第61章

Philippa and Helen looked at one another a little dolefully across the luncheon table.

"I supposes one misses the child," Helen said.

"I feel too depressed for words," Philippa admitted.

"A few days ago," Helen reminded her companion, "we were getting all the excitement that was good for any one."

"And a little more," Philippa agreed. "I don't know why things seem so flat now. We really ought to be glad that nothing terrible has happened."

"What with Henry and Mr. Lessingham both away," Helen continued, "and Captain Griffiths not coming near the place, we really have reverted to the normal, haven't we? I wonder - if Mr. Lessingham has gone back."

"I do not think so," Philippa murmured.

Helen frowned slightly.

"Personally," she said, with some emphasis, "I hope that he has."

"If we are considering the personal point of view only," Philippa retorted, "I hope that he has not."

Helen looked her disapproval.

"I should have thought that you had had enough playing with fire," she observed.

"One never has until one has burned one's fingers," Philippa sighed.

"I know perfectly well what is the matter with you," she continued severely. "You are fretting because curried chicken is Dick's favourite dish."

"I am not such a baby," Helen protested. "All the same, it does make one think. I wonder - "

"I know exactly what you were going to say," Philippa interrupted.

"You were going to say that you wondered whether Mr. Lessingham would keep his promise."

"Whether he would be able to," Helen corrected. "It does seem so impossible, doesn't it? "

"So does Mr. Lessingham himself," Philippa reminded her. "It isn't exactly a usual thing, is it, to have a perfectly charming and well-bred young man step out of a Zeppelin into your drawing-room."

"You really believe, then," Helen asked eagerly, "that he will be able to keep his promise?"

Philippa nodded confidently.

"Do you know," she said, "I believe that Mr. Lessingham, by some means or another, would keep any promise he ever made. I am expecting to see Dick at any moment now, so you can get on with your lunch, dear, and not sit looking at the curry with tears in your eyes."

"It isn't the curry so much as the chutney," Helen protested faintly.

"He never would touch any other sort."

"Well, I shouldn't be surprised if he were here to finish the bottle," Philippa declared. "I have a feeling this morning that something is going to happen."

"How long has Nora gone away for?" Helen enquired, after a moment's pause.

"A fortnight or three weeks," Philippa answered. "Her grandmother wired that she would be glad to have her until Christmas."

"Just why," Helen asked seriously, "have you sent her away?"

Philippa toyed with her curry, and glanced around as though she regretted Mills' absence from the room.

"I thought it best," she said quietly. "You see, I am not quite sure what the immediate future of this menage is going to be."

Helen leaned across the table and laid her hand upon her friend's.

"Dear," she sighed, "it worries me so to hear you talk like that."

"Why?"

"Because you know perfectly well, although you profess to ignore it, that at the bottom of your heart there is no one else but Henry.

It isn't fair, you know."

"To whom isn't it fair?" Philippa demanded.

"To Mr. Lessingham."

Philippa was thoughtful for a few moments.

"Perhaps," she admitted, "that is a point of view which I have not sufficiently considered."

Helen pressed home her advantage.

"I don't think you realise, Philippa," she said, "how madly in love with you the man is. In a perfectly ingenuous way, too. No one could help seeing it."

"Then where does the unfairness come in?" Philippa asked. "It is within my power to give him all that he wants."

"But you wouldn't do it, Philippa. You know that you wouldn't!"

Helen objected. "You may play with the idea in your mind, but that's just as far as you'd ever get."

Philippa looked her friend steadily in the face. "I disagree with you, Helen," she said. Helen set down the glass which she had been in the act of raising to her lips. It was her first really serious intimation of the tragedy which hovered over her future sister-in-law's life. Somehow or other, Philippa had seemed, even to her, so far removed from that strenuous world of over-drugged, over-excited feminine decadence, to whom the changing of a husband or a lover is merely an incident in the day's excitements.

Philippa, with her frail and almost flowerlike beauty, her love of the wholesome ways of life, and her strong affections, represented other things. Now, for the first time, Helen was really afraid, afraid for her friend.

"But you couldn't ever - you wouldn't leave Henry!"

Philippa seemed to find nothing monstrous in the idea.

"That is just what I am seriously thinking of doing," she confided.

Helen affected to laugh, but her mirth was obviously forced. Their conversation ceased perforce with the return of Mills into the room.

Then the wonderful thing happened. The windows of the dining room faced the drive to the house and both women could clearly see a motor car turn in at the gate and stop at the front door. It was obviously a hired car, as the driver was not in livery, but the tall, mulled-up figure in unfamiliar clothes who occupied the front seat was for the moment a mystery to them. Only Helen seemed to have some wonderful premonition of the truth, a premonition which she was afraid to admit even to herself. Her hand began to shake.

Philippa looked at her in amazement.

"You look as though you had seen a ghost, Helen!" she exclaimed.

"Who on earth can it be, coming at this time of the day?"