In the course of the next few days Miss Buckston went back to her Surrey cottage, and two friends of Helen's arrived.

Helen was fulfilling her promise of giving Althea all the people she wanted.

Lady Pickering was widowed, young, coquettish, and pretty; Sir Charles Brewster a lively young bachelor with high eyebrows, upturned tips to his moustache, and an air of surprise and competence.

They made great friends at once with Mildred, Dorothy and Herbert Vaughan, who shared in all Sir Charles's hunting and yachting interests.

Lady Pickering, after a day of tennis and flirtation, would drift at night into Dorothy and Mildred's rooms to talk of dresses, and for some days wore her hair tied in a large black bow behind, reverting, however, to her usual dishevelled picturesqueness.