THE SHUTTLE

By Frances Hodgson Burnett

CONTENTS

 CHAPTER I. THE WEAVING OF THE SHUTTLE II. A LACK OF PERCEPTION III. YOUNG LADY ANSTRUTHERS IV. A MISTAKE OF THE POSTBOY'S V. ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC VI. AN UNFAIR ENDOWMENT VII. ON BOARD THE "MERIDIANA" VIII. THE SECOND-CLASS PASSENGER IX. LADY JANE GREY X. "IS LADY ANSTRUTHERS AT HOME?" XI. "I THOUGHT YOU HAD ALL FORGOTTEN" XII. UGHTRED XIII. ONE OF THE NEW YORK DRESSES XIV. IN THE GARDENS XV. THE FIRST MAN XVI. THE PARTICULAR INCIDENT XVII. TOWNLINSON & SHEPPARD XVIII. THE FIFTEENTH EARL OF MOUNT DUNSTAN XIX. SPRING IN BOND STREET XX. THINGS OCCUR IN STORNHAM VILLAGE XXI. KEDGERS XXII. ONE OF MR. VANDERPOEL'S LETTERS XXIII. INTRODUCING G. SELDEN XXIV. THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF STORNHAM XXV. "WE BEGAN TO MARRY THEM, MY GOOD FELLOW!" XXVI. "WHAT IT MUST BE TO BE YOU--JUST YOU!" XXVII. LIFE XXVIII. SETTING THEM THINKING XXIX. THE THREAD OF G. SELDEN XXX. A RETURN XXXI. NO, SHE WOULD NOT XXXII. A GREAT BALL XXXIII. FOR LADY JANE XXXIV. RED GODWYN XXXV. THE TIDAL WAVE XXXVI. BY THE ROADSIDE EVERYWHERE XXXVII. CLOSED CORRIDORS XXXVIII. AT SHANDY'S XXXIX. ON THE MARSHES XL. "DON'T GO ON WITH THIS" XLI. SHE WOULD DO SOMETHING XLII. IN THE BALLROOM XLIII. HIS CHANCE XLIV. A FOOTSTEP XLV. THE PASSING BELL XLVI. LISTENING XLVII. "I HAVE NO WORD OR LOOK TO REMEMBER" XLVIII. THE MOMENT XLIX. AT STORNHAM AND AT BROADMORLANDS L. THE PRIMEVAL THING

THE SHUTTLE

CHAPTER I

THE WEAVING OF THE SHUTTLE

No man knew when the Shuttle began its slow and heavy weaving from shoreto shore, that it was held and guided by the great hand of Fate. Fatealone saw the meaning of the web it wove, the might of it, and its placein the making of a world's history. Men thought but little of either webor weaving, calling them by other names and lighter ones, for the timeunconscious of the strength of the thread thrown across thousands ofmiles of leaping, heaving, grey or blue ocean. 

Fate and Life planned the weaving, and it seemed mere circumstancewhich guided the Shuttle to and fro between two worlds divided by a gulfbroader and deeper than the thousands of miles of salt, fierce sea--thegulf of a bitter quarrel deepened by hatred and the shedding ofbrothers' blood. Between the two worlds of East and West there was nowill to draw nearer. Each held apart. Those who had rebelled againstthat which their souls called tyranny, having struggled madly andshed blood in tearing themselves free, turned stern backs upon theirunconquered enemies, broke all cords that bound them to the past, flinging off ties of name, kinship and rank, beginning with fiercedisdain a new life. 

Those who, being rebelled against, found the rebels too passionatein their determination and too desperate in their defence of theirstrongholds to be less than unconquerable, sailed back haughtily to theworld which seemed so far the greater power. Plunging into new battles, they added new conquests and splendour to their land, looking back withsomething of contempt to the half-savage West left to build its owncivilisation without other aid than the strength of its own strong righthand and strong uncultured brain. 

But while the two worlds held apart, the Shuttle, weaving slowly in thegreat hand of Fate, drew them closer and held them firm, each of themall unknowing for many a year, that what had at first been mere threadsof gossamer, was forming a web whose strength in time none couldcompute, whose severance could be accomplished but by tragedy andconvulsion. 

The weaving was but in its early and slow-moving years when thisstory opens. Steamers crossed and recrossed the Atlantic, but theyaccomplished the journey at leisure and with heavy rollings and all suchdiscomforts as small craft can afford. Their staterooms and decks werenot crowded with people to whom the voyage was a mere incident--in manycases a yearly one. "A crossing" in those days was an event. It wasplanned seriously, long thought of, discussed and re-discussed, with andamong the various members of the family to which the voyager belonged. A certain boldness, bordering on recklessness, was almost to bepresupposed in the individual who, turning his back upon New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and like cities, turned his face towards "Europe. "In those days when the Shuttle wove at leisure, a man did not lightlyrun over to London, or Paris, or Berlin, he gravely went to "Europe. "

The journey being likely to be made once in a lifetime, the traveller'sintention was to see as much as possible, to visit as many citiescathedrals, ruins, galleries, as his time and purse would allow. Peoplewho could speak with any degree of familiarity of Hyde Park, the ChampsElysees, the Pincio, had gained a certain dignity. The ability to touchwith an intimate bearing upon such localities was a raison de plus forbeing asked out to tea or to dinner. To possess photographs and relicswas to be of interest, to have seen European celebrities even at adistance, to have wandered about the outside of poets' gardens andphilosophers' houses, was to be entitled to respect. The period was afar cry from the time when the Shuttle, having shot to and fro, fasterand faster, week by week, month by month, weaving new threads into itsweb each year, has woven warp and woof until they bind far shore toshore. 

It was in comparatively early days that the first thread we followwas woven into the web. Many such have been woven since and haveadded greater strength than any others, twining the cord of sex andhome-building and race-founding. But this was a slight and weakone, being only the thread of the life of one of Reuben Vanderpoel'sdaughters--the pretty little simple one whose name was Rosalie. 

They were--the Vanderpoels--of the Americans whose fortunes were aportion of the history of their country. The building of these fortuneshad been a part of, or had created epochs and crises. Their millionscould scarcely be regarded as private property. Newspapers bandied themabout, so to speak, employing them as factors in argument, using themas figures of speech, incorporating them into methods of calculation. Literature touched upon them, moral systems considered them, stories forthe young treated them gravely as illustrative. 

The first Reuben Vanderpoel, who in early days of danger had traded withsavages for the pelts of wild animals, was the lauded hero of storiesof thrift and enterprise. Throughout his hard-working life he had beenirresistibly impelled to action by an absolute genius of commerce, expressing itself at the outset by the exhibition of courage in mereexchange and barter. An alert power to perceive the potential value ofthings and the possible malleability of men and circumstances, had stoodhim in marvellous good stead. He had bought at low prices things whichin the eyes of the less discerning were worthless, but, having obtainedpossession of such things, the less discerning had almost invariablyawakened to the fact that, in his hands, values increased, and methodsof remunerative disposition, being sought, were found. Nothing remainedunutilisable. The practical, sordid, uneducated little man developed thepower to create demand for his own supplies. If he was betrayed intoan error, he quickly retrieved it. He could live upon nothing andconsequently could travel anywhere in search of such things as hedesired. He could barely read and write, and could not spell, but he wasdaring and astute. His untaught brain was that of a financier, his bloodburned with the fever of but one desire--the desire to accumulate. Moneyexpressed to his nature, not expenditure, but investment in such smallor large properties as could be resold at profit in the near or farfuture. The future held fascinations for him. He bought nothing for hisown pleasure or comfort, nothing which could not be sold or barteredagain. He married a woman who was a trader's daughter and shared hispassion for gain. She was of North of England blood, her father havingbeen a hard-fisted small tradesman in an unimportant town, who had beendaring enough to emigrate when emigration meant the facing of unknowndangers in a half-savage land. She had excited Reuben Vanderpoel'sadmiration by taking off her petticoat one bitter winter's day to sellit to a squaw in exchange for an ornament for which she chanced to knowanother squaw would pay with a skin of value. The first Mrs. Vanderpoelwas as wonderful as her husband. They were both wonderful. They werethe founders of the fortune which a century and a half later was thedelight--in fact the piece de resistance--of New York society reporters, its enormity being restated in round figures when a blank space must befilled up. The method of statement lent itself to infinite variety andwas always interesting to a particular class, some elements of whichfelt it encouraging to be assured that so much money could be a personalpossession, some elements feeling the fact an additional argument to beused against the infamy of monopoly. 

The first Reuben Vanderpoel transmitted to his son his accumulations andhis fever for gain. He had but one child. The second Reuben built uponthe foundations this afforded him, a fortune as much larger than thefirst as the rapid growth and increasing capabilities of the countrygave him enlarging opportunities to acquire. It was no longer necessaryto deal with savages: his powers were called upon to cope with thoseof white men who came to a new country to struggle for livelihood andfortune. Some were shrewd, some were desperate, some were dishonest. Butshrewdness never outwitted, desperation never overcame, dishonesty neverdeceived the second Reuben Vanderpoel. Each characteristic ended byadapting itself to his own purposes and qualities, and as a result ofeach it was he who in any business transaction was the gainer. It wasthe common saying that the Vanderpoels were possessed of a money-makingspell. Their spell lay in their entire mental and physical absorption inone idea. Their peculiarity was not so much that they wished to be richas that Nature itself impelled them to collect wealth as the load-stonedraws towards it iron. Having possessed nothing, they became rich, having become rich they became richer, having founded their fortuneson small schemes, they increased them by enormous ones. In time theyattained that omnipotence of wealth which it would seem no circumstancecan control or limit. The first Reuben Vanderpoel could not spell, thesecond could, the third was as well educated as a man could be whosesole profession is money-making. His children were taught all thatexpensive teachers and expensive opportunities could teach them. Afterthe second generation the meagre and mercantile physical type of theVanderpoels improved upon itself. Feminine good looks appeared and weremade the most of. The Vanderpoel element invested even good looks to anadvantage. The fourth Reuben Vanderpoel had no son and two daughters. They were brought up in a brown-stone mansion built upon a fashionableNew York thoroughfare roaring with traffic. To the farthest point ofthe Rocky Mountains the number of dollars this "mansion" (it was alwayscalled so) had cost, was known. There may have existed Pueblo Indianswho had heard rumours of the price of it. All the shop-keepers andfarmers in the United States had read newspaper descriptions of itsfurnishings and knew the value of the brocade which hung in the bedroomsand boudoirs of the Misses Vanderpoel. It was a fact much cherished thatMiss Rosalie's bath was of Carrara marble, and to good souls activelyengaged in doing their own washing in small New England or Westerntowns, it was a distinct luxury to be aware that the water in theCarrara marble bath was perfumed with Florentine Iris. Circumstancessuch as these seemed to become personal possessions and even to lightensomewhat the burden of toil. 

Rosalie Vanderpoel married an Englishman of title, and part of thestory of her married life forms my prologue. Hers was of the earlyinternational marriages, and the republican mind had not yet adjusteditself to all that such alliances might imply. It was yet ingenuous, imaginative and confiding in such matters. A baronetcy and a manor housereigning over an old English village and over villagers in possiblesmock frocks, presented elements of picturesque dignity to people whoseintimacy with such allurements had been limited by the novels of Mrs. Oliphant and other writers. The most ordinary little anecdotes in whichvicarages, gamekeepers, and dowagers figured, were exciting in theseearly days. "Sir Nigel Anstruthers, " when engraved upon a visiting card, wore an air of distinction almost startling. Sir Nigel himself wasnot as picturesque as his name, though he was not entirely withoutattraction, when for reasons of his own he chose to aim at agreeablenessof bearing. He was a man with a good figure and a good voice, and butfor a heaviness of feature the result of objectionable living, mighthave given the impression of being better looking than he really was. New York laid amused and at the same time, charmed stress upon the factthat he spoke with an "English accent. " His enunciation was in factclear cut and treated its vowels well. He was a man who observed with anair of accustomed punctiliousness such social rules and courtesies as hedeemed it expedient to consider. An astute worldling had remarked thathe was at once more ceremonious and more casual in his manner than menbred in America. 

"If you invite him to dinner, " the wording said, "or if you die, or marry, or meet with an accident, his notes of condolence orcongratulation are prompt and civil, but the actual truth is that hecares nothing whatever about you or your relations, and if you don'tplease him he does not hesitate to sulk or be astonishingly rude, whichlast an American does not allow himself to be, as a rule. "

By many people Sir Nigel was not analysed, but accepted. He was of theearly English who came to New York, and was a novelty of interest, withhis background of Manor House and village and old family name. He wasvery much talked of at vivacious ladies' luncheon parties, he was verymuch talked to at equally vivacious afternoon teas. At dinner parties hewas furtively watched a good deal, but after dinner when he sat withthe men over their wine, he was not popular. He was not perhaps exactlydisliked, but men whose chief interest at that period lay in stocksand railroads, did not find conversation easy with a man whose soleoccupation had been the shooting of birds and the hunting of foxes, when he was not absolutely loitering about London, with his time on hishands. The stories he told--and they were few--were chiefly anecdoteswhose points gained their humour by the fact that a man was a comicallybad shot or bad rider and either peppered a gamekeeper or was throwninto a ditch when his horse went over a hedge, and such relationsdid not increase in the poignancy of their interest by being filteredthrough brains accustomed to applying their powers to problems ofspeculation and commerce. He was not so dull but that he perceivedthis at an early stage of his visit to New York, which was probably thereason of the infrequency of his stories. 

He on his side was naturally not quick to rise to the humour of a "bigdeal" or a big blunder made on Wall Street--or to the wit of jokesconcerning them. Upon the whole he would have been glad to haveunderstood such matters more clearly. His circumstances were such ashad at last forced him to contemplate the world of money-makers withsomething of an annoyed respect. "These fellows" who had neithertitles nor estates to keep up could make money. He, as he acknowledgeddisgustedly to himself, was much worse than a beggar. There was StornhamCourt in a state of ruin--the estate going to the dogs, the farmhousestumbling to pieces and he, so to speak, without a sixpence to blesshimself with, and head over heels in debt. Englishmen of the rank whichin bygone times had not associated itself with trade had begun at leastto trifle with it--to consider its potentialities as factors possiblyto be made useful by the aristocracy. Countesses had not yet spiritedlyopened milliners' shops, nor belted Earls adorned the stage, but certainnoblemen had dallied with beer and coquetted with stocks. One ofthe first commercial developments had been the discovery ofAmerica--particularly of New York--as a place where if one could make upone's mind to the plunge, one might marry one's sons profitably. Atthe outset it presented a field so promising as to lead to rashness andindiscretion on the part of persons not given to analysis of characterand in consequence relying too serenely upon an ingenuousness whichrather speedily revealed that it had its limits. Ingenuousness combiningitself with remarkable alertness of perception on occasion, israther American than English, and is, therefore, to the English mind, misleading. 

At first younger sons, who "gave trouble" to their families, were sentout. Their names, their backgrounds of castles or manors, relatives ofdistinction, London seasons, fox hunting, Buckingham Palace and GoodwoodRaces, formed a picturesque allurement. That the castles and manorswould belong to their elder brothers, that the relatives of distinctiondid not encourage intimacy with swarms of the younger branches of theirfamilies; that London seasons, hunting, and racing were for their eldersand betters, were facts not realised in all their importance by therepublican mind. In the course of time they were realised to the full, but in Rosalie Vanderpoel's nineteenth year they covered what was atthat time almost unknown territory. One may rest assured Sir NigelAnstruthers said nothing whatsoever in New York of an interview he hadhad before sailing with an intensely disagreeable great-aunt, who wasthe wife of a Bishop. She was a horrible old woman with a broad face, blunt features and a raucous voice, whose tones added acridity toher observations when she was indulging in her favourite pastime ofinterfering with the business of her acquaintances and relations. 

"I do not know what you are going chasing off to America for, Nigel, "she commented. "You can't afford it and it is perfectly ridiculous ofyou to take it upon yourself to travel for pleasure as if you were a manof means instead of being in such a state of pocket that Maria tells meyou cannot pay your tailor. Neither the Bishop nor I can do anythingfor you and I hope you don't expect it. All I can hope is that you knowyourself what you are going to America in search of, and that it issomething more practical than buffaloes. You had better stop in NewYork. Those big shopkeepers' daughters are enormously rich, they say, and they are immensely pleased by attentions from men of your class. They say they'll marry anything if it has an aunt or a grandmother witha title. You can mention the Marchioness, you know. You need not referto the fact that she thought your father a blackguard and your mother aninterloper, and that you have never been invited to Broadmere since youwere born. You can refer casually to me and to the Bishop and to thePalace, too. A Palace--even a Bishop's--ought to go a long way withAmericans. They will think it is something royal. " She ended her remarkswith one of her most insulting snorts of laughter, and Sir Nigel becamedark red and looked as if he would like to knock her down. 

It was not, however, her sentiments which were particularly revolting tohim. If she had expressed them in a manner more flattering to himself hewould have felt that there was a good deal to be said for them. Infact, he had put the same thing to himself some time previously, and, insumming up the American matter, had reached certain thrifty decisions. The impulse to knock her down surged within him solely because he had abrutally bad temper when his vanity was insulted, and he was furious ather impudence in speaking to him as if he were a villager out of workwhom she was at liberty to bully and lecture. 

"For a woman who is supposed to have been born of gentle people, " hesaid to his mother afterwards, "Aunt Marian is the most vulgar old beastI have ever beheld. She has the taste of a female costermonger. " Whichwas entirely true, but it might be added that his own was no better andhis points of view and morals wholly coincided with his taste. 

Naturally Rosalie Vanderpoel knew nothing of this side of the matter. She had been a petted, butterfly child, who had been pretty and admiredand indulged from her infancy; she had grown up into a petted, butterflygirl, pretty and admired and surrounded by inordinate luxury. Her worldhad been made up of good-natured, lavish friends and relations, whoenjoyed themselves and felt a delight in her girlish toilettes andtriumphs. She had spent her one season of belledom in being whirled fromfestivity to festivity, in dancing in rooms festooned with thousands ofdollars' worth of flowers, in lunching or dining at tables loaded withroses and violets and orchids, from which ballrooms or feasts she hadborne away wonderful "favours" and gifts, whose prices, being recordedin the newspapers, caused a thrill of delight or envy to pass over theland. She was a slim little creature, with quantities of light featheryhair like a French doll's. She had small hands and small feet and asmall waist--a small brain also, it must be admitted, but she was aninnocent, sweet-tempered girl with a childlike simpleness of mind. In fine, she was exactly the girl to find Sir Nigel's domineeringtemperament at once imposing and attractive, so long as it was cloakedby the ceremonies of external good breeding. 

Her sister Bettina, who was still a child, was of a stronger and lesssusceptible nature. Betty--at eight--had long legs and a square butdelicate small face. Her well-opened steel-blue eyes were noticeablefor rather extravagant ink-black lashes and a straight young starewhich seemed to accuse if not to condemn. She was being educated ata ruinously expensive school with a number of other inordinately richlittle girls, who were all too wonderfully dressed and too lavishlysupplied with pocket money. The school considered itself especiallyrefined and select, but was in fact interestingly vulgar. 

The inordinately rich little girls, who had most of them pretty andspiritual or pretty and piquant faces, ate a great many bon bons andchattered a great deal in high unmodulated voices about the partiestheir sisters and other relatives went to and the dresses they wore. Some of them were nice little souls, who in the future would emerge fromtheir chrysalis state enchanting women, but they used colloquialismsfreely, and had an ingenuous habit of referring to the prices ofthings. Bettina Vanderpoel, who was the richest and cleverest and mostpromisingly handsome among them, was colloquial to slanginess, but shehad a deep, mellow, child voice and an amazing carriage. 

