Helena was not long in suspecting that Lady Cynthia was in some way Buntingford's envoy, and had been sent to make friends, with an ulterior object; while Cynthia was repelled by the girl's ungracious manner, and by the gulf which it implied between the outlook of forty, and that of nineteen.

"She means to make me feel that I might have been her mother--and that we have nothing in common!" The result was that Cynthia was driven into an intimate and possessive tone with regard to Buntingford, which was more than the facts warranted, and soon reduced Helena to monosyllables, and a sarcastic lip.
"You can't think," said Cynthia effusively--"how good he is to us two.

It is so like him.

He never forgets us.

But indeed he never forgets anybody." Helena raised her eyebrows, as though the news astonished her, but she was too polite to contradict.
"He sends you flowers, doesn't he ?" she said carelessly.
"He sends us all kinds of things.