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Updated: May 20, 2025
His work still went on; but it was no longer absorbing; it no longer mattered enough to hold in check the vague impulses and passions that were beating against his will. And meanwhile the years were running on. He was forty-four, Helena Pitstone's guardian, and clearly relegated already by that unmanageable child to the ranks of the middle-aged. He had read her thought in her great scornful eyes.
And now here she was in Lord Buntingford's house Miss Helena Pitstone's chaperon. As she stood before her looking-glass, fastening her little black dress with shaking fingers, the first impression of Helena's personality was upon her, running through her, like wine to the unaccustomed. She supposed that now girls were all like this all such free, wild, uncurbed creatures, a law to themselves.
Why, Rachel Pitstone's life had been one continuous selfless offering to God and man, from her childhood to her last hour! He knew very well what he had owed her what others had owed to her genius for sympathy, for understanding, for a compassion which was also a stimulus. He missed her sorely. At that very moment, he was in great practical need of her help, her guidance.
Yet the one dear woman friend to whom in these latter years he had spoken freely, who knew him through and through Helena Pitstone's mother had taken for granted, in her quiet ascetic way, that he had indeed had his chance, and must accept for good and all what had come of it.
Sir Henry Bostock, one of those solid, grey-haired pillars of Church and State in which rural England abounds, was first dazzled by Miss Pitstone's beauty, and then clearly scandalized by some of her conversation, and perhaps or so Mrs. Friend imagined by the rather astonishing "make-up" which disfigured lips and cheeks Nature had already done her best with. He departed immediately after lunch.
The telephone message which had reached her had been from Lord Donald's butler not even from Lord Donald himself! and had been to the effect that "his lordship" asked him to say that he had been obliged to go to Scotland for a fortnight, and was very sorry he had not been able to answer Miss Pitstone's telegram before starting. Helena's cheeks were positively smarting under the humiliation of it.
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