She could not endure Sir Nigel Anstruthers, and, being an Americanchild, did not hesitate to express herself with force, if with somecrudeness. "He's a hateful thing, " she said, "I loathe him. He's stuckup and he thinks you are afraid of him and he likes it. "

Sir Nigel had known only English children, little girls who lived inthat discreet corner of their parents' town or country houses knownas "the schoolroom, " apparently emerging only for daily walks withgovernesses; girls with long hair and boys in little high hats and withfaces which seemed curiously made to match them. Both boys and girlswere decently kept out of the way and not in the least dwelt on exceptwhen brought out for inspection during the holidays and taken to thepantomime. 

Sir Nigel had not realised that an American child was an absolute factorto be counted with, and a "youngster" who entered the drawing-room whenshe chose and joined fearlessly in adult conversation was an element heconsidered annoying. It was quite true that Bettina talked too muchand too readily at times, but it had not been explained to her thatthe opinions of eight years are not always of absorbing interest to themature. It was also true that Sir Nigel was a great fool for interferingwith what was clearly no affair of his in such a manner as would havemade him an enemy even had not the child's instinct arrayed her againsthim at the outset. 

"You American youngsters are too cheeky, " he said on one of theoccasions when Betty had talked too much. "If you were my sister andlived at Stornham Court, you would be learning lessons in the schoolroomand wearing a pinafore. Nobody ever saw my sister Emily when she wasyour age. "

"Well, I'm not your sister Emily, " retorted Betty, "and I guess I'm gladof it. "

It was rather impudent of her, but it must be confessed that she wasnot infrequently rather impudent in a rude little-girl way, but she wasserenely unconscious of the fact. 

Sir Nigel flushed darkly and laughed a short, unpleasant laugh. If shehad been his sister Emily she would have fared ill at the moment, forhis villainous temper would have got the better of him. 

"I 'guess' that I may be congratulated too, " he sneered. 

"If I was going to be anybody's sister Emily, " said Betty, excited alittle by the sense of the fray, "I shouldn't want to be yours. "

"Now Betty, don't be hateful, " interposed Rosalie, laughing, and herlaugh was nervous. "There's Mina Thalberg coming up the front steps. Goand meet her. "

Rosalie, poor girl, always found herself nervous when Sir Nigel andBetty were in the room together. She instinctively recognised theirantagonism and was afraid Betty would do something an English baronetwould think vulgar. Her simple brain could not have explained to herwhy it was that she knew Sir Nigel often thought New Yorkers vulgar. Shewas, however, quite aware of this but imperfectly concealed fact, andfelt a timid desire to be explanatory. 

When Bettina marched out of the room with her extraordinary carriagefinely manifest, Rosy's little laugh was propitiatory. 

"You mustn't mind her, " she said. "She's a real splendid little thing, but she's got a quick temper. It's all over in a minute. "

"They wouldn't stand that sort of thing in England, " said Sir Nigel. "She's deucedly spoiled, you know. "

He detested the child. He disliked all children, but this one awakenedin him more than mere dislike. The fact was that though Betty herselfwas wholly unconscious of the subtle truth, the as yet undevelopedintellect which later made her a brilliant and captivating personality, vaguely saw him as he was, an unscrupulous, sordid brute, as remorselessan adventurer and swindler in his special line, as if he had beenengaged in drawing false cheques and arranging huge jewel robberies, instead of planning to entrap into a disadvantageous marriage a girlwhose gentleness and fortune could be used by a blackguard of reputablename. The man was cold-blooded enough to see that her gentle weaknesswas of value because it could be bullied, her money was to be counted onbecause it could be spent on himself and his degenerate vices and on hisracked and ruined name and estate, which must be rebuilt and restockedat an early date by someone or other, lest they tumbled into ignominiouscollapse which could not be concealed. Bettina of the accusing eyes didnot know that in the depth of her yet crude young being, instinct wassumming up for her the potentialities of an unusually fine specimen ofthe British blackguard, but this was nevertheless the interesting truth. When later she was told that her sister had become engaged to SirNigel Anstruthers, a flame of colour flashed over her face, she staredsilently a moment, then bit her lip and burst into tears. 

"Well, Bett, " exclaimed Rosalie, "you are the queerest thing I eversaw. "

Bettina's tears were an outburst, not a flow. She swept them awaypassionately with her small handkerchief. 

"He'll do something awful to you, " she said. "He'll nearly kill you. Iknow he will. I'd rather be dead myself. "

She dashed out of the room, and could never be induced to say a wordfurther about the matter. She would indeed have found it impossible toexpress her intense antipathy and sense of impending calamity. She hadnot the phrases to make herself clear even to herself, and after allwhat controlling effort can one produce when one is only eight yearsold?

CHAPTER II

A LACK OF PERCEPTION

Mercantile as Americans were proclaimed to be, the opinion of SirNigel Anstruthers was that they were, on some points, singularlyunbusinesslike. In the perfectly obvious and simple matter of thesettlement of his daughter's fortune, he had felt that Reuben Vanderpoelwas obtuse to the point of idiocy. He seemed to have none of theordinary points of view. Naturally there was to Anstruthers' mind butone point of view to take. A man of birth and rank, he argued, does notcareer across the Atlantic to marry a New York millionaire's daughterunless he anticipates deriving some advantage from the alliance. Sucha man--being of Anstruthers' type--would not have married a rich womaneven in his own country with out making sure that advantages were toaccrue to himself as a result of the union. "In England, " to use hisown words, "there was no nonsense about it. " Women's fortunes as well asthemselves belonged to their husbands, and a man who was master in hisown house could make his wife do as he chose. He had seen girls withmoney managed very satisfactorily by fellows who held a tight rein, andwere not moved by tears, and did not allow talking to relations. Ifhe had been desirous of marrying and could have afforded to take apenniless wife, there were hundreds of portionless girls ready to thankGod for a decent chance to settle themselves for life, and one need notstir out of one's native land to find them. 

But Sir Nigel had not in the least desired to saddle himself with adomestic encumbrance, in fact nothing would have induced him to considerthe step if he had not been driven hard by circumstances. His fortuneshad reached a stage where money must be forthcoming somehow--fromsomewhere. He and his mother had been living from hand to mouth, so tospeak, for years, and they had also been obliged to keep up appearances, which is sometimes embittering even to persons of amiable tempers. LadyAnstruthers, it is true, had lived in the country in as niggardlya manner as possible. She had narrowed her existence to absoluteprivation, presenting at the same time a stern, bold front to thepersons who saw her, to the insufficient staff of servants, to thevillage to the vicar and his wife, and the few far-distant neighbourswho perhaps once a year drove miles to call or leave a card. She was anold woman sufficiently unattractive to find no difficulty in the wayof limiting her acquaintances. The unprepossessing wardrobe she hadgathered in the passing years was remade again and again by the villagedressmaker. She wore dingy old silk gowns and appalling bonnets, andmantles dripping with rusty fringes and bugle beads, but these mitigatednot in the least the unflinching arrogance of her bearing, or thesimple, intolerant rudeness which she considered proper and becomingin persons like herself. She did not of course allow that there existedmany persons like herself. 

That society rejoiced in this fact was but the stamp of its inferiorityand folly. While she pinched herself and harried her few hirelings atStornham it was necessary for Sir Nigel to show himself in town andpresent as decent an appearance as possible. His vanity was far tooarrogant to allow of his permitting himself to drop out of the world towhich he could not afford to belong. That he should have been forgottenor ignored would have been intolerable to him. For a few years he wasinvited to dine at good houses, and got shooting and hunting as partof the hospitality of his acquaintances. But a man who cannot afford toreturn hospitalities will find that he need not expect to avail himselfof those of his acquaintances to the end of his career unless he is anextremely engaging person. Sir Nigel Anstruthers was not an engagingperson. He never gave a thought to the comfort or interest of any otherhuman being than himself. He was also dominated by the kind of nastytemper which so reveals itself when let loose that its owner cannotcontrol it even when it would be distinctly to his advantage to do so. 

Finding that he had nothing to give in return for what he took as if itwere his right, society gradually began to cease to retain any livelyrecollection of his existence. The tradespeople he had borne himselfloftily towards awakened to the fact that he was the kind of man it wasat once safe and wise to dun, and therefore proceeded to make his lifea burden to him. At his clubs he had never been a member surrounded andrejoiced over when he made his appearance. The time came when he beganto fancy that he was rather edged away from, and he endeavoured tosustain his dignity by being sulky and making caustic speeches when hewas approached. Driven occasionally down to Stornham by actual pressureof circumstances, he found the outlook there more embittering still. 

Lady Anstruthers laid the bareness of the land before him without anyeffort to palliate unpleasantness. If he chose to stalk about and lookglum, she could sit still and call his attention to revolting truthswhich he could not deny. She could point out to him that he had nomoney, and that tenants would not stay in houses which were tumbling topieces, and work land which had been starved. She could tell him justhow long a time had elapsed since wages had been paid and accountscleared off. And she had an engaging, unbiassed way of seeming to drivethese maddening details home by the mere manner of her statement. 

"You make the whole thing as damned disagreeable as you can, " Nigelwould snarl. 

"I merely state facts, " she would reply with acrid serenity. 

A man who cannot keep up his estate, pay his tailor or the rent of hislodgings in town, is in a strait which may drive him to desperation. Sir Nigel Anstruthers borrowed some money, went to New York and made hissuit to nice little silly Rosalie Vanderpoel. 

But the whole thing was unexpectedly disappointing and surrounded byirritating circumstances. He found himself face to face with a state ofaffairs such as he had not contemplated. In England when a man married, certain practical matters could be inquired into and arranged bysolicitors, the amount of the prospective bride's fortune, theallowances and settlements to be made, the position of the bridegroomwith regard to pecuniary matters. To put it simply, a man found outwhere he stood and what he was to gain. But, at first to his sardonicentertainment and later to his disgusted annoyance, Sir Nigel graduallydiscovered that in the matter of marriage, Americans had an ingenuoustendency to believe in the sentimental feelings of the partiesconcerned. The general impression seemed to be that a man married purelyfor love, and that delicacy would make it impossible for him to askquestions as to what his bride's parents were in a position to handover to him as a sort of indemnity for the loss of his bachelor freedom. Anstruthers began to discover this fact before he had been many weeksin New York. He reached the realisation of its existence by processes ofexclusion and inclusion, by hearing casual remarks people let drop, byasking roundabout and careful questions, by leading both men and womento the innocent expounding of certain points of view. Millionaires, itappeared, did not expect to make allowances to men who married theirdaughters; young women, it transpired, did not in the least realise thata man should be liberally endowed in payment for assuming the dutiesof a husband. If rich fathers made allowances, they made them to theirdaughters themselves, who disposed of them as they pleased. In thiscase, of course, Sir Nigel privately argued with fine acumen, it becamethe husband's business to see that what his wife pleased should be whatmost agreeably coincided with his own views and conveniences. 

His most illuminating experience had been the hearing of some men, hard-headed, rich stockbrokers with a vulgar sense of humour, enjoyingthemselves quite uproariously one night at a club, over a story oneof them was relating of an unsatisfactory German son-in-law who haddemanded an income. He was a man of small title, who had married thenarrator's daughter, and after some months spent in his father-in-law'shouse, had felt it but proper that his financial position should be puton a practical footing. 

"He brought her back after the bridal tour to make us a visit, " said thestoryteller, a sharp-featured man with a quaint wry mouth, which seemedto express a perpetual, repressed appreciation of passing events. "I hadnothing to say against that, because we were all glad to see her homeand her mother had been missing her. But weeks passed and months passedand there was no mention made of them going over to settle in theSlosh we'd heard so much of, and in time it came out that the Sloshthing"--Anstruthers realised with gall in his soul that the "brute, "as he called him, meant "Schloss, " and that his mispronunciation wasat once a matter of humour and derision--"wasn't his at all. It was hiselder brother's. The whole lot of them were counts and not one of themseemed to own a dime. The Slosh count hadn't more than twenty-five centsand he wasn't the kind to deal any of it out to his family. So Lily'scount would have to go clerking in a dry goods store, if he promised tosupport himself. But he didn't propose to do it. He thought he'd got onto a soft thing. Of course we're an easy-going lot and we should havestood him if he'd been a nice fellow. But he wasn't. Lily's mother usedto find her crying in her bedroom and it came out by degrees that it wasbecause Adolf had been quarrelling with her and saying sneering thingsabout her family. When her mother talked to him he was insulting. Thenbills began to come in and Lily was expected to get me to pay them. Andthey were not the kind of bills a decent fellow calls on another man topay. But I did it five or six times to make it easy for her. I didn'ttell her that they gave an older chap than himself sidelights on thesituation. But that didn't work well. He thought I did it because I hadto, and he began to feel free and easy about it, and didn't try to coverup his tracks so much when he sent in a new lot. He was always workingLily. He began to consider himself master of the house. He intimatedthat a private carriage ought to be kept for them. He said it wasbeggarly that he should have to consider the rest of the family when hewanted to go out. When I got on to the situation, I began to enjoy it. I let him spread himself for a while just to see what he would do. GoodLord! I couldn't have believed that any fellow could have thought anyother fellow could be such a fool as he thought I was. He went perfectlycrazy after a month or so and ordered me about and patronised me as if Iwas a bootblack he meant to teach something to. So at last I had a talkwith Lily and told her I was going to put an end to it. Of course shecried and was half frightened to death, but by that time he had ill-usedher so that she only wanted to get rid of him. So I sent for him and hada talk with him in my office. I led him on to saying all he had on hismind. He explained to me what a condescension it was for a man likehimself to marry a girl like Lily. He made a dignified, touching pictureof all the disadvantages of such an alliance and all the advantages theyought to bring in exchange to the man who bore up under them. I rubbedmy head and looked worried every now and then and cleared my throatapologetically just to warm him up. I can tell you that fellow felthappy, downright happy when he saw how humbly I listened to him. Hepositively swelled up with hope and comfort. He thought I was going toturn out well, real well. I was going to pay up just as a vulgar NewYork father-in-law ought to do, and thank God for the blessed privilege. Why, he was real eloquent about his blood and his ancestors and thehoary-headed Slosh. So when he'd finished, I cleared my throat ina nervous, ingratiating kind of way again and I asked him kind ofanxiously what he thought would be the proper thing for a base-born NewYork millionaire to do under the circumstances--what he would approve ofhimself. "

Sir Nigel was disgusted to see the narrator twist his mouth into asweet, shrewd, repressed grin even as he expectorated into the nearestreceptacle. The grin was greeted by a shout of laughter from hiscompanions. 

"What did he say, Stebbins?" someone cried. 

"He said, " explained Mr. Stebbins deliberately, "he said that anallowance was the proper thing. He said that a man of his rank must haveresources, and that it wasn't dignified for him to have to ask his wifeor his wife's father for money when he wanted it. He said an allowancewas what he felt he had a right to expect. And then he twisted hismoustache and said, 'what proposition' did I make--what would I allowhim?"

The storyteller's hearers evidently knew him well. Their laughter waslouder than before. 

"Let's hear the rest, Joe! Let's hear it!"

"Well, " replied Mr. Stebbins almost thoughtfully, "I just got up andsaid, 'Well, it won't take long for me to answer that. I've alwaysbeen fond of my children, and Lily is rather my pet. She's always hadeverything she wanted, and she always shall. She's a good girl and shedeserves it. I'll allow you----" The significant deliberation of hisdrawl could scarcely be described. "I'll allow you just five minutes toget out of this room, before I kick you out, and if I kick you out ofthe room, I'll kick you down the stairs, and if I kick you down thestairs, I shall have got my blood comfortably warmed up and I'll kickyou down the street and round the block and down to Hoboken, becauseyou're going to take the steamer there and go back to the place you camefrom, to the Slosh thing or whatever you call it. We haven't a damnedbit of use for you here. ' And believe it or not, gentlemen----" lookinground with the wry-mouthed smile, "he took that passage and back hewent. And Lily's living with her mother and I mean to hold on to her. "

Sir Nigel got up and left the club when the story was finished. He tooka long walk down Broadway, gnawing his lip and holding his head in theair. He used blasphemous language at intervals in a low voice. Some ofit was addressed to his fate and some of it to the vulgar mercantilecoarseness and obtuseness of other people. 

"They don't know what they are talking of, " he said. "It is unheard of. What do they expect? I never thought of this. Damn it! I'm like a rat ina trap. "

It was plain enough that he could not arrange his fortune as he hadanticipated when he decided to begin to make love to little pink andwhite, doll-faced Rosy Vanderpoel. If he began to demand monetaryadvantages in his dealing with his future wife's people in theirsettlement of her fortune, he might arouse suspicion and inquiry. Hedid not want inquiry either in connection with his own means or his pastmanner of living. People who hated him would be sure to crop up withstories of things better left alone. There were always meddling foolsready to interfere. 

His walk was long and full of savage thinking. Once or twice as herealised what the disinterestedness of his sentiments was supposed tobe, a short laugh broke from him which was rather like the snort of theBishopess. 

"I am supposed to be moonstruck over a simpering Americanchit--moonstruck! Damn!" But when he returned to his hotel he had madeup his mind and was beginning to look over the situation in evil coldblood. Matters must be settled without delay and he was shrewd enough torealise that with his temper and its varied resources a timid girlwould not be difficult to manage. He had seen at an early stage of theiracquaintance that Rosy was greatly impressed by the superiority ofhis bearing, that he could make her blush with embarrassment when heconveyed to her that she had made a mistake, that he could chill hermiserably when he chose to assume a lofty stiffness. A man's domesticarmoury was filled with weapons if he could make a woman feel gauche, inexperienced, in the wrong. When he was safely married, he could pavethe way to what he felt was the only practical and feasible end. 

If he had been marrying a woman with more brains, she would be moredifficult to subdue, but with Rosalie Vanderpoel, processes werenot necessary. If you shocked, bewildered or frightened her withaccusations, sulks, or sneers, her light, innocent head was set in sucha whirl that the rest was easy. It was possible, upon the whole, thatthe thing might not turn out so infernally ill after all. Supposing thatit had been Bettina who had been the marriageable one! Appreciating tothe full the many reasons for rejoicing that she had not been, he walkedin gloomy reflection home. 

CHAPTER III

YOUNG LADY ANSTRUTHERS

When the marriage took place the event was accompanied by an ingenuouslyelate flourish of trumpets. Miss Vanderpoel's frocks were multitudinousand wonderful, as also her jewels purchased at Tiffany's. She carrieda thousand trunks--more or less--across the Atlantic. When the shipsteamed away from the dock, the wharf was like a flower garden in theblaze of brilliant and delicate attire worn by the bevy of relatives andintimates who stood waving their handkerchiefs and laughingly callingout farewell good wishes. 

Sir Nigel's mental attitude was not a sympathetic or admiring one ashe stood by his bride's side looking back. If Rosy's half happy, half tearful excitement had left her the leisure to reflect on hisexpression, she would not have felt it encouraging. 

"What a deuce of a row Americans make, " he said even before they wereout of hearing of the voices. "It will be a positive rest to be in acountry where the women do not cackle and shriek with laughter. "

He said it with that simple rudeness which at times professed to bealmost impersonal, and which Rosalie had usually tried to believe wasthe outcome of a kind of cool British humour. But this time she starteda little at his words. 

