ‘Yes.’” Helen gave a long sigh, as Moses, perhaps, sighed on Pisgah. “I don’t know if I could manage it,” she said, “though it would be heavenly. Perhaps, as Aunt Clara comes back in a day or two, I could leave father. But I don’t know. Oh, I should enjoy it,” she cried. “I expect you have a very fine faculty for enjoyment,” said he. Again the personal note entered, but this time it did not make her pause. “I? I should just think I had. And I love London in little raids like this, it is so full of charming things to do. But Martin,--it is good of you, Lord Yorkshire. And do be very good for him. Do use your influence with him. Do make him, at any rate, work hard to pass his examination at Cambridge first. It would make everything so much easier, so much happier.” “For him?” he asked, with a marked intonation. “Yes, and for all of us.” He looked at her gravely. “That sounds worth while,” he said. He let that string vibrate, as it were, for a moment or two, and then passed on. “But what becomes of the liberty of the individual which we talked of yesterday?” he said. “To influence anybody always seems to me a slight infringement of rights. One imposes one’s personality--such as it is--on another.” “Ah, but in a good cause, to show him the stupidity of not passing examinations. Surely, that is a rule absolutely without exception, that it is always wise not to be stupid.” He laughed. Helen, with her direct vivid personality, seemed to him unlike anybody else he had ever seen, with the exception, perhaps, of her twin. The extraordinary and rather rare charm also of perfect naturalness, not the assumption of it, was hers also. “Well, it is certainly hard to think of any exception to that rule,” he said, “though one always distrusts rules without exceptions. It seems so very unlikely that they should exist, considering how utterly different every one person is from every other. On the face of it, it seems impossible.” This had aroused another train of thought in the girl. “Oh, nothing would be impossible, if one were wise,” she said. “Oh, I hate fools. And I am one.” And she snipped viciously among the sweet-peas. He followed this with some success. “Was the Sunday-school very stupid?” he asked, sympathetically. “Hideously--quite hideously. How clever of you to guess. It was also extremely ugly. I don’t know which I dislike most, ugliness or stupidity. In fact, they are difficult to tell apart. Yet, after all, beauty is only skin deep.”