“You think nineteen makes all the difference?  I doubt,” said Geoffrey French coolly, as he sat up tailor-fashion, and surveyed her.  “Well, my view is that for the babes, as you call them, chaperonage is certainly reviving.  I have just been sitting next Lady Maud, this babe’s mother, and she told me an invitation came for the babe from some great house last week, addressed to ’Miss Luton and partner’—­whereon Lady Maud wrote back—­’My daughter has no partner and I shall be very happy to bring her.’  Rather a poke in the eye!  Then there are the women of five or six and twenty who have been through the war, and are not likely to give up the freedom of it—­ever again.  That’s all right.  They’ll take their own risks.  Many of them will prefer not to live at home again.  They’ll live with a friend—­and visit their people perhaps every day!  But, then there’s you, Helena—­the betwixt and between!—­”

“Well—­what about me?”

“You’re neither a babe—­nor a veteran.”

“I’m nineteen and a half—­and I’ve done a year and a half of war work—­”

“Canteen—­and driving?  All right.  Am I to give an opinion?”

“You will give it, whatever I say.  And it’s you all over—­to give it, before you’ve allowed me to explain anything.”

“Oh, I know your point of view—­” said Geoffrey, unperturbed—­“know it by heart.  Haven’t you dinned it into me at half a dozen dances lately?  No!—­I’m entitled to my say—­and here it is.  Claim all the freedom you like—­but as you’re not twenty-five, but nineteen—­let a good fellow like Buntingford give you advice—­and be thankful!”

“Prig!” said Helena, pelting him with a spray of wild cherry, which he caught and put in his button-hole.  “If that isn’t preaching, I should like to know what is!”

“Not at all.  Unbiased opinion—­civilly expressed.  If you really were an emancipated young woman, Helena, you’d take it so!  But now—­” his tone changed—­“let’s come to business.  What have you and Philip been quarrelling about?”

Helena straightened her shoulders, as though to meet certain disapproval.

“Because—­I asked Lord Donald to spend the week-end here—­”

“You didn’t!”

“I did; and Cousin Philip wired to him and forbade him the house.  Offence No. 1.  Then as I intended all the same to see Jim, I told him I would go up and lunch with him at the Ritz.  Cousin Philip vows I shan’t, and he seems to have some underhand means of stopping it—­I—­I don’t know what—­”

“Underhand!  Philip!  I say, Helena, I wonder whether you have any idea how people who really know him think about Buntingford!”

“Oh, of course men back up men!”

“Stuff!  It’s really silly—­abominable too—­the way you talk of him—­I can’t help saying it.”

And this time it was Geoffrey’s turn to look indignant.  His long face with its deeply set grey eyes, a rather large nose, and a fine brow under curly hair, had flushed suddenly.