"I suppose we do make more noise than English people, " she admitteda second or so later. "I wonder why?" And without waiting for ananswer--somewhat as if she had not expected or quite wanted one--sheleaned a little farther over the side to look back, waving her small, fluttering handkerchief to the many still in tumult on the wharf. Shewas not perceptive or quick enough to take offence, to realise that theremark was significant and that Sir Nigel had already begun as he meantto go on. It was far from being his intention to play the part of anAmerican husband, who was plainly a creature in whom no authority vesteditself. Americans let their women say and do anything, and were capableof fetching and carrying for them. He had seen a man run upstairs forhis wife's wrap, cheerfully, without the least apparent sense thatthe service was the part of a footman if there was one in the house, aparlour maid if there was not. Sir Nigel had been brought up in the goodEarly Victorian days when "a nice little woman to fetch your slippersfor you" figured in certain circles as domestic bliss. Girls wereeducated to fetch slippers as retrievers were trained to go into thewater after sticks, and terriers to bring back balls thrown for them. 

The new Lady Anstruthers had, it supervened, several opportunities toobtain a new view of her bridegroom's character before their voyageacross the Atlantic was over. At this period of the slower and morecumbrous weaving of the Shuttle, the world had not yet awakened even tothe possibilities of the ocean greyhound. An Atlantic voyage at timeswas capable of offering to a bride and bridegroom days enough to beginto glance into their future with a premonition of the waning of thehoneymoon, at least, and especially if they were not sea-proof, to wishwearily that the first half of it were over. Rosalie was not weary, butshe began to be bewildered. As she had never been a clever girl or quickto perceive, and had spent her life among women-indulging American men, she was not prepared with any precedent which made her situation clear. The first time Sir Nigel showed his temper to her she simply stared athim, her eyes looking like those of a puzzled, questioning child. Thenshe broke into her nervous little laugh, because she did not know whatelse to do. At his second outbreak her stare was rather startled and shedid not laugh. 

Her first awakening was to an anxious wonderment concerning certainmoods of gloom, or what seemed to be gloom, to which he seemed prone. Asshe lay in her steamer chair he would at times march stiffly up anddown the deck, apparently aware of no other existence than his own, his features expressing a certain clouded resentment of whose veryunexplainableness she secretly stood in awe. She was not astute enough, poor girl, to leave him alone, and when with innocent questionings sheendeavoured to discover his trouble, the greatest mystification sheencountered was that he had the power to make her feel that she was insome way taking a liberty, and showing her lack of tact and perspicuity. 

"Is anything the matter, Nigel?" she asked at first, wondering if shewere guilty of silliness in trying to slip her hand into his. She wassure she had been when he answered her. 

"No, " he said chillingly. 

"I don't believe you are happy, " she returned. "Somehow you seem so--sodifferent. "

"I have reasons for being depressed, " he replied, and it was with astiff finality which struck a note of warning to her, signifying that itwould be better taste in her to put an end to her simple efforts. 

She vaguely felt herself put in the wrong, and he preferred that itshould be so. It was the best form of preparation for any mood he mightsee that it might pay him to show her in the future. He was, in fact, confronting disdainfully his position. He had her on his hands and hewas returning to his relations with no definite advantage to exhibit asthe result of having married her. She had been supplied with an incomebut he had no control over it. It would not have been so if he hadnot been in such straits that he had been afraid to risk his chance bymaking a stand. To have a wife with money, a silly, sweet temper and nowill of her own, was of course better than to be penniless, head overheels in debt and hemmed in by difficulties on every side. He had seenwomen trained to give in to anything rather than be bullied in public, to accede in the end to any demand rather than endure the shame ofa certain kind of scene made before servants, and a certain kind ofinsolence used to relatives and guests. The quality he foundmost maddeningly irritating in Rosalie was her obviously absoluteunconsciousness of the fact that it was entirely natural and proper thather resources should be in her husband's hands. He had, indeed, evenin these early days, made a tentative effort or so in the form of asuggestive speech; he had given her openings to give him an opening toput things on a practical basis, but she had never had the intelligenceto see what he was aiming at, and he had found himself almostfloundering ungracefully in his remarks, while she had looked at himwithout a sign of comprehension in her simple, anxious blue eyes. Thecreature was actually trying to understand him and could not. That wasthe worst of it, the blank wall of her unconsciousness, her childlikebelief that he was far too grand a personage to require anything. Thesewere the things he was thinking over when he walked up and down the deckin unamiable solitariness. Rosy awakened to the amazed consciousness ofthe fact that, instead of being pleased with the luxury and prettinessof her wardrobe and appointments, he seemed to dislike and disdain them. 

"You American women change your clothes too much and think too much ofthem, " was one of his first amiable criticisms. "You spend more thanwell-bred women should spend on mere dresses and bonnets. In New York italways strikes an Englishman that the women look endimanche at whatevertime of day you come across them. "

"Oh, Nigel!" cried Rosy woefully. She could not think of anything moreto say than, "Oh, Nigel!"

"I am sorry to say it is true, " he replied loftily. That she was anAmerican and a New Yorker was being impressed upon poor little LadyAnstruthers in a new way--somehow as if the mere cold statement of thefact put a fine edge of sarcasm to any remark. She was of too innocent aloyalty to wish that she was neither the one nor the other, but she didwish that Nigel was not so prejudiced against the places and people shecared for so much. 

She was sitting in her stateroom enfolded in a dressing gown coveredwith cascades of lace, tied with knots of embroidered ribbon, and hermaid, Hannah, who admired her greatly, was brushing her fair long hairwith a gold-backed brush, ornamented with a monogram of jewels. 

If she had been a French duchess of a piquant type, or an English onewith an aquiline nose, she would have been beyond criticism; if she hadbeen a plump, over-fed woman, or an ugly, ill-natured, gross one, shewould have looked vulgar, but she was a little, thin, fair NewYorker, and though she was not beyond criticism--if one demanded highdistinction--she was pretty and nice to look at. But Nigel Anstrutherswould not allow this to her. His own tailors' bills being far inarrears and his pocket disgustingly empty, the sight of her ingenuoussumptuousness and the gay, accustomed simpleness of outlook with whichshe accepted it as her natural right, irritated him and roused hisvenom. Bills would remain unpaid if she was permitted to spend her moneyon this sort of thing without any consideration for the requirements ofother people. 

He inhaled the air and made a gesture of distaste. 

"This sachet business is rather overpowering, " he said. "It is the sortof thing a woman should be particularly discreet about. "

"Oh, Nigel!" cried the poor girl agitatedly. "Hannah, do go and callthe steward to open the windows. Is it really strong?" she implored asHannah went out. "How dreadful. It's only orris and I didn't know Hannahhad put it in the trunks. "

"My dear Rosalie, " with a wave of the hand taking in both herself andher dressing case, "it is all too strong. "

"All--wh--what?" gaspingly. 

"The whole thing. All that lace and love knot arrangement, thegold-backed brushes and scent bottles with diamonds and rubies stickingin them. "

"They--they were wedding presents. They came from Tiffany's. Everyonethought them lovely. "

"They look as if they belonged to the dressing table of a French womanof the demi-monde. I feel as if I had actually walked into the apartmentof some notorious Parisian soubrette. "

Rosalie Vanderpoel was a clean-minded little person, her people were ofthe clean-minded type, therefore she did not understand all that thisironic speech implied, but she gathered enough of its significance tocause her to turn first red and then pale and then to burst into tears. She was crying and trying to conceal the fact when Hannah returned. She bent her head and touched her eyes furtively while her toilette wascompleted. 

Sir Nigel had retired from the scene, but he had done so feeling that hehad planted a seed and bestowed a practical lesson. He had, it is true, bestowed one, but again she had not understood its significance and wasonly left bewildered and unhappy. She began to be nervous and uncertainabout herself and about his moods and points of view. She had never beenmade to feel so at home. Everyone had been kind to her and lenient toher lack of brilliancy. No one had expected her to be brilliant, and shehad been quite sweet-temperedly resigned to the fact that she was notthe kind of girl who shone either in society or elsewhere. She did notresent the fact that she knew people said of her, "She isn't in theleast bit bright, Rosy Vanderpoel, but she's a nice, sweet littlething. " She had tried to be nice and sweet and had aspired to nothinghigher. 

But now that seemed so much less than enough. Perhaps Nigel ought tohave married one of the clever ones, someone who would have known how tounderstand him and who would have been more entertaining than she couldbe. Perhaps she was beginning to bore him, perhaps he was finding herout and beginning to get tired. At this point the always too readytears would rise to her eyes and she would be overwhelmed by a sense ofhomesickness. Often she cried herself silently to sleep, longing forher mother--her nice, comfortable, ordinary mother, whom she had severaltimes felt Nigel had some difficulty in being unreservedly politeto--though he had been polite on the surface. 

By the time they landed she had been living under so much strain in hereffort to seem quite unchanged, that she had lost her nerve. She did notfeel well and was sometimes afraid that she might do something silly andhysterical in spite of herself, begin to cry for instance when there wasreally no explanation for her doing it. But when she reached London thenovelty of everything so excited her that she thought she was going tobe better, and then she said to herself it would be proved to her thatall her fears had been nonsense. This return of hope made her quitelight-spirited, and she was almost gay in her little outbursts ofdelight and admiration as she drove about the streets with her husband. She did not know that her ingenuous ignorance of things he had known allhis life, her rapture over common monuments of history, led him to sayto himself that he felt rather as if he were taking a housemaid to see aLord Mayor's Show. 

Before going to Stornham Court they spent a few days in town. There hadbeen no intention of proclaiming their presence to the world, and theydid not do so, but unluckily certain tradesmen discovered the fact thatSir Nigel Anstruthers had returned to England with the bride he hadsecured in New York. The conclusion to be deduced from this circumstancewas that the particular moment was a good one at which to send in billsfor "acct. Rendered. " The tradesmen quite shared Anstruthers' pointof view. Their reasoning was delightfully simple and they were whollyunaware that it might have been called gross. A man over his head andears in debt naturally expected his creditors would be paid by the youngwoman who had married him. America had in these days been so littleexplored by the thrifty impecunious well-born that its ingenuoussentimentality in certain matters was by no means comprehended. 

By each post Sir Nigel received numerous bills. Sometimes lettersaccompanied them, and once or twice respectful but firm male personsbrought them by hand and demanded interviews which irritated Sir Nigelextremely. Given time to arrange matters with Rosalie, to train her tosome sense of her duty, he believed that the "acct. Rendered" could bewiped off, but he saw he must have time. She was such a little fool. Again and again he was furious at the fate which had forced him to takeher. 

The truth was that Rosalie knew nothing whatever about unpaid bills. Reuben Vanderpoel's daughters had never encountered an indignanttradesman in their lives. When they went into "stores" they werereceived with unfeigned rapture. Everything was dragged forth to bedisplayed to them, attendants waited to leap forth to supply theirsmallest behest. They knew no other phase of existence than the one inwhich one could buy anything one wanted and pay any price demanded forit. 

Consequently Rosalie did not recognise signs which would have beenobviously recognisable by the initiated. If Sir Nigel Anstruthers hadbeen a nice young fellow who had loved her, and he had been honestenough to make a clean breast of his difficulties, she would have thrownherself into his arms and implored him effusively to make use of allher available funds, and if the supply had been insufficient, would haveimmediately written to her father for further donations, knowing thather appeal would be responded to at once. But Sir Nigel Anstrutherscherished no sentiment for any other individual than himself, and hehad no intention of explaining that his mere vanity had caused him tomislead her, that his rank and estate counted for nothing and that hewas in fact a pauper loaded with dishonest debts. He wanted money, buthe wanted it to be given to him as if he conferred a favour by receivingit. It must be transferred to him as though it were his by right. Whatdid a man marry for? Therefore his wife's unconsciousness that she wasinflicting outrage upon him by her mere mental attitude filled his beingwith slowly rising gall. 

Poor Rosalie went joyfully forth shopping after the manner of all newlyarrived Americans. She bought new toilettes and gewgaws and presentsfor her friends and relations in New York, and each package which wasdelivered at the hotel added to Sir Nigel's rage. 

That the little blockhead should be allowed to do what she liked withher money and that he should not be able to forbid her! This he saidto himself at intervals of five minutes through the day--which led toanother small episode. 

"You are spending a great deal of money, " he said one morning in hiscondemnatory manner. Rosalie looked up from the lace flounce whichhad just been delivered and gave the little nervous laugh, which wasbecoming entirely uncertain of propitiating. 

"Am I?" she answered. "They say all Americans spend a good deal. "

"Your money ought to be in proper hands and properly managed, " he wenton with cold precision. "If you were an English woman, your husbandwould control it. "

"Would he?" The simple, sweet-tempered obtuseness of her tone was aninfuriating thing to him. There was the usual shade of troubled surprisein her eyes as they met his. "I don't think men in America ever do that. I don't believe the nice ones want to. You see they have such a prideabout always giving things to women, and taking care of them. I believea nice American man would break stones in the street rather than takemoney from a woman--even his wife. I mean while he could work. Of courseif he was ill or had ill luck or anything like that, he wouldn't be soproud as not to take it from the person who loved him most and wantedto help him. You do sometimes hear of a man who won't work and lets hiswife support him, but it's very seldom, and they are always the low kindthat other men look down on. "

"Wanted to help him. " Sir Nigel selected the phrase and quoted itbetween puffs of the cigar he held in his fine, rather cruel-lookinghands, and his voice expressed a not too subtle sneer. "A woman is not'helping' her husband when she gives him control of her fortune. Sheis only doing her duty and accepting her proper position with regard tohim. The law used to settle the thing definitely. "

"Did-did it?" Rosy faltered weakly. She knew he was offended again andthat she was once more somehow in the wrong. So many things about herseemed to displease him, and when he was displeased he always remindedher that she was stupidly, objectionably guilty of not being an Englishwoman. 

Whatsoever it happened to be, the fault she had committed out of herdepth of ignorance, he did not forget it. It was no habit of his toendeavour to dismiss offences. He preferred to hold them in possessionas if they were treasures and to turn them over and over, in the mentalseclusion which nourishes the growth of injuries, since within itsbarriers there is no chance of their being palliated by the apologies orexplanations of the offender. 

During their journey to Stornham Court the next day he was in one of hisblack moods. Once in the railway carriage he paid small attention tohis wife, but sat rigidly reading his Times, until about midway to theirdestination he descended at a station and paid a visit to the buffet inthe small refreshment room, after which he settled himself to doze inan exceedingly unbecoming attitude, his travelling cap pulled down, his rather heavy face congested with the dark flush Rosalie had not yetlearned was due to the fact that he had hastily tossed off two or threewhiskies and sodas. Though he was never either thick of utterance orunsteady on his feet, whisky and soda formed an important factor in hisexistence. When he was annoyed or dull he at once took the necessaryprecautions against being overcome by these feelings, and the effectupon a constitutionally evil temper was to transform it into an infernalone. The night had been a bad one for Rosy. Such floods of homesicklonging had overpowered her that she had not been able to sleep. She hadrisen feeling shaky and hysterical and her nervousness had been added toby her fear that Nigel might observe her and make comment. Of courseshe told herself it was natural that he should not wish her to appear atStornham Court looking a pale, pink-nosed little fright. Her effortsto be cheerful had indeed been somewhat touching, but they had met withsmall encouragement. 

She thought the green-clothed country lovely as the train sped throughit, and a lump rose in her small throat because she knew she might havebeen so happy if she had not been so frightened and miserable. The thingwhich had been dawning upon her took clearer, more awful form. Incidentsshe had tried to explain and excuse to herself, upon all sorts offutile, simple grounds, began to loom up before her in something liketheir actual proportions. She had heard of men who had changed theirmanner towards girls after they had married them, but she did not knowthey had begun to change so soon. This was so early in the honeymoon tobe sitting in a railway carriage, in a corner remote from that occupiedby a bridegroom, who read his paper in what was obviously intentional, resentful solitude. Emily Soame's father, she remembered it against herwill, had been obliged to get a divorce for Emily after her two yearsof wretched married life. But Alfred Soames had been quite nice for sixmonths at least. It seemed as if all this must be a dream, one of thosenightmare things, in which you suddenly find yourself married tosomeone you cannot bear, and you don't know how it happened, because youyourself have had nothing to do with the matter. She felt that presentlyshe must waken with a start and find herself breathing fast, and pantingout, half laughing, half crying, "Oh, I am so glad it's not true! I amso glad it's not true!"

But this was true, and there was Nigel. And she was in a new, unexploredworld. Her little trembling hands clutched each other. The happy, lightgirlish days full of ease and friendliness and decency seemed goneforever. It was not Rosalie Vanderpoel who pressed her colourless faceagainst the glass of the window, looking out at the flying trees; it wasthe wife of Nigel Anstruthers, and suddenly, by some hideous magic, shehad been snatched from the world to which she belonged and was beingdragged by a gaoler to a prison from which she did not know how toescape. Already Nigel had managed to convey to her that in England awoman who was married could do nothing to defend herself against herhusband, and that to endeavour to do anything was the last impossibletouch of vulgar ignominy. 

The vivid realisation of the situation seized upon her like a possessionas she glanced sideways at her bridegroom and hurriedly glanced awayagain with a little hysterical shudder. New York, good-tempered, lenient, free New York, was millions of miles away and Nigel was soloathly near and--and so ugly. She had never known before that he was sougly, that his face was so heavy, his skin so thick and coarse and hisexpression so evilly ill-tempered. She was not sufficiently analyticalto be conscious that she had with one bound leaped to the appallingpoint of feeling uncontrollable physical abhorrence of the creatureto whom she was chained for life. She was terrified at finding herselfforced to combat the realisation that there were certain expressionsof his countenance which made her feel sick with repulsion. Herself-reproach also was as great as her terror. He was her husband--herhusband--and she was a wicked girl. She repeated the words to herselfagain and again, but remotely she knew that when she said, "He is myhusband, " that was the worst thing of all. 

This inward struggle was a bad preparation for any added misery, andwhen their railroad journey terminated at Stornham Station she was metby new bewilderment. 

The station itself was a rustic place where wild roses climbed down abank to meet the very train itself. The station master's cottage hadroses and clusters of lilies waving in its tiny garden. The stationmaster, a good-natured, red-faced man, came forward, baring his head, to open the railroad carriage door with his own hand. Rosy thought himdelightful and bowed and smiled sweet-temperedly to him and to hiswife and little girls, who were curtseying at the garden gate. She wassufficiently homesick to be actually grateful to them for their air ofwelcoming her. But as she smiled she glanced furtively at Nigel to seeif she was doing exactly the right thing. 

He himself was not smiling and did not unbend even when the stationmaster, who had known him from his boyhood, felt at liberty to offer adeferential welcome. 

"Happy to see you home with her ladyship, Sir Nigel, " he said; "veryhappy, if I may say so. "

Sir Nigel responded to the respectful amiability with a half-militarylifting of his right hand, accompanied by a grunt. 

"D'ye do, Wells, " he said, and strode past him to speak to the footmanwho had come from Stornham Court with the carriage. 

The new and nervous little Lady Anstruthers, who was left to trot afterher husband, smiled again at the ruddy, kind-looking fellow, this timein conscious deprecation. In the simplicity of her republican sympathywith a well-meaning fellow creature who might feel himself snubbed, she could have shaken him by the hand. She had even parted her lips toventure a word of civility when she was startled by hearing Sir Nigel'svoice raised in angry rating. 

"Damned bad management not to bring something else, " she heard. "Kind ofthing you fellows are always doing. "

She made her way to the carriage, flurried again by not knowing whethershe was doing right or wrong. Sir Nigel had given her no instructionsand she had not yet learned that when he was in a certain humour therewas equal fault in obeying or disobeying such orders as he gave. 

The carriage from the Court--not in the least a new or smartequipage--was drawn up before the entrance of the station and Sir Nigelwas in a rage because the vehicle brought for the luggage was too smallto carry it all. 

