Helena watched her, as though in a quick, unspoken sympathy, her own storm of feeling subsiding.
"Do you know, Lucy, you look very nice indeed in that little black dress!" she said, in her soft, low voice, like the voice of an incantation, that she had used the night before. "You are the neatest, daintiest person!--not prim--but you make everything you wear refined. When I compare you with Cynthia Welwyn!"
She raised her shoulders scornfully. Lucy Friend, aghast at the outrageousness of the comparison, tried to silence her--but quite in vain. Helena ran on.
"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 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!"