"All right!" said Buntingford. He turned smiling to Helena. "Now we'll go home and get some dinner!"
The Dansworth doctor and nurse remained behind. Once more Buntingford got into the car beside his ward.
"What an ass I am!" he said, in disgust--"not to be able to drive the car. But I should probably kill you and myself."
Helena laughed at him, a new sweetness in the sound, and they started.
"I want to thank you,--for one thing especially--for having waited so patiently--while we got the thing under."
"I wasn't patient at all! I wanted desperately to be in it!"
"All the more credit! It would have been a terrible anxiety if you had been there. A policeman was killed just beside us. There was a man with a revolver running amuck. He just missed French by a hair-breadth."
"You see--one puts the best face on it--but it might have been a terrible business. But what I shall always remember most--is your part in it"
Their eyes met, hers half shy, half repentant, his full of a kindness she had never yet seen there.
"Oh, what a jolly day! We've had a glorious ride," said Helena, throwing herself down on the grass beside Mrs. Friend. "And how are you? Have you been resting--or slaving--as you were _expressly_ forbidden to do?"
For Mrs. Friend had been enjoying a particularly bad cold and had not long emerged from her bedroom, looking such a pitiful little wreck, that both Lord Buntingford and Helena had been greatly concerned. In the five weeks that had now elapsed since her arrival at Beechmark she had stolen her quiet way into the liking of everybody in the house to such an extent that, during the days she had been in bed with a high temperature, she had been seriously missed in the daily life of the place, and the whole household had actively combined to get her well again. Mrs. Mawson had fed her; and Lucy Friend was aghast to think how much her convalescence must be costing her employer in milk, eggs, butter, cream and chickens, when all such foods were still so frightfully, abominably dear. But they were forced down her throat by Helena and the housekeeper; while Lord Buntingford enquired after her every morning, and sent her a reckless supply of illustrated papers and novels. To see her now in the library or on the lawn again, with her white shawl round her, and the usual needlework on her knee, was a pleasant sight to everybody in the house.