"Very sorry, Sir Nigel, " said the coachman, touching his hat two orthree times in his agitation. "Very sorry. The omnibus was a little outof order--the springs, Sir Nigel--and I thought----"

"You thought!" was the heated interruption. "What right had you tothink, damn it! You are not paid to think, you are paid to do yourwork properly. Here are a lot of damned boxes which ought to go with usand--where's your maid?" wheeling round upon his wife. 

Rosalie turned towards the woman, who was approaching from the waitingroom. 

"Hannah, " she said timorously. 

"Drop those confounded bundles, " ordered Sir Nigel, "and show James theboxes her ladyship is obliged to have this evening. Be quick about itand don't pick out half a dozen. The cart can't take them. "

Hannah looked frightened. This sort of thing was new to her, too. Sheshuffled her packages on to a seat and followed the footman to theluggage. Sir Nigel continued rating the coachman. Any form of violentself-assertion was welcome to him at any time, and when he was irritatedhe found it a distinct luxury to kick a dog or throw a boot at a cat. The springs of the omnibus, he argued, had no right to be broken whenit was known that he was coming home. His anger was only added to by thecoachman's halting endeavours in his excuses to veil a fact he knew hismaster was aware of, that everything at Stornham was more or less out oforder, and that dilapidations were the inevitable result of there beingno money to pay for repairs. The man leaned forward on his box and spokeat last in a low tone. 

"The bus has been broken some time, " he said. "It's--it's an expensivejob, Sir Nigel. Her ladyship thought it better to----" Sir Nigel turnedwhite about the mouth. 

"Hold your tongue, " he commanded, and the coachman got red in the face, saluted, biting his lips, and sat very stiff and upright on his box. 

The station master edged away uneasily and tried to look as if he werenot listening. But Rosalie could see that he could not help hearing, norcould the country people who had been passengers by the train and whowere collecting their belongings and getting into their traps. 

Lady Anstruthers was ignored and remained standing while the scenewent on. She could not help recalling the manner in which she had beeninvariably received in New York on her return from any journey, how shewas met by comfortable, merry people and taken care of at once. This wasso strange, it was so queer, so different. 

"Oh, never mind, Nigel dear, " she said at last, with innocentindiscretion. "It doesn't really matter, you know. "

Sir Nigel turned upon her a blaze of haughty indignation. 

"If you'll pardon my saying so, it does matter, " he said. "It mattersconfoundedly. Be good enough to take your place in the carriage. "

He moved to the carriage door, and not too civilly put her in. Shegasped a little for breath as she sat down. He had spoken to her as ifshe had been an impertinent servant who had taken a liberty. The poorgirl was bewildered to the verge of panic. When he had ended his tiradeand took his place beside her he wore his most haughtily intolerant air. 

"May I request that in future you will be good enough not to interferewhen I am reproving my servants, " he remarked. 

"I didn't mean to interfere, " she apologised tremulously. 

"I don't know what you meant. I only know what you did, " was hisresponse. "You American women are too fond of cutting in. An Englishmancan think for himself without his wife's assistance. "

The tears rose to her eyes. The introduction of the internationalquestion overpowered her as always. 

"Don't begin to be hysterical, " was the ameliorating tenderness withwhich he observed the two hot salt drops which fell despite her. "Ishould scarcely wish to present you to my mother bathed in tears. "

She wiped the salt drops hastily away and sat for a moment silent in thecorner of the carriage. Being wholly primitive and unanalytical, she wasashamed and began to blame herself. He was right. She must not be sillybecause she was unused to things. She ought not to be disturbed bytrifles. She must try to be nice and look cheerful. She made an effortand did no speak for a few minutes. When she had recovered herself shetried again. 

"English country is so pretty, " she said, when she thought she was quitesure that her voice would not tremble. "I do so like the hedges and thedarling little red-roofed cottages. "

It was an innocent tentative at saying something agreeable which mightpropitiate him. She was beginning to realise that she was continuallymaking efforts to propitiate him. But one of the forms of unpleasantnessmost enjoyable to him was the snubbing of any gentle effort atpalliating his mood. He condescended in this case no response whatever, but merely continued staring contemptuously before him. 

"It is so picturesque, and so unlike America, " was the pathetic littlecommonplace she ventured next. "Ain't it, Nigel?"

He turned his head slowly towards her, as if she had taken a new libertyin disturbing his meditations. 

"Wha--at?" he drawled. 

It was almost too much for her to sustain herself under. Her couragecollapsed. 

"I was only saying how pretty the cottages were, " she faltered. "Andthat there's nothing like this in America. "

"You ended your remark by adding, 'ain't it, '" her husbandcondescended. "There is nothing like that in England. I shall ask you todo me the favour of leaving Americanisms out of your conversation whenyou are in the society of English ladies and gentlemen. It won't do. "

"I didn't know I said it, " Rosy answered feebly. 

"That is the difficulty, " was his response. "You never know, buteducated people do. "

There was nothing more to be said, at least for a girl who had neverknown what it was to be bullied. This one felt like a beggar or ascullery maid, who, being rated by her master, had not the refuge ofbeing able to "give warning. " She could never give warning. The AtlanticOcean was between her and those who had loved and protected her allher short life, and the carriage was bearing her onwards to the home inwhich she was to live alone as this man's companion to the end of herexistence. 

She made no further propitiatory efforts, but sat and stared in simpleblankness at the country, which seemed to increase in loveliness at eachnew point of view. Sometimes she saw sweet wooded, rolling lands madelovelier by the homely farmhouses and cottages enclosed and sheltered bythick hedges and trees; once or twice they drove past a park enfoldinga great house guarded by its huge sentinel oaks and beeches; once thecarriage passed through an adorable little village, where childrenplayed on the green and a square-towered grey church seemed to watchover the steep-roofed cottages and creeper-covered vicarage. If she hadbeen a happy American tourist travelling in company with impressionablefriends, she would have broken into ecstatic little exclamations ofadmiration every five minutes, but it had been driven home to her thatto her present companion, to whom nothing was new, her rapture wouldmerely represent the crudeness which had existed in contentment in abrown-stone house on a noisy thoroughfare, through a life which had beenpassed tramping up and down numbered streets and avenues. 

They approached at last a second village with a green, a grass-grownstreet and the irregular red-tiled cottages, which to the unaccustomedeye seemed rather to represent studies for sketches than absoluterealities. The bells in the church tower broke forth into a chime andpeople appeared at the doors of the cottages. The men touched theirforeheads as the carriage passed, and the children made bobbingcurtsies. Sir Nigel condescended to straighten himself a trifle in hisseat, and recognised the greetings with the stiff, half-military salute. The poor girl at his side felt that he put as little feeling as possibleinto the movement, and that if she herself had been a bowing villagershe would almost have preferred to be wholly ignored. She looked at himquestioningly. 

"Are they--must _I_?" she began. 

"Make some civil recognition, " answered Sir Nigel, as if he wereinstructing an ignorant child. "It is customary. "

So she bowed and tried to smile, and the joyous clamour of the bellsbrought the awful lump into her throat again. It reminded her ofthe ringing of the chimes at the New York church on that day of hermarriage, which had been so full of gay, luxurious bustle, so crowdedwith wedding presents, and flowers, and warm-hearted, affectionatecongratulations, and good wishes uttered in merry American voices. 

The park at Stornham Court was large and beautiful and old. The treeswere magnificent, and the broad sweep of sward and rich dip of fernydell all that the imagination could desire. The Court itself was old, and many-gabled and mellow-red and fine. Rosalie had learned from noprecedent as yet that houses of its kind may represent the apotheosisof discomfort and dilapidation within, and only become more beautifulwithout. Tumbled-down chimneys and broken tiles, being clambered over bytossing ivy, are pictures to delight the soul. 

As she descended from the carriage the girl was tremulous and uncertainof herself and much overpowered by the unbending air of the man-servantwho received her as if she were a parcel in which it was no part of hisduty to take the smallest interest. As she mounted the stone steps shecaught a glimpse of broad gloom within the threshold, a big, square, dingy hall where some other servants were drawn up in a row. She hadread of something of the sort in English novels, and she was suddenlyembarrassed afresh by her realisation of the fact that she did not knowwhat to do and that if she made a mistake Nigel would never forgive her. 

An elderly woman came out of a room opening into the hall. She was anugly woman of a rigid carriage, which, with the obvious intention ofbeing severely majestic, was only antagonistic. She had a flaccidchin, and was curiously like Nigel. She had also his expression when heintended to be disagreeable. She was the Dowager Lady Anstruthers, and being an entirely revolting old person at her best, she objectedextremely to the transatlantic bride who had made her a dowager, thoughshe was determinedly prepared to profit by any practical benefit likelyto accrue. 

"Well, Nigel, " she said in a deep voice. "Here you are at last. "

This was of course a statement not to be refuted. She held out aleathern cheek, and as Sir Nigel also presented his, their caress ofgreeting was a singular and not effusive one. 

"Is this your wife?" she asked, giving Rosalie a bony hand. And as hedid not indignantly deny this to be the fact, she added, "How do youdo?"

Rosalie murmured a reply and tried to control herself by making anothereffort to swallow the lump in her throat. But she could not swallowit. She had been keeping a desperate hold on herself too long. Thebewildered misery of her awakening, the awkwardness of the public rowat the station, the sulks which had filled the carriage to repletionthrough all the long drive, and finally the jangling bells which hadso recalled that last joyous day at home--at home--had brought her toa point where this meeting between mother and son--these two stony, unpleasant creatures exchanging a reluctant rub of uninviting cheeks--astwo savages might have rubbed noses--proved the finishing impetus tohysteria. They were so hideous, these two, and so ghastly comic andfantastic in their unresponsive glumness, that the poor girl lost allhold upon herself and broke into a trembling shriek of laughter. 

"Oh!" she gasped in terror at what she felt to be her indecent madness. "Oh! how--how----" And then seeing Nigel's furious start, his mother'sglare and all the servants' alarmed stare at her, she rushed staggeringto the only creature she felt she knew--her maid Hannah, clutched herand broke down into wild sobbing. 

"Oh, take me away!" she cried. "Oh, do! Oh, do! Oh, Hannah! Oh, mother--mother!"

"Take your mistress to her room, " commanded Sir Nigel. "Go downstairs, "he called out to the servants. "Take her upstairs at once and throwwater in her face, " to the excited Hannah. 

And as the new Lady Anstruthers was half led, half dragged, inhumiliated hysteric disorder up the staircase, he took his mother by theelbow, marched her into the nearest room and shut the door. There theystood and stared at each other, breathing quick, enraged breaths andlooking particularly alike with their heavy-featured, thick-skinned, infuriated faces. 

It was the Dowager who spoke first, and her whole voice and mannerexpressed all she intended that they should, all the derision, dislikeand scathing resignment to a grotesque fate. 

"Well, " said her ladyship. "So THIS is what you have brought home fromAmerica!"

CHAPTER IV

A MISTAKE OF THE POSTBOY'S

As the weeks passed at Stornham Court the Atlantic Ocean seemed toRosalie Anstruthers to widen endlessly, and gay, happy, noisy New Yorkto recede until it was as far away as some memory of heaven. The girlhad been born in the midst of the rattling, rumbling bustle, and ithad never struck her as assuming the character of noise; she had onlythought of it as being the cheerful confusion inseparable from town. Shehad been secretly offended and hurt when strangers said that New Yorkwas noisy and dirty; when they called it vulgar, she never whollyforgave them. She was of the New Yorkers who adore their New Yorkas Parisians adore Paris and who feel that only within its belovedboundaries can the breath of life be breathed. People were often too hotor too cold there, but there was usually plenty of bright glaring sun, and the extremes of the weather had at least something rather dramaticabout them. There were dramatic incidents connected with them, at anyrate. People fell dead of sunstroke or were frozen to death, and thenewspapers were full of anecdotes during a "cold snap" or a "torridwave, " which all made for excitement and conversation. 

But at Stornham the rain seemed to young Lady Anstruthers to descendceaselessly. The season was a wet one, and when she rose in the morningand looked out over the huge stretch of trees and sward she thought shealways saw the rain falling either in hopeless sheets or more hopelessdrizzle. The occasions upon which this was a dreary truth blotted out orblurred the exceptions, when in liquid ultramarine deeps of sky, floatedislands and mountains of snow-white fleece, of a beauty of which she hadbefore had no conception. 

In the English novels she had read, places such as Stornham Court werealways filled with "house parties, " made up of wonderful town wits andbeauties, who provided endless entertainment for each other, who playedgames, who hunted and shot pheasants and shone in dazzling amateurtheatricals. There were, however, no visitors at Stornham, and therewere in fact, no accommodations for any. There were numberless bedrooms, but none really fit for guests to occupy. Carpets and curtains wereancient and ragged, furniture was dilapidated, chimneys would not draw, beds were falling to pieces. The Dowager Lady Anstruthers had nevereither attracted desired, or been able to afford company. Her son's wifesuffered from the resulting boredom and unpopularity without being ableto comprehend the significance of the situation. 

As the weeks dragged by a few heavy carriages deposited at the Courta few callers. Some of the visitors bore imposing titles, which madeRosalie very nervous and caused her hastily to array herself to receivethem in toilettes much too pretty and delicate for the occasion. Herinnocent idea was that she must do her husband credit by appearing as"stylish" as possible. 

As a result she was stared at, either with open disfavour, or withwell-bred, furtive criticism, and was described afterwards as beingeither "very American" or "very over-dressed. " When she had lived inhuge rooms in Fifth Avenue, Rosalie had changed her attire as many timesa day as she had changed her fancy; every hour had been filled withengagements and amusements; the Vanderpoel carriages had driven upto the door and driven away again and again through the mornings andafternoons and until midnight and later. Someone was always going out orcoming in. There had been in the big handsome house not much more of anair of repose than one might expect to find at a railway station; butthe flurry, the coming and going, the calling and chatting had all beencheery, amiable. At Stornham, Rosalie sat at breakfast before unchangingboiled eggs, unfailing toast and unalterable broiled bacon, morningafter morning. Sir Nigel sat and munched over the newspapers, hismother, with an air of relentless disapproval from a lofty height ofboth her food and companions, disposed of her eggs and her rasher atRosalie's right hand. She had transferred to her daughter-in-law herpreviously occupied seat at the head of the table. This had beendone with a carefully prepared scene of intense though correctdisagreeableness, in which she had managed to convey all the rancour ofher dethroned spirit and her disapproval and disdain of internationalalliances. 

"It is of course proper that you should sit at the head of yourhusband's table, " she had said, among other agreeable things. "A womanhaving devoted her life to her son must relinquish her position to theperson he chooses to marry. If you should have a son you will giveup your position to his wife. Since Nigel has married you, he has, ofcourse, a right to expect that you will at least make an effort to learnsomething of what is required of women of your position. "

"Sit down, Rosalie, " said Nigel. "Of course you take the head of thetable, and naturally you must learn what is expected of my wife, butdon't talk confounded rubbish, mother, about devoting your life to yourson. We have seen about as little of each other as we could help. Wenever agreed. " They were both bullies and each made occasional effortsat bullying the other without any particular result. But each could atleast bully the other into intensified unpleasantness. 

The vicar's wife having made her call of ceremony upon the newLady Anstruthers, followed up the acquaintance, and found her quiteexotically unlike her mother-in-law, whose charities one may be sure hadneither been lavish nor dispensed by any hand less impressive than herown. The younger woman was of wholly malleable material. Her sympathieswere easily awakened and her purse was well filled and readily opened. Small families or large ones, newly born infants or newly buried ones, old women with "bad legs" and old men who needed comforts, equallytouched her heart. She innocently bestowed sovereigns where anEnglishwoman would have known that half-crowns would have beensufficient. As the vicaress was her almoner that lady felt herimportance rapidly on the increase. When she left a cottage saying, "I'll speak to young Lady Anstruthers about you, " the good woman of thehouse curtsied low and her husband touched his forehead respectfully. 

But this did not advance the fortunes of Sir Nigel, who personallyrequired of her very different things. Two weeks after her arrival atStornham, Rosalie began to see that somehow she was regarded as a personalmost impudently in the wrong. It appeared that if she had been anEnglish girl she would have been quite different, that she would havebeen an advantage instead of a detriment. As an American she was adetriment. That seemed to go without saying. She tried to do everythingshe was told, and learn something from each cold insinuation. She didnot know that her very amenability and timidity were her undoing. SirNigel and his mother thoroughly enjoyed themselves at her expense. Theyknew they could say anything they chose, and that at the most she wouldonly break down into crying and afterwards apologise for being so badlybehaved. If some practical, strong-minded person had been near to defendher she might have been rescued promptly and her tyrants routed. But shewas a young girl, tender of heart and weak of nature. She used to cry agreat deal when she was alone, and when she wrote to her mother she wastoo frightened to tell the truth concerning her unhappiness. 

"Oh, if I could just see some of them!" she would wail to herself. "IfI could just see mother or father or anybody from New York! Oh, I knowI shall never see New York again, or Broadway or Fifth Avenue or CentralPark--I never--never--never shall!" And she would grovel among herpillows, burying her face and half stifling herself lest her sobs shouldbe heard. Her feeling for her husband had become one of terror andrepulsion. She was almost more afraid of his patronising, affectionatemoments than she was of his temper. 

His conjugal condescensions made her feel vaguely--without knowingwhy--as if she were some lower order of little animal. 

American women, he said, had no conception of wifely duties andaffection. He had a great deal to say on the subject of wifely duty. It was part of her duty as a wife to be entirely satisfied with hissociety, and to be completely happy in the pleasure it afforded her. Itwas her wifely duty not to talk about her own family and palpitatinglyexpect letters by every American mail. He objected intensely to thisletter writing and receiving, and his mother shared his prejudices. 

"You have married an Englishman, " her ladyship said. "You have put itout of his power to marry an Englishwoman, and the least considerationyou can show is to let New York and Nine-hundredth street remain uponthe other side of the Atlantic and not insist on dragging them intoStornham Court. "

The Dowager Lady Anstruthers was very fine in her picture of her mentalcondition, when she realised, as she seemed periodically to do, that itwas no longer possible for her son to make a respectable marriage witha woman of his own nation. The unadorned fact was that both she andSir Nigel were infuriated by the simplicity which made Rosalie slow incomprehending that it was proper that the money her father allowedher should be placed in her husband's hands, and left there with noindelicate questioning. If she had been an English girl matters wouldhave been made plain to her from the first and arranged satisfactorilybefore her marriage. Sir Nigel's mother considered that he had playedthe fool, and would not believe that New York fathers were such touchy, sentimental idiots as not to know what was expected of them. 

They wasted no time, however, in coming to the point, and in a measureit was the vicaress who aided them. Not she entirely, however. 

Since her mother-in-law's first mention of a possible son whose wifewould eventually thrust her from her seat at the head of the table, Rosalie had several times heard this son referred to. It struck herthat in England such things seemed discussed with more freedom than inAmerica. She had never heard a young woman's possible family arrangedfor and made the subject of conversation in the more crude atmosphereof New York. It made her feel rather awkward at first. Then she beganto realise that the son was part of her wifely duty also; that she wasexpected to provide one, and that he was in some way expected to providefor the estate--to rehabilitate it--and that this was because herfather, being a rich man, would provide for him. It had also struck herthat in England there was a tendency to expectation that someonewould "provide" for someone else, that relatives even by marriage weresupposed to "make allowances" on which it was quite proper for otherpersons to live. Rosalie had been accustomed to a community in whicheven rich men worked, and in which young and able-bodied men would havefelt rather indignant if aunts or uncles had thought it necessary topension them off as if they had been impotent paupers. It was Rosalie'sson who was to be "provided for" in this case, and who was to "providefor" his father. 

