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Updated: June 19, 2025
No one seeing him could have doubted his mother's story; and Buntingford had been able to verify it in all essential particulars by the evidence of the old bonne, who had lived with Anna in Paris before her flight, and had been present at the child's birth. The old woman was very taciturn, and apparently hostile to Buntingford, whom she perfectly remembered; but she had told enough.
Lord Buntingford threw himself back in his arm-chair, and watched the curls of smoke for a short space apparently in meditation. "Of course it's no good trying the old kind of thing strict chaperonage and that sort of business," he said at last. "The modern girl won't stand it." "No, indeed she won't!" said Mrs. Friend fervently.
The village street, still bathed in sun, was full of groups of holiday makers, idling and courting. To avoid them, Buntingford stepped into one of his own plantations, in which there was a path leading straight to the back of the Rectory. He walked like one half-stunned, with very little conscious thought.
But the war had intervened, and during its four years she and Buntingford had very much lost sight of each other. She had taken her full share in the county war work; while he was absorbed body and soul by the Admiralty. And now that they were meeting again as of old, she was very conscious, in some undefined way, that she had lost ground with him.
The little lady had not only won this place for herself by the sweet and selfless gift which was her natural endowment; she was becoming the practical helper of everybody, of Mrs. Mawson in the house, of old Fenn in the garden, even of Buntingford himself, who was gradually falling into the habit of letting her copy important letters for him, and keep some order in the library.
Helena, on her mettle, was driving her best, and Buntingford had already paid her one or two brief compliments, which she had taken in silence. Presently they topped a ridge, and there lay Dansworth in a hollow, a column of smoke gashed with occasional flame rising above the town. "A big blaze," said Buntingford, examining it through a field-glass. "It's the large brewery in the market-place.
Buntingford had naturally no heart for pageants; but Helena had been astonished by Geoffrey's telegram, which had arrived the night before from the Lancashire town he represented in Parliament. As an M.P. he ought surely to have been playing his part in the great show. Moreover, she had not expected him so soon, and she had done nothing to hurry his coming.
"Of course if you want me " "The boy his mother says is abnormal deficient. An injury at birth. If you will accompany me I shall know better what to do." A grasp of the hand, a look of sympathy answered; and they parted. Buntingford emerged from the little Rectory to find Alcott again waiting for him in the garden. The sun had set some time and the moon was peering over the hills to the east.
Buntingford hung over him, alive to his every movement, absorbed indeed in his son. The boy's paternity was stamped upon him. He had Buntingford's hair and brow; every line and trait in those noticeable eyes of his father seemed to be reproduced in him; and there were small characteristics in the hands which made them a copy in miniature of his father's.
All the same there was present in her own mind an ideal of what the action and bearing of a girl in her position should be, which, with the help of pride, would not allow her to drift into mere temper. She put her hands firmly behind her; so that Buntingford was forced to withdraw his; but she kept her self-possession.
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