"When you have a son, " her mother-in-law had remarked severely, "Isuppose something will be done for Nigel and the estate. "

This had been said before she had been ten days in the house, and hadset her not-too-quick brain working. She had already begun to see thatlife at Stornham Court was not the luxurious affair it was in thehouse in Fifth Avenue. Things were shabby and queer and not at allcomfortable. Fires were not lighted because a day was chilly and gloomy. She had once asked for one in her bedroom and her mother-in-law hadreproved her for indecent extravagance in a manner which took her breathaway. 

"I suppose in America you have your house at furnace heat in July, " shesaid. "Mere wastefulness and self-indulgence! That is why Americans areold women at twenty. They are shrivelled and withered by the unhealthylives they lead. Stuffing themselves with sweets and hot bread and neverbreathing the fresh air. "

Rosalie could not at the moment recall any withered and shrivelled oldwomen of twenty, but she blushed and stammered as usual. 

"It is never cold enough for fires in July, " she answered, "but we--wenever think fires extravagant when we are not comfortable without them. "

"Coal must be cheaper than it is in England, " said her ladyship. "Whenyou have a daughter, I hope you do not expect to bring her up as girlsare brought up in New York. "

This was the first time Rosalie had heard of her daughter, and she wasnot ready enough to reply. She naturally went into her room and criedagain, wondering what her father and mother would say if they knew thatbedroom fires were considered vulgarly extravagant by an impressivemember of the British aristocracy. 

She was not at all strong at the time and was given to feeling chillyand miserable on wet, windy days. She used to cry more than ever and wasso desolate that there were days when she used to go to the vicarage forcompanionship. On such days the vicar's wife would entertain her withstories of the villagers' catastrophes, and she would empty her purseupon the tea table and feel a little consoled because she was the meansof consoling someone else. 

"I suppose it gratifies your vanity to play the Lady Bountiful, " SirNigel sneered one evening, having heard in the village what she wasdoing. 

"I--never thought of such a thing, " she stammered feebly. "Mrs. Brentsaid they were so poor. "

"You throw your money about as if you were a child, " said hermother-in-law. "It is a pity it is not put in the hands of some personwith discretion. "

It had begun to dawn upon Rosalie that her ladyship was deeply convincedthat either herself or her son would be admirably discreet custodians ofthe money referred to. And even the dawning of this idea had frightenedthe girl. She was so inexperienced and ignorant that she felt it mightbe possible that in England one's husband and one's mother-in-law coulddo what they liked. It might be that they could take possession of one'smoney as they seemed to take possession of one's self and one's verysoul. She would have been very glad to give them money, and had indeedwondered frequently if she might dare to offer it to them, if they wouldbe outraged and insulted and slay her in their wrath at her purse-prouddaring. She had tried to invent ways in which she could approach thesubject, but had not been able to screw up her courage to any stickingpoint. She was so overpowered by her consciousness that they seemedcontinually to intimate that Americans with money were ostentatious andalways laying stress upon the amount of their possessions. She had noconception of the primeval simpleness of their attitude in such matters, and that no ceremonies were necessary save the process of transferringsufficiently large sums as though they were the mere right of therecipients. She was taught to understand this later. In the meantime, however, ready as she would have been to give large sums if she hadknown how, she was terrified by the thought that it might be possiblethat she could be deprived of her bank account and reduced to thecondition of a sort of dependent upon the humours of her lately acquiredrelations. She thought over this a good deal, and would have foundimmense relief if she dared have consulted anyone. But she could notmake up her mind to reveal her unhappiness to her people. She had beenmarried so recently, everybody had thought her marriage so delightful, she could not bear that her father and mother should be distressed byknowing that she was wretched. She also reflected with misery thatNew York would talk the matter over excitedly and that finally thenewspapers would get hold of the gossip. She could even imagineinterviewers calling at the house in Fifth Avenue and endeavouringto obtain particulars of the situation. Her father would be angry andrefuse to give them, but that would make no difference; the newspaperswould give them and everybody would read what they said, whether it wastrue or not. She could not possibly write facts, she thought, so herpoor little letters were restrained and unlike herself, and to thewarm-hearted souls in New York, even appearing stiff and unaffectionate, as if her aristocratic surroundings had chilled her love for them. Infact, it became far from easy for her to write at all, since Sir Nigelso disapproved of her interest in the American mail. His objections hadindeed taken the form of his feeling himself quite within his rightswhen he occasionally intercepted letters from her relations, with a viewof finding out whether they contained criticisms of himself, which wouldbetray that she had been guilty of indiscreet confidences. He discoveredthat she had not apparently been so guilty, but it was evident thatthere were moments when Mrs. Vanderpoel was uneasy and disposed to askanxious questions. When this occurred he destroyed the letters, and as aresult of this precaution on his part her motherly queries seemed to beignored, and she several times shed tears in the belief that Rosy hadgrown so patrician that she was capable of snubbing her mother inher resentment at feeling her privacy intruded upon and an unrefinedeffusiveness shown. 

"I just feel as if she was beginning not to care about us at all, Betty, " she said. "I couldn't have believed it of Rosy. She was alwayssuch an affectionate girl. "

"I don't believe it now, " replied Betty sharply. "Rosy couldn't growhateful and stuck up. It's that nasty Nigel I know it is. "

Sir Nigel's intention was that there should be as little intercoursebetween Fifth Avenue and Stornham Court as was possible. Among otherthings, he did not intend that a lot of American relations should cometumbling in when they chose to cross the Atlantic. He would not have it, and took discreet steps to prevent any accident of the sort. He wroteto America occasionally himself, and knowing well how to make himselfcivilly repellent, so subtly chilled his parents-in-law as to discouragein them more than once their half-formed plan of paying a visit to theirchild in her new home. He opened, read and reclosed all epistles toand from New York, and while Mrs. Vanderpoel was much hurt to findthat Rosalie never condescended to make any response to her tentativesconcerning her possible visit, Rosalie herself was mystified by the factthat the journey "to Europe" was never spoken of. 

"I don't see why they never seem to think of coming over, " she saidplaintively one day. "They used to talk so much about it. "

"They?" ejaculated the Dowager Lady Anstruthers. "Whom may you mean?"

"Mother and father and Betty and some of the others. "

Her mother-in-law put up her eye-glasses to stare at her. 

"The whole family?" she inquired. 

"There are not so many of them, " Rosalie answered. 

"A family is always too many to descend upon a young woman when she ismarried, " observed her ladyship unmovedly. Nigel glanced over the top ofhis Times. 

"I may as well tell you that it would not do at all, " he put in. 

"Why--why not?" exclaimed Rosalie, aghast. 

"Americans don't do in English society, " slightingly. 

"But they are coming over so much. They like London so--all Americanslike London. "

"Do they?" with a drawl which made Rosalie blush until the tears startedto her eyes. "I am afraid the sentiment is scarcely mutual. "

Rosalie turned and fled from the room. She turned and fled because sherealised that she should burst out crying if she waited to hear anotherword, and she realised that of late she seemed always to be bursting outcrying before one or the other of those two. She could not help it. Theyalways seemed to be implying something slighting or scathing. They werealways putting her in the wrong and hurting her feelings. 

The day was damp and chill, but she put on her hat and ran out into thepark. She went down the avenue and turned into a coppice. There, amongthe wet bracken, she sank down on the mossy trunk of a fallen tree andhuddled herself in a small heap, her head on her arms, actually wailing. 

"Oh, mother! Oh, mother!" she cried hysterically. "Oh, I do wish youwould come. I'm so cold, mother; I'm so ill! I can't bear it! It seemsas if you'd forgotten all about me! You're all so happy in New York thatperhaps you have forgotten--perhaps you have! Oh, don't, mother--don't!"

It was a month later that through the vicar's wife she reached adiscovery and a climax. She had heard one morning from this lady of amisfortune which had befallen a small farmer. It was a misfortune whichwas an actual catastrophe to a man in his position. His house had caughtfire during a gale of wind and the fire had spread to the outbuildingsand rickyard and swept away all his belongings, his house, hisfurniture, his hayricks, and stored grain, and even his few cows andhorses. He had been a poor, hard-working fellow, and his small insurancehad lapsed the day before the fire. He was absolutely ruined, andwith his wife and six children stood face to face with beggary andstarvation. 

Rosalie Anstruthers entered the vicarage to find the poor woman who washis companion in calamity sobbing in the hall. A child of a few weekswas in her arms, and two small creatures clung crying to her skirts. 

"We've worked hard, " she wept; "we have, ma'am. Father, he's always beensteady, an' up early an' late. P'r'aps it's the Lord's 'and, as yousay, ma'am, but we've been decent people an' never missed church when wecould 'elp it--father didn't deserve it--that he didn't. "

She was heartbroken in her downtrodden hopelessness. Rosalie literallyquaked with sympathy. She poured forth her pity in such words as thepoor woman had never heard spoken by a great lady to a humble creaturelike herself. The villagers found the new Lady Anstruthers' interviewswith them curiously simple and suggestive of an equality they couldnot understand. Stornham was a conservative old village, where thedistinction between the gentry and the peasants was clearly marked. Thecottagers were puzzled by Sir Nigel's wife, but they decided that shewas kind, if unusual. 

As Rosalie talked to the farmer's wife she longed for her father'spresence. She had remembered a time when a man in his employ had losthis all by fire, the small house he had just made his last payment uponhaving been burned to the ground. He had lost one of his children inthe fire, and the details had been heartrending. The entire Vanderpoelhousehold had wept on hearing them, and Mr. Vanderpoel had drawn acheque which had seemed like a fortune to the sufferer. A new househad been bought, and Mrs. Vanderpoel and her daughters and friends hadbestowed furniture and clothing enough to make the family comfortable tothe verge of luxury. 

"See, you poor thing, " said Rosalie, glowing with memories of thisincident, her homesick young soul comforted by the mere likeness in thetwo calamities. "I brought my cheque book with me because I meant tohelp you. A man worked for my father had his house burned, just as yourswas, and my father made everything all right for him again. I'll make itall right for you; I'll make you a cheque for a hundred pounds now, andthen when your husband begins to build I'll give him some more. "

The woman gasped for breath and turned pale. She was frightened. Itreally seemed as if her ladyship must have lost her wits a little. Shecould not mean this. The vicaress turned pale also. 

"Lady Anstruthers, " she said, "Lady Anstruthers, it--it is too much. SirNigel----"

"Too much!" exclaimed Rosalie. "They have lost everything, you know;their hayricks and cattle as well as their house; I guess it won't behalf enough. "

Mrs. Brent dragged her into the vicar's study and talked to her. Shetried to explain that in English villages such things were not done ina manner so casual, as if they were the mere result of unconsideredfeeling, as if they were quite natural things, such as any human personmight do. When Rosalie cried: "But why not--why not? They ought to be. "Mrs. Brent could not seem to make herself quite clear. Rosalie onlygathered in a bewildered way that there ought to be more ceremony, moredeliberation, more holding off, before a person of rank indulged insuch munificence. The recipient ought to be made to feel it more, tounderstand fully what a great thing was being done. 

"They will think you will do anything for them. "

"So I will, " said young Lady Anstruthers, "if I have the money when theyare in such awful trouble. Suppose we lost everything in the world andthere were people who could easily help us and wouldn't?"

"You and Sir Nigel--that is quite different, " said Mrs. Brent. "I amafraid that if you do not discuss the matter and ask advice from yourhusband and mother-in-law they will be very much offended. "

"If I were doing it with their money they would have the right to be, "replied Rosalie, with entire ingenuousness. "I wouldn't presume to dosuch a thing as that. That wouldn't be right, of course. "

"They will be angry with me, " said the vicaress awkwardly. This queer, silly girl, who seemed to see nothing in the right light, frequentlymade her feel awkward. Mrs. Brent told her husband that she appeared tohave no sense of dignity or proper appreciation of her position. 

The wife of the farmer, John Wilson, carried away the cheque, quitestunned. She was breathless with amazement and turned rather faint withexcitement, bewilderment and her sense of relief. She had to sit downin the vicarage kitchen for a few minutes and drink a glass of the thinvicarage beer. 

Rosalie promised that she would discuss the matter and ask advicewhen she returned to the Court. Just as she left the house Mrs. Brentsuddenly remembered something she had forgotten. 

"The Wilson trouble completely drove it out of my mind, " she said. "Itwas a stupid mistake of the postboy's. He left a letter of yours amongmine when he came this morning. It was most careless. I shall speakto his father about it. It might have been important that you shouldreceive it early. "

When she saw the letter Rosalie uttered an exclamation. It was addressedin her father's handwriting. 

"Oh!" she cried. "It's from father! And the postmark is Havre. What doesit mean?"

She was so excited that she almost forgot to express her thanks. Her heart leaped up in her throat. Could they have come over fromAmerica--could they? Why was it written from Havre? Could they be nearher?

She walked along the road choked with ecstatic, laughing sobs. Her handshook so that she could scarcely tear open the envelope; she tore acorner of the letter, and when the sheet was spread open her eyes werefull of wild, delighted tears, which made it impossible for her to seefor the moment. But she swept the tears away and read this:

DEAR DAUGHTER:

It seems as if we had had pretty bad luck in not seeing you. We hadcounted on it very much, and your mother feels it all the more becauseshe is weak after her illness. We don't quite understand why you didnot seem to know about her having had diphtheria in Paris. You did notanswer Betty's letter. Perhaps it missed you in some way. Things dosometimes go wrong in the mail, and several times your mother hasthought a letter has been lost. She thought so because you seemed toforget to refer to things. We came over to leave Betty at a Frenchschool and we had expected to visit you later. But your mother fell illof diphtheria and not hearing from you seemed to make her homesick, so we decided to return to New York by the next steamer. I ran over toLondon, however, to make some inquiries about you, and on the first dayI arrived I met your husband in Bond Street. He at once explained to methat you had gone to a house party at some castle in Scotland, and saidyou were well and enjoying yourself very much, and he was on his way tojoin you. I am sorry, daughter, that it has turned out that we could notsee each other. It seems a long time since you left us. But I am veryglad, however, that you are so well and really like English life. If wehad time for it I am sure it would be delightful. Your mother sendsher love and wants very much to hear of all you are doing and enjoying. Hoping that we may have better luck the next time we cross--

Your affectionate father, REUBEN L. VANDERPOEL. 

Rosalie found herself running breathlessly up the avenue. She wasclutching the letter still in her hand, and staggering from side toside. Now and then she uttered horrible little short cries, like ananimal's. She ran and ran, seeing nothing, and now and then with theclenched hand in which the letter was crushed striking a sharp blow ather breast. 

She stumbled up the big stone steps she had mounted on the day she wasbrought home as a bride. Her dress caught her feet and she fell on herknees and scrambled up again, gasping; she dashed across the hugedark hall, and, hurling herself against the door of the morning room, appeared, dishevelled, haggard-eyed, and with scarlet patches on herwild, white face, before the Dowager, who started angrily to her feet:

"Where is Nigel? Where is Nigel?" she cried out frenziedly. 

"What in heaven's name do you mean by such manners?" demanded herladyship. "Apologise at once!"

"Where is Nigel? Nigel! Nigel!" the girl raved. "I will see him--Iwill--I will see him!"

She who had been the mildest of sweet-tempered creatures all her lifehad suddenly gone almost insane with heartbroken, hysteric grief andrage. She did not know what she was saying and doing; she only realisedin an agony of despair that she was a thing caught in a trap; that thesepeople had her in their power, and that they had tricked and lied to herand kept her apart from what her girl's heart so cried out to and longedfor. Her father, her mother, her little sister; they had been near herand had been lied to and sent away. 

"You are quite mad, you violent, uncontrolled creature!" cried theDowager furiously. "You ought to be put in a straitjacket and drenchedwith cold water. "

Then the door opened again and Nigel strode in. He was in riding dressand was breathless and livid with anger. He was in a nice mood toconfront a wife on the verge of screaming hysterics. After a bad halfhour with his steward, who had been talking of impending disasters, he had heard by chance of Wilson's conflagration and the hundred-poundcheque. He had galloped home at the top of his horse's speed. 

"Here is your wife raving mad, " cried out his mother. 

Rosalie staggered across the room to him. She held up her hand clenchingthe letter and shook it at him. 

"My mother and father have been here, " she shrieked. My mother has beenill. They wanted to come to see me. You knew and you kept it from me. You told my father lies--lies--hideous lies! You said I was away inScotland--enjoying myself--when I was here and dying with homesickness. You made them think I did not care for them--or for New York! You havekilled me! Why did you do such a wicked thing!

He looked at her with glaring eyes. If a man born a gentleman is ever inthe mood to kick his wife to death, as costermongers do, he was in thatmood. He had lost control over himself as completely as she had, andwhile she was only a desperate, hysteric girl, he was a violent man. 

"I did it because I did not mean to have them here, " he said. "I did itbecause I won't have them here. "

"They shall come, " she quavered shrilly in her wildness. "They shallcome to see me. They are my own father and mother, and I will havethem. "

He caught her arm in such a grip that she must have thought he wouldbreak it, if she could have thought or felt anything. 

"No, you will not have them, " he ground forth between his teeth. "Youwill do as I order you and learn to behave yourself as a decent marriedwoman should. You will learn to obey your husband and respect his wishesand control your devilish American temper. "

"They have gone--gone!" wailed Rosalie. "You sent them away! My father, my mother, my sister!"

"Stop your indecent ravings!" ordered Sir Nigel, shaking her. "I willnot submit to be disgraced before the servants. "

"Put your hand over her mouth, Nigel, " cried his mother. "The veryscullery maids will hear. "

She was as infuriated as her son. And, indeed, to behold civilised humanbeings in the state of uncontrolled violence these three had reached wasa sight to shudder at. 

"I won't stop, " cried the girl. "Why did you take me away fromeverything--I was quite happy. Everybody was kind to me. I loved people, I had everything. No one ever--ever--ever ill-used anyone----"

Sir Nigel clutched her arm more brutally still and shook her withabsolute violence. Her hair broke loose and fell about her awful littledistorted, sobbing face. 

"I did not take you to give you an opportunity to display your vulgarostentation by throwing away hundred-pound cheques to villagers, " hesaid. "I didn't take you to give you the position of a lady and be madea fool of by you. "

"You have ruined him, " burst forth his mother. "You have put it out ofhis power to marry an Englishwoman who would have known it was her dutyto give something in return for his name and protection. "

Her ladyship had begun to rave also, and as mother and son were of equalviolence when they had ceased to control themselves, Rosalie began tofind herself enlightened unsparingly. She and her people were vulgarsharpers. They had trapped a gentleman into a low American marriage andhad not the decency to pay for what they had got. If she had been anEnglishwoman, well born, and of decent breeding, all her fortune wouldhave been properly transferred to her husband and he would have had thedispensing of it. Her husband would have been in the position to controlher expenditure and see that she did not make a fool of herself. As itwas she was the derision of all decent people, of all people who hadbeen properly brought up and knew what was in good taste and of goodmorality. 

First it was the Dowager who poured forth, and then it was SirNigel. They broke in on each other, they interrupted one another withexclamations and interpolations. They had so far lost themselves thatthey did not know they became grotesque in the violence of their fury. Rosalie's brain whirled. Her hysteria mounted and mounted. She staredfirst at one and then at the other, gasping and sobbing by turns; sheswayed on her feet and clutched at a chair. 

"I did not know, " she broke forth at last, trying to make her voiceheard in the storm. "I never understood. I knew something made youhate me, but I didn't know you were angry about money. " She laughedtremulously and wildly. "I would have given it to you--father would havegiven you some--if you had been good to me. " The laugh became hystericalbeyond her management. Peal after peal broke from her, she shook allover with her ghastly merriment, sobbing at one and the same time. 

"Oh! oh! oh!" she shrieked. "You see, I thought you were soaristocratic. I wouldn't have dared to think of such a thing. I thoughtan English gentleman--an English gentleman--oh! oh! to think it wasall because I did not give you money--just common dollars and centsthat--that I daren't offer to a decent American who could work forhimself. "

Sir Nigel sprang at her. He struck her with his open hand upon thecheek, and as she reeled she held up her small, feverish, shaking hand, laughing more wildly than before. 

"You ought not to strike me, " she cried. "You oughtn't! You don't knowhow valuable I am. Perhaps----" with a little, crazy scream--"perhaps Imight have a son. "

She fell in a shuddering heap, and as she dropped she struck heavilyagainst the protruding end of an oak chest and lay upon the floor, herarms flung out and limp, as if she were a dead thing. 

CHAPTER V

ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC

In the course of twelve years the Shuttle had woven steadily and--itsmovements lubricated by time and custom--with increasing rapidity. Threads of commerce it caught up and shot to and fro, with threads ofliterature and art, threads of life drawn from one shore to the otherand back again, until they were bound in the fabric of its weaving. Coldness there had been between both lands, broad divergence of tasteand thought, argument across seas, sometimes resentment, but the web inFate's hands broadened and strengthened and held fast. Coldness faintlywarmed despite itself, taste and thought drawn into nearer contact, reflecting upon their divergences, grew into tolerance and the knowledgethat the diverging, seen more clearly, was not so broad; argumentcoming within speaking distance reasoned itself to logical and practicalconclusions. Problems which had stirred anger began to find solutions. Books, in the first place, did perhaps more than all else. Cheap, pirated editions of English works, much quarrelled over by authors andpublishers, being scattered over the land, brought before American eyessoft, home-like pictures of places which were, after all was said anddone, the homes of those who read of them, at least in the sense ofhaving been the birthplaces of fathers or grandfathers. Some subtle, far-reaching power of nature caused a stirring of the blood, a vague, unexpressed yearning and lingering over pages which depicted sweet, green lanes, broad acres rich with centuries of nourishment and care;grey church towers, red roofs, and village children playing beforecottage doors. None of these things were new to those who pondered overthem, kinsmen had dwelt on memories of them in their fireside talk, and their children had seen them in fancy and in dreams. Old grievanceshaving had time to fade away and take on less poignant colour, thestirring of the blood stirred also imaginations, and wakened somethingakin to homesickness, though no man called the feeling by its name. Andthis, perhaps, was the strongest cord the Shuttle wove and was the truemeaning of its power. Being drawn by it, Americans in increasing numbersturned their faces towards the older land. Gradually it was discoveredthat it was the simplest affair in the world to drive down to thewharves and take a steamer which landed one, after a more or lessinteresting voyage, in Liverpool, or at some other convenient port. From there one went to London, or Paris, or Rome; in fact, whithersoeverone's fancy guided, but first or last it always led the traveller tothe treading of green, velvet English turf. And once standing onsuch velvet, both men and women, looking about them, felt, despitethemselves, the strange old thrill which some of them half resented andsome warmly loved. 

In the course of twelve years, a length of time which will transform alittle girl wearing a short frock into a young woman wearing a long one, the pace of life and the ordering of society may become so altered asto appear amazing when one finds time to reflect on the subject. But onedoes not often find time. Changes occur so gradually that one scarcelyobserves them, or so swiftly that they take the form of a kind of amazedshock which one gets over as quickly as one experiences it and realisesthat its cause is already a fixed fact. 

In the United States of America, which have not yet acquired the serenesense of conservative self-satisfaction and repose which centuries ofage may bestow, the spirit of life itself is the aspiration for change. Ambition itself only means the insistence on change. Each day is to bebetter than yesterday fuller of plans, of briskness, of initiative. Eachto-day demands of to-morrow new men, new minds, new work. A to-day whichhas not launched new ships, explored new countries, constructed newbuildings, added stories to old ones, may consider itself a failure, unworthy even of being consigned to the limbo of respectable yesterdays. Such a country lives by leaps and bounds, and the ten years whichfollowed the marriage of Reuben Vanderpoel's eldest daughter made manysuch bounds and leaps. They were years which initiated and establishedinternational social relations in a manner which caused them toincorporate themselves with the history of both countries. As Americadiscovered Europe, that continent discovered America. American beautiesbegan to appear in English drawing-rooms and Continental salons. Theywere presented at court and commented upon in the Row and the Bois. Their little transatlantic tricks of speech and their mots were repeatedwith gusto. It became understood that they were amusing and amazing. Americans "came in" as the heroes and heroines of novels and stories. Punch delighted in them vastly. Shopkeepers and hotel proprietorsstocked, furnished, and provisioned for them. They spent moneyenormously and were singularly indifferent (at the outset) underimposition. They "came over" in a manner as epoch-making, though lesswar-like than that of William the Conqueror. 

International marriages ceased to be a novelty. As Bettina Vanderpoelgrew up, she grew up, so to speak, in the midst of them. She saw hercountry, its people, its newspapers, its literature, innocently rejoicedby the alliances its charming young women contracted with foreignrank. She saw it affectionately, gleefully, rubbing its hands over itsduchesses, its countesses, its miladies. The American Eagle spread itswings and flapped them sometimes a trifle, over this new but so naturaland inevitable triumph of its virgins. It was of course only "American"that such things should happen. America ruled the universe, and itswomen ruled America, bullying it a little, prettily, perhaps. What couldbe more a matter of course than that American women, being aided byadoring fathers, brothers and husbands, sumptuously to ship themselvesto other lands, should begin to rule these lands also? Betty, in hergrowing up, heard all this intimated. At twelve years old, though shehad detested Rosalie's marriage, she had rather liked to hear peopletalk of the picturesqueness of places like Stornham Court, and of thelife led by women of rank in their houses in town and country. Suchtalk nearly always involved the description of things and people, whosecolour and tone had only reached her through the medium of books, mostfrequently fiction. 

She was, however, of an unusually observing mind, even as a child, andthe time came when she realised that the national bird spread its wingsless proudly when the subject of international matches was touched upon, and even at such times showed signs of restlessness. Now and then thingshad not turned out as they appeared to promise; two or three seeminglybrilliant unions had resulted in disaster. She had not understood allthe details the newspapers cheerfully provided, but it was clear toher that more than one previously envied young woman had had practicalreasons for discovering that she had made an astonishingly bad bargain. This being the case, she used frequently to ponder over the case ofRosy--Rosy! who had been swept away from them and swallowed up, as itseemed, by that other and older world. She was in certain ways a silentchild, and no one but herself knew how little she had forgotten Rosy, how often she pondered over her, how sometimes she had lain awake in thenight and puzzled out lines of argument concerning her and things whichmight be true. 

The one grief of poor Mrs. Vanderpoel's life had been the apparentestrangement of her eldest child. After her first six months in EnglandLady Anstruthers' letters had become fewer and farther between, and hadgiven so little information connected with herself that affectionatecuriosity became discouraged. Sir Nigel's brief and rare epistlesrevealed so little desire for any relationship with his wife's familythat gradually Rosy's image seemed to fade into far distance and becomefainter with the passing of each month. It seemed almost an incrediblething, when they allowed themselves to think of it, but no member of thefamily had ever been to Stornham Court. Two or three efforts to arrangea visit had been made, but on each occasion had failed through someapparently accidental cause. Once Lady Anstruthers had been away, oncea letter had seemingly failed to reach her, once her children had hadscarlet fever and the orders of the physicians in attendance hadbeen stringent in regard to visitors, even relatives who did not fearcontagion. 

"If she had been living in New York and her children had been ill Ishould have been with her all the time, " poor Mrs. Vanderpoel had saidwith tears. "Rosy's changed awfully, somehow. Her letters don't sound abit like she used to be. It seems as if she just doesn't care to see hermother and father. "

Betty had frowned a good deal and thought intensely in secret. She didnot believe that Rosy was ashamed of her relations. She remembered, however, it is true, that Clara Newell (who had been a schoolmate) hadbecome very super-fine and indifferent to her family after her marriageto an aristocratic and learned German. Hers had been one of thesuccessful alliances, and after living a few years in Berlin she hadquite looked down upon New Yorkers, and had made herself exceedinglyunpopular during her one brief visit to her relatives. She seemedto think her father and mother undignified and uncultivated, and shedisapproved entirely of her sisters dress and bearing. She said thatthey had no distinction of manner and that all their interests werefrivolous and unenlightened. 

"But Clara always was a conceited girl, " thought Betty. "She was alwayspatronising people, and Rosy was only pretty and sweet. She always saidherself that she had no brains. But she had a heart. "

After the lapse of a few years there had been no further discussion ofplans for visiting Stornham. Rosalie had become so remote as to appearalmost unreachable. She had been presented at Court, she had had threechildren, the Dowager Lady Anstruthers had died. Once she had writtento her father to ask for a large sum of money, which he had sent toher, because she seemed to want it very much. She required it to pay offcertain debts on the estate and spoke touchingly of her boy who wouldinherit. 

"He is a delicate boy, father, " she wrote, "and I don't want the estateto come to him burdened. "

When she received the money she wrote gratefully of the generosity shownher, but she spoke very vaguely of the prospect of their seeing eachother in the future. It was as if she felt her own remoteness even morethan they felt it themselves. 

In the meantime Bettina had been taken to France and placed at schoolthere. The resulting experience was an enlightening one, far moreilluminating to the quick-witted American child than it would have beento an English, French, or German one, who would not have had so much tolearn, and probably would not have been so quick at the learning. 

Betty Vanderpoel knew nothing which was not American, and only vaguelya few things which were not of New York. She had lived in Fifth Avenue, attended school in a numbered street near her own home, played in andbeen driven round Central Park. She had spent the hot months of thesummer in places up the Hudson, or on Long Island, and such resorts ofpleasure. She had believed implicitly in all she saw and knew. Shehad been surrounded by wealth and decent good nature throughout herexistence, and had enjoyed her life far too much to admit of any doubtthat America was the most perfect country in the world, Americans thecleverest and most amusing people, and that other nations were a littleout of it, and consequently sufficiently scant of resource to renderpity without condemnation a natural sentiment in connection with one'soccasional thoughts of them. 

But hers was a mentality by no means ordinary. Inheritance in her naturehad combined with circumstances, as it has a habit of doing in all humanbeings. But in her case the combinations were unusual and produced aresult somewhat remarkable. The quality of brains which, in the firstReuben Vanderpoel had expressed itself in the marvellously successfulplanning and carrying to their ends of commercial and financial schemes, the absolute genius of penetration and calculation of the sordid anduneducated little trader in skins and barterer of goods, havingfiltered through two generations of gradual education and refinementof existence, which was no longer that of the mere trader, hadbeen transformed in the great-granddaughter into keen, clear sight, level-headed perceptiveness and a logical sense of values. As the firstReuben had known by instinct the values of pelts and lands, Bettinaknew by instinct the values of qualities, of brains, of hearts, ofcircumstances, and the incidents which affect them. She was as unawareof the significance of her great possession as were those around her. Nevertheless it was an unerring thing. As a mere child, unformed anduneducated by life, she had not been one of the small creatures to bedeceived or flattered. 

"She's an awfully smart little thing, that Betty, " her New York auntsand cousins often remarked. "She seems to see what people mean, itdoesn't matter what they say. She likes people you would not expect herto like, and then again she sometimes doesn't care the least for peoplewho are thought awfully attractive. "

As has been already intimated, the child was crude enough and notparticularly well bred, but her small brain had always been at work, andeach day of her life recorded for her valuable impressions. The page ofher young mind had ceased to be a blank much earlier than is usual. 

The comparing of these impressions with such as she received when herlife in the French school was new afforded her active mental exercise. 

She began with natural, secret indignation and rebellion. There was noother American pupil in the establishment besides herself. But for thefact that the name of Vanderpoel represented wealth so enormous asto amount to a sort of rank in itself, Bettina would not have beenreceived. The proprietress of the institution had gravely disquietingdoubts of the propriety of America. Her pupils were not accustomedto freedom of opinions and customs. An American child might eitherconsciously or unconsciously introduce them. As this must be guardedagainst, Betty's first few months at the school were not agreeable toher. She was supervised and expurgated, as it were. Special Sisterswere told off to converse and walk with her, and she soon perceivedthat conversations were not only French lessons in disguise, but werelectures on ethics, morals, and good manners, imperfectly concealedby the mask and domino of amiable entertainment. She translated intoEnglish after the following manner the facts her swift young perceptionsgathered. There were things it was so inelegant to say that onlythe most impossible persons said them; there were things it was soinexcusable to do that when done their inexcusability assumed theproportions of a crime. There were movements, expressions, points ofview, which one must avoid as one would avoid the plague. And they wereall things, acts, expressions, attitudes of mind which Bettina hadbeen familiar with from her infancy, and which she was well aware wereconsidered almost entirely harmless and unobjectionable in New York, in her beloved New York, which was the centre of the world, which wasbigger, richer, gayer, more admirable than any other city known upon theearth. 

If she had not so loved it, if she had ever dreamed of the existence ofany other place as being absolutely necessary, she would not have feltthe thing so bitterly. But it seemed to her that all these amiablediatribes in exquisite French were directed at her New York, and itmust be admitted that she was humiliated and enraged. It was a personal, indeed, a family matter. Her father, her mother, her relatives, andfriends were all in some degree exactly the kind of persons whosespeech, habits, and opinions she must conscientiously avoid. But forthe instinct of summing up values, circumstances, and intentions, it isprobable that she would have lost her head, let loose her temper and hertongue, and have become insubordinate. But the quickness of perceptionwhich had revealed practical potentialities to old Reuben Vanderpoel, revealed to her the value of French which was perfectly fluent, a voicewhich was musical, movements which were grace, manners which had astill beauty, and comparing these things with others less charmingshe listened and restrained herself, learning, marking, and inwardlydigesting with a cleverness most enviable. 

Among her fellow pensionnaires she met with discomforting illuminations, which were fine discipline also, though if she herself had been a lessintellectual creature they might have been embittering. Without doubtBetty, even at twelve years, was intellectual. Hers was the practicalworking intellect which begins duty at birth and does not lay down itstools because the sun sets. The little and big girls who wrote theirexercises at her side did not deliberately enlighten her, but shelearned from them in vague ways that it was not New York which was thecentre of the earth, but Paris, or Berlin, Madrid, London, or Rome. Paris and London were perhaps more calmly positive of themselves thanother capitals, and were a little inclined to smile at the lack ofseriousness in other claims. But one strange fact was more predominantthan any other, and this was that New York was not counted as acivilised centre at all; it had no particular existence. Nobodyexpressed this rudely; in fact, it did not acquire the form of actualstatement at any time. It was merely revealed by amiable and ingenuousunconsciousness of the circumstance that such a part of the worldexpected to be regarded or referred to at all. Betty began early torealise that as her companions did not talk of Timbuctoo or Zanzibar, so they did not talk of New York. Stockholm or Amsterdam seemed, despite their smallness, to be considered. No one denied the presence ofZanzibar on the map, but as it conveyed nothing more than the impressionof being a mere geographical fact, there was no reason why one shoulddwell on it in conversation. Remembering all she had left behind, thecrowded streets, the brilliant shop windows, the buzz of individualpeople, there were moments when Betty ground her strong little teeth. She wanted to express all these things, to call out, to explain, andcommand recognition for them. But her cleverness showed to her thatargument or protestation would be useless. She could not make suchhearers understand. There were girls whose interest in America wasfounded on their impression that magnificent Indian chieftains inblankets and feathers stalked about the streets of the towns, andthat Betty's own thick black hair had been handed down to her by somebeautiful Minnehaha or Pocahontas. When first she was approached bytimid, tentative questionings revealing this point of view, Betty felthot and answered with unamiable curtness. No, there were no red Indiansin New York. There had been no red Indians in her family. She hadneither grandmothers nor aunts who were squaws, if they meant that. 

She felt so scornfully, so disgustedly indignant at their benightedignorance, that she knew she behaved very well in saying so little inreply. She could have said so much, but whatsoever she had said wouldhave conveyed nothing to them, so she thought it all out alone. Shewent over the whole ground and little realised how much she was teachingherself as she turned and tossed in her narrow, spotlessly white bed atnight, arguing, comparing, drawing deductions from what she knew anddid not know of the two continents. Her childish anger, combiningitself with the practical, alert brain of Reuben Vanderpoel the first, developed in her a logical reasoning power which led her to arrive atmany an excellent and curiously mature conclusion. The result wasfinely educational. All the more so that in her fevered desire forjustification of the things she loved, she began to read books such aslittle girls do not usually take interest in. She found some difficultyin obtaining them at first, but a letter or two written to her fatherobtained for her permission to read what she chose. The third ReubenVanderpoel was deeply fond of his younger daughter, and felt in secreta profound admiration for her, which was saved from becoming too obviousby the ever present American sense of humour. 

"Betty seems to be going in for politics, " he said after reading theletter containing her request and her first list of books. "She's aboutas mad as she can be at the ignorance of the French girls about Americaand Americans. She wants to fill up on solid facts, so that she can comeout strong in argument. She's got an understanding of the power of solidfacts that would be a fortune to her if she were a man. "

It was no doubt her understanding of the power of facts which led herto learn everything well and to develop in many directions. She began todip into political and historical volumes because she was furious, andwished to be able to refute idiocy, but she found herself continuing toread because she was interested in a way she had not expected. She beganto see things. Once she made a remark which was prophetic. She madeit in answer to a guileless observation concerning the gold mines withwhich Boston was supposed to be enriched. 

"You don't know anything about America, you others, " she said. "But youWILL know!"

"Do you think it will become the fashion to travel in America?" asked aGerman girl. 

"Perhaps, " said Betty. "But--it isn't so much that you will go toAmerica. I believe it will come to you. It's like that--America. Itdoesn't stand still. It goes and gets what it wants. "

She laughed as she ended, and so did the other girls. But in ten years'time, when they were young women, some of them married, some of themcourt beauties, one of them recalled this speech to another, whom sheencountered in an important house in St. Petersburg, the wife of thecelebrated diplomat who was its owner being an American woman. 

Bettina Vanderpoel's education was a rather fine thing. She herselfhad more to do with it than girls usually have to do with their owntraining. In a few months' time those in authority in the French schoolfound that it was not necessary to supervise and expurgate her. Shelearned with an interested rapacity which was at once unusual andamazing. And she evidently did not learn from books alone. Her voice, asan organ, had been musical and full from babyhood. It began to modulateitself and to express things most voices are incapable of expressing. She had been so built by nature that the carriage of her head and limbswas good to behold. She acquired a harmony of movement which caused herto lose no shade of grace and spirit. Her eyes were full of thought, ofspeculation, and intentness. 

"She thinks a great deal for one so young, " was said of her frequentlyby one or the other of her teachers. One finally went further and added, "She has genius. "

This was true. She had genius, but it was not specialised. It was notgenius which expressed itself through any one art. It was a genius forlife, for living herself, for aiding others to live, for vivifyingmere existence. She herself was, however, aware only of an eagernessof temperament, a passion for seeing, doing, and gaining knowledge. Everything interested her, everybody was suggestive and more or lessenlightening. 

Her relatives thought her original in her fancies. They called themfancies because she was so young. Fortunately for her, there was noreason why she should not be gratified. Most girls preferred to spendtheir holidays on the Continent. She elected to return to America everyalternate year. She enjoyed the voyage and she liked the entire changeof atmosphere and people. 

"It makes me like both places more, " she said to her father when she wasthirteen. "It makes me see things. "

Her father discovered that she saw everything. She was the pleasure ofhis life. He was attracted greatly by the interest she exhibited inall orders of things. He saw her make bold, ingenuous plunges into allwaters, without any apparent consciousness that the scraps of knowledgeshe brought to the surface were unusual possessions for a schoolgirl. She had young views on the politics and commerce of different countries, as she had views on their literature. When Reuben Vanderpoel swoopedacross the American continent on journeys of thousands of miles, takingher as a companion, he discovered that he actually placed a sort ofconfidence in her summing up of men and schemes. He took her to seemines and railroads and those who worked them, and he talked them overwith her afterward, half with a sense of humour, half with a sense offinding comfort in her intelligent comprehension of all he said. 

She enjoyed herself immensely and gained a strong picturesqueness ofcharacter. After an American holiday she used to return to France, Germany, or Italy, with a renewed zest of feeling for all thingsromantic and antique. After a few years in the French convent she askedthat she might be sent to Germany. 

"I am gradually changing into a French girl, " she wrote to her father. "One morning I found I was thinking it would be nice to go into aconvent, and another day I almost entirely agreed with one of the girlswho was declaiming against her brother who had fallen in love with aCalifornian. You had better take me away and send me to Germany. "

Reuben Vanderpoel laughed. He understood Betty much better than most ofher relations did. He knew when seriousness underlay her jests and hisrespect for her seriousness was great. He sent her to school in Germany. During the early years of her schooldays Betty had observed that Americaappeared upon the whole to be regarded by her schoolfellows principallyas a place to which the more unfortunate among the peasantry emigratedas steerage passengers when things could become no worse for them intheir own country. The United States was not mentally detached from anyother portion of the huge Western Continent. Quite well-educated personsspoke casually of individuals having "gone to America, " as if there wereno particular difference between Brazil and Massachusetts. 

"I wonder if you ever saw my cousin Gaston, " a French girl once askedher as they sat at their desks. "He became very poor through ill living. He was quite without money and he went to America. "

"To New York?" inquired Bettina. 

"I am not sure. The town is called Concepcion. "

"That is not in the United States, " Betty answered disdainfully. "It isin Chili. "

She dragged her atlas towards her and found the place. 

"See, " she said. "It is thousands of miles from New York. " Her companionwas a near-sighted, rather slow girl. She peered at the map, drawing aline with her finger from New York to Concepcion. 

"Yes, they are at a great distance from one another, " she admitted, "butthey are both in America. "

"But not both in the United States, " cried Betty. "French girls alwaysseem to think that North and South America are the same, that they areboth the United States. "

"Yes, " said the slow girl with deliberation. "We do make odd mistakessometimes. " To which she added with entire innocence of any ironicintention. "But you Americans, you seem to feel the United States, yourNew York, to be all America. "

Betty started a little and flushed. During a few minutes of rapidreflection she sat bolt upright at her desk and looked straightbefore her. Her mentality was of the order which is capable of makingdiscoveries concerning itself as well as concerning others. She hadnever thought of this view of the matter before, but it was quite true. To passionate young patriots such as herself at least, that portion ofthe map covered by the United States was America. She suddenly saw alsothat to her New York had been America. Fifth Avenue Broadway, CentralPark, even Tiffany's had been "America. " She laughed and reddened ashade as she put the atlas aside having recorded a new idea. She hadfound out that it was not only Europeans who were local, which was adiscovery of some importance to her fervid youth. 

Because she thought so often of Rosalie, her attention was, during thepassing years, naturally attracted by the many things she heard of suchmarriages as were made by Americans with men of other countries thantheir own. She discovered that notwithstanding certain commercialviews of matrimony, all foreigners who united themselves with Americanheiresses were not the entire brutes primitive prejudice might leadone to imagine. There were rather one-sided alliances which provedthemselves far from happy. The Cousin Gaston, for instance, brought homea bride whose fortune rebuilt and refurnished his dilapidated chateauand who ended by making of him a well-behaved and cheery countrygentleman not at all to be despised in his amiable, if light-minded goodnature and good spirits. His wife, fortunately, was not a young womanwho yearned for sentiment. She was a nice-tempered, practical Americangirl, who adored French country life and knew how to amuse and manageher husband. It was a genial sort of menage and yet though this was anundeniable fact, Bettina observed that when the union was spoken of itwas always referred to with a certain tone which conveyed that thoughone did not exactly complain of its having been undesirable, it wasnot quite what Gaston might have expected. His wife had money and wasgood-natured, but there were limitations to one's appreciation of amarriage in which husband and wife were not on the same plane. 

"She is an excellent person, and it has been good for Gaston, " saidBettina's friend. "We like her, but she is not--she is not----" Shepaused there, evidently seeing that the remark was unlucky. Bettina, whowas still in short frocks, took her up. 

"What is she not?" she asked. 

"Ah!--it is difficult to explain--to Americans. It is really not exactlya fault. But she is not of his world. "

"But if he does not like that, " said Bettina coolly, "why did he let herbuy him and pay for him?"

It was young and brutal, but there were times when the businessperspicuity of the first Reuben Vanderpoel, combining with the fiery, wounded spirit of his young descendant, rendered Bettina brutal. She sawcertain unadorned facts with unsparing young eyes and wanted to statethem. After her frocks were lengthened, she learned how to state themwith more fineness of phrase, but even then she was sometimes stillrather unsparing. 

In this case her companion, who was not fiery of temperament, onlycoloured slightly. 

"It was not quite that, " she answered. "Gaston really is fond of her. She amuses him, and he says she is far cleverer than he is. "

But there were unions less satisfactory, and Bettina had opportunitiesto reflect upon these also. The English and Continental papers didnot give enthusiastic, detailed descriptions of the marriages New Yorkjournals dwelt upon with such delight. They were passed over with aparagraph. When Betty heard them spoken of in France, Germany or Italy, she observed that they were not, as a rule, spoken of respectfully. Itseemed to her that the bridegrooms were, in conversation, treated bytheir equals with scant respect. It appeared that there had always beensome extremely practical reason for the passion which had led them tothe altar. One generally gathered that they or their estates were verymuch out at elbow, and frequently their characters were not consideredadmirable by their relatives and acquaintances. Some had been rathercold shouldered in certain capitals on account of embarrassing little, or big, stories. Some had spent their patrimonies in riotous living. Those who had merely begun by coming into impoverished estates, and hadlater attenuated their resources by comparatively decent follies, wereof the more desirable order. By the time she was nineteen, Bettina hadfelt the blood surge in her veins more than once when she heard somecomments on alliances over which she had seen her compatriots glow withaffectionate delight. 

"It was time Ludlow married some girl with money, " she heard said of onesuch union. "He had been playing the fool ever since he came intothe estate. Horses and a lot of stupid women. He had come some awfulcroppers during the last ten years. Good-enough looking girl, they tellme--the American he has married--tremendous lot of money. Couldn'thave picked it up on this side. English young women of fortune are notlooking for that kind of thing. Poor old Billy wasn't good enough. "

Bettina told the story to her father when they next met. She had growninto a tall young creature by this time. Her low, full voice was like abell and was capable of ringing forth some fine, mellow tones of irony. 

"And in America we are pleased, " she said, "and flatter ourselves thatwe are receiving the proper tribute of adoration of our American wit andbeauty. We plume ourselves on our conquests. "

"No, Betty, " said her father, and his reflective deliberation hadmeaning. "There are a lot of us who don't plume ourselves particularlyin these days. We are not as innocent as we were when this sort of thingbegan. We are not as innocent as we were when Rosy was married. " Andhe sighed and rubbed his forehead with the handle of his pen. "Not asinnocent as we were when Rosy was married, " he repeated. 

Bettina went to him and slid her fine young arm round his neck. It wasa long, slim, round arm with a wonderful power to caress in its curves. She kissed Vanderpoel's lined cheek. 

"Have you had time to think much about Rosy?" she said. 

"I've not had time, but I've done it, " he answered. "Anything that hurtsyour mother hurts me. Sometimes she begins to cry in her sleep, and whenI wake her she tells me she has been dreaming that she has seen Rosy. "

"I have had time to think of her, " said Bettina. "I have heard so muchof these things. I was at school in Germany when Annie Butterfield andBaron von Steindahl were married. I heard it talked about there, andthen my mother sent me some American papers. "

She laughed a little, and for a moment her laugh did not sound like agirl's. 

"Well, it's turned out badly enough, " her father commented. "The papershad plenty to say about it later. There wasn't much he was too good todo to his wife, apparently. "

"There was nothing too bad for him to do before he had a wife, " saidBettina. "He was black. It was an insolence that he should have dared tospeak to Annie Butterfield. Somebody ought to have beaten him. "

"He beat her instead. "

"Yes, and I think his family thought it quite natural. They said thatshe was so vulgar and American that she exasperated Frederick beyondendurance. She was not geboren, that was it. " She laughed her severelittle laugh again. "Perhaps we shall get tired in time, " she added. "Ithink we are learning. If it is made a matter of business quite open andaboveboard, it will be fair. You know, father, you always said that Iwas businesslike. "

There was interested curiosity in Vanderpoel's steady look at her. Therewere times when he felt that Betty's summing up of things was well worthlistening to. He saw that now she was in one of her moods when it wouldpay one to hear her out. She held her chin up a little, and her facetook on a fine stillness at once sweet and unrelenting. She was verygood to look at in such moments. 

"Yes, " he answered, "you have a particularly level head for a girl. "

"Well, " she went on. "What I see is that these things are not business, and they ought to be. If a man comes to a rich American girl and says, 'I and my title are for sale. Will you buy us?' If the girl is--is thatkind of a girl and wants that kind of man, she can look them both overand say, 'Yes, I will buy you, ' and it can be arranged. He will notreturn the money if he is unsatisfactory, but she cannot complain thatshe has been deceived. She can only complain of that when he pretendsthat he asks her to marry him because he wants her for his wife, becausehe would want her for his wife if she were as poor as himself. Let itbe understood that he is property for sale, let her make sure that he isthe kind of property she wants to buy. Then, if, when they are married, he is brutal or impudent, or his people are brutal or impudent, she cansay, 'I will forfeit the purchase money, but I will not forfeit myself. I will not stay with you. '"

"They would not like to hear you say that, Betty, " said her father, rubbing his chin reflectively. 

"No, " she answered. "Neither the girl nor the man would like it, and itis their business, not mine. But it is practical and would prevent sillymistakes. It would prevent the girls being laughed at. It is when theyare flattered by the choice made of them that they are laughed at. Noone can sneer at a man or woman for buying what they think they want, and throwing it aside if it turns out a bad bargain. "

She had seated herself near her father. She rested her elbow slightlyon the table and her chin in the hollow of her hand. She was a beautifulyoung creature. She had a soft curving mouth, and a soft curving cheekwhich was warm rose. Taken in conjunction with those young charms, hernext words had an air of incongruity. 

"You think I am hard, " she said. "When I think of these things Iam hard--as hard as nails. That is an Americanism, but it is a goodexpression. I am angry for America. If we are sordid and undignified, let us get what we pay for and make the others acknowledge that we havepaid. "

She did not smile, nor did her father. Mr. Vanderpoel, on the contrary, sighed. He had a dreary suspicion that Rosy, at least, had not receivedwhat she had paid for, and he knew she had not been in the least awarethat she had paid or that she was expected to do so. Several timesduring the last few years he had thought that if he had not been so hardworked, if he had had time, he would have seriously investigatedthe case of Rosy. But who is not aware that the profession ofmultimillionaire does not allow of any swerving from duty or of anyinterests requiring leisure?

"I wonder, Betty, " he said quite deliberately, "if you know how handsomeyou are?"

"Yes, " answered Bettina. "I think so. And I am tall. It is the fashionto be tall now. It was Early Victorian to be little. The Queen broughtin the 'dear little woman, ' and now the type has gone out. "

"They will come to look at you pretty soon, " said Vanderpoel. "Whatshall you say then?"

"I?" said Bettina, and her voice sounded particularly low and mellow. "I have a little monomania, father. Some people have a monomania for onething and some for another. Mine is for NOT taking a bargain from theducal remnant counter. "

CHAPTER VI

AN UNFAIR ENDOWMENT

To Bettina Vanderpoel had been given, to an extraordinary extent, theextraordinary thing which is called beauty--which is a thingentirely set apart from mere good looks or prettiness. This thingis extraordinary because, if statistics were taken, the result wouldprobably be the discovery that not three human beings in a millionreally possess it. That it should be bestowed at all--since it is sorare--seems as unfair a thing as appears to the mere mortal mind thebestowal of unbounded wealth, since it quite as inevitably places thelife of its owner upon an abnormal plane. There are millions of prettywomen, and billions of personable men, but the man or woman of entirephysical beauty may cross one's pathway only once in a lifetime--or notat all. In the latter case it is natural to doubt the absolute truth ofthe rumours that the thing exists. The abnormal creature seems a merefreak of nature and may chance to be angel, criminal, total insipidity, virago or enchanter, but let such an one enter a room or appear in thestreet, and heads must turn, eyes light and follow, souls yearn orenvy, or sink under the discouragement of comparison. With the completeharmony and perfect balance of the singular thing, it would be folly forthe rest of the world to compete. A human being who had lived in povertyfor half a lifetime, might, if suddenly endowed with limitless fortune, retain, to a certain extent, balance of mind; but the same creaturehaving lived the same number of years a wholly unlovely thing, suddenlyawakening to the possession of entire physical beauty, might find thestrain upon pure sanity greater and the balance less easy to preserve. The relief from the conscious or unconscious tension bred by the senseof imperfection, the calm surety of the fearlessness of meeting inany eye a look not lighted by pleasure, would be less normal than theknowledge that no wish need remain unfulfilled, no fancy ungratified. Even at sixteen Betty was a long-limbed young nymph whose small head, set high on a fine slim column of throat, might well have been crownedwith the garland of some goddess of health and the joy of life. She waslight and swift, and being a creature of long lines and tender curves, there was pleasure in the mere seeing her move. The cut of her spiritedlip, and delicate nostril, made for a profile at which one turned tolook more than once, despite one's self. Her hair was soft and black andrepeated its colour in the extravagant lashes of her childhood, whichmade mysterious the changeful dense blue of her eyes. They were eyeswith laughter in them and pride, and a suggestion of many deep thingsyet unstirred. She was rather unusually tall, and her body had thesuppleness of a young bamboo. The deep corners of her red mouth curledgenerously, and the chin, melting into the fine line of the lovelythroat, was at once strong and soft and lovely. She was a creature ofharmony, warm richness of colour, and brilliantly alluring life. 

When her school days were over she returned to New York and gaveherself into her mother's hands. Her mother's kindness of heart andsweet-tempered lovingness were touching things to Bettina. In the midstof her millions Mrs. Vanderpoel was wholly unworldly. Bettina knew thatshe felt a perpetual homesickness when she allowed herself to think ofthe daughter who seemed lost to her, and the girl's realisation of thiscaused her to wish to be especially affectionate and amenable. She wasglad that she was tall and beautiful, not merely because such physicalgifts added to the colour and agreeableness of life, but becausehers gave comfort and happiness to her mother. To Mrs. Vanderpoel, tointroduce to the world the loveliest debutante of many years was to belaunched into a new future. To concern one's self about her exquisitewardrobe was to have an enlivening occupation. To see her surrounded, to watch eyes as they followed her, to hear her praised, was to feelsomething of the happiness she had known in those younger days when NewYork had been less advanced in its news and methods, and slim littleblonde Rosalie had come out in white tulle and waltzed like a fairy witha hundred partners. 

"I wonder what Rosy looks like now, " the poor woman said involuntarilyone day. Bettina was not a fairy. When her mother uttered herexclamation Bettina was on the point of going out, and as she stood nearher, wrapped in splendid furs, she had the air of a Russian princess. 

"She could not have worn the things you do, Betty, " said the affectionatematernal creature. "She was such a little, slight thing. But she wasvery pretty. I wonder if twelve years have changed her much?"

Betty turned towards her rather suddenly. 

"Mother, " she said, "sometime, before very long, I am going to see. "

"To see!" exclaimed Mrs. Vanderpoel. "To see Rosy!"

"Yes, " Betty answered. "I have a plan. I have never told you of it, butI have been thinking over it ever since I was fifteen years old. "

She went to her mother and kissed her. She wore a becoming but resoluteexpression. 

"We will not talk about it now, " she said. "There are some things I mustfind out. "

When she had left the room, which she did almost immediately, Mrs. Vanderpoel sat down and cried. She nearly always shed a few tearswhen anyone touched upon the subject of Rosy. On her desk were somephotographs. One was of Rosy as a little girl with long hair, one was ofLady Anstruthers in her wedding dress, and one was of Sir Nigel. 

"I never felt as if I quite liked him, " she said, looking at this last, "but I suppose she does, or she would not be so happy that she couldforget her mother and sister. "

There was another picture she looked at. Rosalie had sent it with theletter she wrote to her father after he had forwarded the money sheasked for. It was a little study in water colours of the head of herboy. It was nothing but a head, the shoulders being fancifully draped, but the face was a peculiar one. It was over-mature, and unlovely, butfor a mouth at once pathetic and sweet. 

"He is not a pretty child, " sighed Mrs. Vanderpoel. "I should havethought Rosy would have had pretty babies. Ughtred is more like hisfather than his mother. "

She spoke to her husband later, of what Betty had said. 

"What do you think she has in her mind, Reuben?" she asked. 

"What Betty has in her mind is usually good sense, " was his response. "She will begin to talk to me about it presently. I shall not askquestions yet. She is probably thinking: things over. "

She was, in truth, thinking things over, as she had been doing for sometime. She had asked questions on several occasions of English people shehad met abroad. But a schoolgirl cannot ask many questions, and thoughshe had once met someone who knew Sir Nigel Anstruthers, it was a personwho did not know him well, for the reason that she had not desiredto increase her slight acquaintance. This lady was the aunt of oneof Bettina's fellow pupils, and she was not aware of the girl'srelationship to Sir Nigel. What Betty gathered was that herbrother-in-law was regarded as a decidedly bad lot, that since hismarriage to some American girl he had seemed to have money which hespent in riotous living, and that the wife, who was said to be a sillycreature, was kept in the country, either because her husband did notwant her in London, or because she preferred to stay at Stornham. Aboutthe wife no one appeared to know anything, in fact. 

"She is rather a fool, I believe, and Sir Nigel Anstruthers is the kindof man a simpleton would be obliged to submit to, " Bettina had heard thelady say. 

Her own reflections upon these comments had led her through variouspaths of thought. She could recall Rosalie's girlhood, and whatshe herself, as an unconsciously observing child, had known of hercharacter. She remembered the simple impressionability of her mind. Shehad been the most amenable little creature in the world. Her yieldingamiability could always be counted upon as a factor by the calculating;sweet-tempered to weakness, she could be beguiled or distressed into anycourse the desires of others dictated. An ill-tempered or self-pityingperson could alter any line of conduct she herself wished to pursue. 

"She was neither clever nor strong-minded, " Betty said to herself. "Aman like Sir Nigel Anstruthers could make what he chose of her. I wonderwhat he has done to her?"

Of one thing she thought she was sure. This was that Rosalie's aloofnessfrom her family was the result of his design. 

She comprehended, in her maturer years, the dislike of her childhood. She remembered a certain look in his face which she had detested. Shehad not known then that it was the look of a rather clever brute, whowas malignant, but she knew now. 

"He used to hate us all, " she said to herself. "He did not mean to knowus when he had taken Rosalie away, and he did not intend that she shouldknow us. "

She had heard rumours of cases somewhat parallel, cases in which girls'lives had become swamped in those of their husbands, and their husbands'families. And she had also heard unpleasant details of the meansemployed to reach the desired results. Annie Butterfield's husband hadforbidden her to correspond with her American relatives. He had arguedthat such correspondence was disturbing to her mind, and to the domesticduties which should be every decent woman's religion. One of theoccasions of his beating her had been in consequence of his finding herwriting to her mother a letter blotted with tears. Husbands frequentlyobjected to their wives' relatives, but there was a special orderof European husband who opposed violently any intimacy with Americanrelations on the practical ground that their views of a wife's position, with regard to her husband, were of a revolutionary nature. 

Mrs. Vanderpoel had in her possession every letter Rosalie or herhusband had ever written. Bettina asked to be allowed to read them, andone morning seated herself in her own room before a blazing fire, withthe collection on a table at her side. She read them in order. Nigel'sbegan as they went on. They were all in one tone, formal, uninteresting, and requiring no answers. There was not a suggestion of human feeling inone of them. 

"He wrote them, " said Betty, "so that we could not say that he had neverwritten. "

Rosalie's first epistles were affectionate, but timid. At the outsetshe was evidently trying to conceal the fact that she was homesick. Gradually she became briefer and more constrained. In one she saidpathetically, "I am such a bad letter writer. I always feel as if I wantto tear up what I have written, because I never say half that is in myheart. " Mrs. Vanderpoel had kissed that letter many a time. She was surethat a mark on the paper near this particular sentence was where a tearhad fallen. Bettina was sure of this, too, and sat and looked at thefire for some time. 

That night she went to a ball, and when she returned home, she persuadedher mother to go to bed. 

"I want to have a talk with father, " she exclaimed. "I am going to askhim something. "

She went to the great man's private room, where he sat at work, evenafter the hours when less seriously engaged people come home from balls. The room he sat in was one of the apartments newspapers had with muchdetail described. It was luxuriously comfortable, and its effect wassober and rich and fine. 

When Bettina came in, Vanderpoel, looking up to smile at her in welcome, was struck by the fact that as a background to an entering figure oftall, splendid girlhood in a ball dress it was admirable, throwing upall its whiteness and grace and sweep of line. He was always glad to seeBetty. The rich strength of the life radiating from her, the reality andglow of her were good for him and had the power of detaching him fromwork of which he was tired. 

She smiled back at him, and, coming forward took her place in abig armchair close to him, her lace-frilled cloak slipping fromher shoulders with a soft rustling sound which seemed to convey herintention to stay. 

"Are you too busy to be interrupted?" she asked, her mellow voicecaressing him. "I want to talk to you about something I am going to do. "She put out her hand and laid it on his with a clinging firmness whichmeant strong feeling. "At least, I am going to do it if you will helpme, " she ended. 

"What is it, Betty?" he inquired, his usual interest in her accentuatedby her manner. 

She laid her other hand on his and he clasped both with his own. 

"When the Worthingtons sail for England next month, " she explained, "Iwant to go with them. Mrs. Worthington is very kind and will be goodenough to take care of me until I reach London. "

Mr. Vanderpoel moved slightly in his chair. Then their eyes metcomprehendingly. He saw what hers held. 

"From there you are going to Stornham Court!" he exclaimed. 

"To see Rosy, " she answered, leaning a little forward. "To SEE her. 

"You believe that what has happened has not been her fault?" he said. There was a look in her face which warmed his blood. 

"I have always been sure that Nigel Anstruthers arranged it. "

"Do you think he has been unkind to her?"

"I am going to see, " she answered. 

"Betty, " he said, "tell me all about it. "

He knew that this was no suddenly-formed plan, and he knew it wouldbe well worth while to hear the details of its growth. It was sointerestingly like her to have remained silent through the process ofthinking a thing out, evolving her final idea without having disturbedhim by bringing to him any chaotic uncertainties. 

"It's a sort of confession, " she answered. "Father, I have been thinkingabout it for years. I said nothing because for so long I knew I was onlya child, and a child's judgment might be worth so little. But throughall those years I was learning things and gathering evidence. When I wasat school, first in one country and then another, I used to tell myselfthat I was growing up and preparing myself to do a particular thing--togo to rescue Rosy. "

"I used to guess you thought of her in a way of your own, " Vanderpoelsaid, "but I did not guess you were thinking that much. You were alwaysa solid, loyal little thing, and there was business capacity in yourkeeping your scheme to yourself. Let us look the matter in the face. Suppose she does not need rescuing. Suppose, after all, she is acomfortable, fine lady and adores her husband. What then?"

"If I should find that to be true, I will behave myself very well--asif we had expected nothing else. I will make her a short visit and comeaway. Lady Cecilia Orme, whom I knew in Florence, has asked me to staywith her in London. I will go to her. She is a charming woman. But Imust first see Rosy--SEE her. "

Mr. Vanderpoel thought the matter over during a few moments of silence. 

"You do not wish your mother to go with you?" he said presently. 

"I believe it will be better that she should not, " she answered. "Ifthere are difficulties or disappointments she would be too unhappy. "

"Yes, " he said slowly, "and she could not control her feelings. Shewould give the whole thing away, poor girl. "

He had been looking at the carpet reflectively, and now he looked atBettina. 

"What are you expecting to find, at the worst?" he asked her. "The kindof thing which will need management while it is being looked into?"

"I do not know what I am expecting to find, " was her reply. "We knowabsolutely nothing; but that Rosy was fond of us, and that her marriagehas seemed to make her cease to care. She was not like that; she was notlike that! Was she, father?"

"No, she wasn't, " he exclaimed. The memory of her in her short-frockedand early girlish days, a pretty, smiling, effusive thing, given tolavish caresses and affectionate little surprises for them all, cameback to him vividly. "She was the most affectionate girl I ever knew, "he said. "She was more affectionate than you, Betty, " with a smile. 

Bettina smiled in return and bent her head to put a kiss on his hand, awarm, lovely, comprehending kiss. 

"If she had been different I should not have thought so much of thechange, " she said. "I believe that people are always more or less LIKEthemselves as long as they live. What has seemed to happen has been sounlike Rosy that there must be some reason for it. "

"You think that she has been prevented from seeing us?"

"I think it so possible that I am not going to announce my visitbeforehand. "

"You have a good head, Betty, " her father said. 

"If Sir Nigel has put obstacles in our way before, he will do it again. I shall try to find out, when I reach London, if Rosalie is at Stornham. When I am sure she is there, I shall go and present myself. If Sir Nigelmeets me at the park gates and orders his gamekeepers to drive me offthe premises, we shall at least know that he has some reason for notwishing to regard the usual social and domestic amenities. I feel ratherlike a detective. It entertains me and excites me a little. "

The deep blue of her eyes shone under the shadow of the extravagantlashes as she laughed. 

"Are you willing that I should go, father?" she said next. 

"Yes, " he answered. "I am willing to trust you, Betty, to do things Iwould not trust other girls to try at. If you were not my girl at all, if you were a man on Wall Street, I should know you would be pretty safeto come out a little more than even in any venture you made. You knowhow to keep cool. "

Bettina picked up her fallen cloak and laid it over her arm. It was madeof billowy frills of Malines lace, such as only Vanderpoels could buy. She looked down at the amazing thing and touched up the frills with herfingers as she whimsically smiled. 

"There are a good many girls who can be trusted to do things in thesedays, " she said. "Women have found out so much. Perhaps it is becausethe heroines of novels have informed them. Heroines and heroes alwaysbring in the new fashions in character. I believe it is years since aheroine 'burst into a flood of tears. ' It has been discovered, really, that nothing is to be gained by it. Whatsoever I find at Stornham Court, I shall neither weep nor be helpless. There is the Atlantic cable, youknow. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why heroines have changed. Whenthey could not escape from their persecutors except in a stage coach, and could not send telegrams, they were more or less in everyone'shands. It is different now. Thank you, father, you are very good tobelieve in me. "

CHAPTER VII

ON BOARD THE "MERIDIANA"

A large transatlantic steamer lying at the wharf on a brilliant, sunnymorning just before its departure is an interesting and suggestiveobject to those who are fond of following suggestion to its end. Onesometimes wonders if it is possible that the excitement in the dockatmosphere could ever become a thing to which one was sufficientlyaccustomed to be able to regard it as among things commonplace. Therumbling and rattling of waggons and carts, the loading and unloading ofboxes and bales, the people who are late, and the people who are early, the faces which are excited, and the faces which are sad, the trunks andbales, and cranes which creak and groan, the shouts and cries, the hurryand confusion of movement, notwithstanding that every day has seen themall for years, have a sort of perennial interest to the looker-on. 

This is, perhaps, more especially the case when the looker-on is to bea passenger on the outgoing ship; and the exhilaration of his point ofview may greatly depend upon the reason for his voyage and the classby which he travels. Gaiety and youth usually appear upon the promenadedeck, having taken saloon passage. Dulness, commerce, and eld minglingwith them, it is true, but with a discretion which does not seem todominate. Second-class passengers wear a more practical aspect, andyouth among them is rarer and more grave. People who must travel secondand third class make voyages for utilitarian reasons. Their object isusually to better themselves in one way or another. When they are goingfrom Liverpool to New York, it is usually to enter upon new efforts andnew labours. When they are returning from New York to Liverpool, it isoften because the new life has proved less to be depended upon thanthe old, and they are bearing back with them bitterness of soul anddiscouragement of spirit. 

On the brilliant spring morning when the huge liner Meridiana was tosail for England a young man, who was a second-class passenger, leanedupon the ship's rail and watched the turmoil on the wharf with adetached and not at all buoyant air. 

His air was detached because he had other things in his mind than thosemerely passing before him, and he was not buoyant because they were notcheerful or encouraging subjects for reflection. He was a big young man, well hung together, and carrying himself well; his face was square-jawedand rugged, and he had dark red hair restrained by its close cut fromwaving strongly on his forehead. His eyes were red brown, and a few darkfreckles marked his clear skin. He was of the order of man one looks attwice, having looked at him once, though one does not in the least knowwhy, unless one finally reaches some degree of intimacy. 

He watched the vehicles, heavy and light, roll into the big shed-likebuilding and deposit their freight; he heard the voices and caught thesentences of instruction and comment; he saw boxes and bales hauled fromthe dock side to the deck and swung below with the rattling of machineryand chains. But these formed merely a noisy background to his mood, which was self-centred and gloomy. He was one of those who go back totheir native land knowing themselves conquered. He had left England twoyears before, feeling obstinately determined to accomplish a certaindifficult thing, but forces of nature combining with the circumstancesof previous education and living had beaten him. He had lost two yearsand all the money he had ventured. He was going back to the place hehad come from, and he was carrying with him a sense of having been usedhardly by fortune, and in a way he had not deserved. 

He had gone out to the West with the intention of working hard and usinghis hands as well as his brains; he had not been squeamish; he had, infact, laboured like a ploughman; and to be obliged to give in had beengalling and bitter. There are human beings into whose consciousness ofthemselves the possibility of being beaten does not enter. This man wasone of them. 

The ship was of the huge and luxuriously-fitted class by which the richand fortunate are transported from one continent to another. Passengerscould indulge themselves in suites of rooms and live sumptuously. As theman leaning on the rail looked on, he saw messengers bearing baskets andboxes of fruit and flowers with cards and notes attached, hurrying upthe gangway to deliver them to waiting stewards. These were the farewellofferings to be placed in staterooms, or to await their owners on thesaloon tables. Salter--the second-class passenger's name was Salter--hadseen a few such offerings before on the first crossing. But there hadnot been such lavishness at Liverpool. It was the New Yorkers whowere sumptuous in such matters, as he had been told. He had also heardcasually that the passenger list on this voyage was to record importantnames, the names of multi-millionaire people who were going over for theLondon season. 

Two stewards talking near him, earlier in the morning, had been exultingover the probable largesse such a list would result in at the end of thepassage. 

"The Worthingtons and the Hirams and the John William Spayters, " saidone. "They travel all right. They know what they want and they want agood deal, and they're willing to pay for it. "

"Yes. They're not school teachers going over to improve their minds andcontriving to cross in a big ship by economising in everything else. Miss Vanderpoel's sailing with the Worthingtons. She's got the bestsuite all to herself. She'll bring back a duke or one of those princefellows. How many millions has Vanderpoel?"

"How many millions. How many hundred millions!" said his companion, gloating cheerfully over the vastness of unknown possibilities. "I'vecrossed with Miss Vanderpoel often, two or three times when she was inshort frocks. She's the kind of girl you read about. And she's got moneyenough to buy in half a dozen princes. "

"There are New Yorkers who won't like it if she does, " returned theother. "There's been too much money going out of the country. Hersuite is crammed full of Jack roses, now, and there are boxes waitingoutside. "

Salter moved away and heard no more. He moved away, in fact, because hewas conscious that to a man in his case, this dwelling upon millions, this plethora of wealth, was a little revolting. He had walked downBroadway and seen the price of Jacqueminot roses, and he was not soothedor allured at this particular moment by the picture of a girl whosehalf-dozen cabins were crowded with them. 

"Oh, the devil!" he said. "It sounds vulgar. " And he walked up anddown fast, squaring his shoulders, with his hands in the pockets of hisrough, well-worn coat. He had seen in England something of the Americanyoung woman with millionaire relatives. He had been scarcely more than aboy when the American flood first began to rise. He had been old enough, however, to hear people talk. As he had grown older, Salter had observedits advance. Englishmen had married American beauties. American fortuneshad built up English houses, which otherwise threatened to fall intodecay. Then the American faculty of adaptability came into play. Anglo-American wives became sometimes more English than their husbands. They proceeded to Anglicise their relations, their relations' clothes, even, in time, their speech. They carried or sent English conventions tothe States, their brothers ordered their clothes from West End tailors, their sisters began to wear walking dresses, to play out-of-door gamesand take active exercise. Their mothers tentatively took houses inLondon or Paris, there came a period when their fathers or uncles, serious or anxious business men, the most unsporting of human beings, rented castles or manors with huge moors and covers attached andentertained large parties of shooters or fishers who could be lured toany quarter by the promise of the particular form of slaughter for whichthey burned. 

"Sheer American business perspicacity, that, " said Salter, as he marchedup and down, thinking of a particular case of this order. "There'ssomething admirable in the practical way they make for what they want. They want to amalgamate with English people, not for their own sake, but because their women like it, and so they offer the men thousands ofacres full of things to kill. They can get them by paying for them, and they know how to pay. " He laughed a little, lifting his squareshoulders. "Balthamor's six thousand acres of grouse moor and Elsty'ssalmon fishing are rented by the Chicago man. He doesn't care twopencefor them, and does not know a pheasant from a caper-cailzie, but hiswife wants to know men who do. "

It must be confessed that Salter was of the English who were not pleasedwith the American Invasion. In some of his views of the matter he was alittle prehistoric and savage, but the modern side of his characterwas too intelligent to lack reason. He was by no means entirely modern, however; a large part of his nature belonged to the age in which menhad fought fiercely for what they wanted to get or keep, and when theamenities of commerce had not become powerful factors in existence. 

"They're not a bad lot, " he was thinking at this moment. "They arerather fine in a way. They are clever and powerful and interesting--moreso than they know themselves. But it is all commerce. They don't comeand fight with us and get possession of us by force. They come andbuy us. They buy our land and our homes, and our landowners, for thatmatter--when they don't buy them, they send their women to marry them, confound it!"

He took half a dozen more strides and lifted his shoulders again. 

"Beggarly lot as I am, " he said, "unlikely as it seems that I can marryat all, I'm hanged if I don't marry an Englishwoman, if I give my lifeto a woman at all. "

But, in fact, he was of the opinion that he should never give his lifeto any woman, and this was because he was, at this period, also of theopinion that there was small prospect of its ever being worth the givingor taking. It had been one of those lives which begin untowardly and areruled by unfair circumstances. 

He had a particularly well-cut and expressive mouth, and, as he wentback to the ship's side and leaned on his folded arms on the rail again, its curves concealed a good deal of strong feeling. 

The wharf was busier than before. In less than half an hour the shipwas to sail. The bustle and confusion had increased. There were peoplehurrying about looking for friends, and there were people scribblingoff excited farewell messages at the telegraph office. The situation wasworking up to its climax. An observing looker-on might catch glimpses ofemotional scenes. Many of the passengers were already on board, partiesof them accompanied by their friends were making their way up thegangplank. 

Salter had just been watching a luxuriously cared-for little invalidwoman being carried on deck in a reclining chair, when his attentionwas attracted by the sound of trampling hoofs and rolling wheels. Twonoticeably big and smart carriages had driven up to the stopping-placefor vehicles. They were gorgeously of the latest mode, and their tall, satin-skinned horses jangled silver chains and stepped up to theirnoses. 

"Here come the Worthingtons, whosoever they may be, " thoughtSalter. "The fine up-standing young woman is, no doubt, themulti-millionairess. "

The fine, up-standing young woman WAS the multi-millionairess. Bettinawalked up the gangway in the sunshine, and the passengers upon the upperdeck craned their necks to look at her. Her carriage of her head andshoulders invariably made people turn to look. 

"My, ain't she fine-looking!" exclaimed an excited lady beholder above. "I guess that must be Miss Vanderpoel, the multi-millionaire's daughter. Jane told me she'd heard she was crossing this trip. "

Bettina heard her. She sometimes wondered if she was ever pointed out, if her name was ever mentioned without the addition of the explanatorystatement that she was the multi-millionaire's daughter. As a child shehad thought it ridiculous and tiresome, as she had grown older she hadfelt that only a remarkable individuality could surmount a fact so everpresent. 

It was like a tremendous quality which overshadowed everything else. 

"It wounds my vanity, I have no doubt, " she had said to her father. "Nobody ever sees me, they only see you and your millions and millionsof dollars. "

Salter watched her pass up the gangway. The phase through which hewas living was not of the order which leads a man to dwell upon thebeautiful and inspiriting as expressed by the female image. Success andthe hopefulness which engender warmth of soul and quickness of heartare required for the development of such allurements. He thought of theVanderpoel millions as the lady on the deck had thought of them, andin his mind somehow the girl herself appeared to express them. The richup-springing sweep of her abundant hair, her height, her colouring, theremarkable shade and length of her lashes, the full curve of her mouth, all, he told himself, looked expensive, as if even nature herself hadbeen given carte blanche, and the best possible articles procured forthe money. 

"She moves, " he thought sardonically, "as if she were perfectlyaware that she could pay for anything. An unlimited income, no doubt, establishes in the owner the equivalent to a sense of rank. "

He changed his position for one in which he could command a view of thepromenade deck where the arriving passengers were gradually appearing. He did this from the idle and careless curiosity which, though it is nota matter of absolute interest, does not object to being entertained bypassing objects. He saw the Worthington party reappear. It struck Salterthat they looked not so much like persons coming on board a ship, aslike people who were returning to a hotel to which they were accustomed, and which was also accustomed to them. He argued that they had probablycrossed the Atlantic innumerable times in this particular steamer. The deck stewards knew them and made obeisance with empressement. MissVanderpoel nodded to the steward Salter had heard discussing her. Shegave him a smile of recognition and paused a moment to speak to him. Salter saw her sweep the deck with her glance and then designate asequestered corner, such as the experienced voyager would recognise asbeing desirably sheltered. She was evidently giving an order concerningthe placing of her deck chair, which was presently brought. An elegantlyneat and decorous person in black, who was evidently her maid, appearedlater, followed by a steward who carried cushions and sumptuous furrugs. These being arranged, a delightful corner was left alluringlyprepared. Miss Vanderpoel, after her instructions to the deck steward, had joined her party and seemed to be awaiting some arrival anxiously. 

"She knows how to do herself well, " Salter commented, "and she realisesthat forethought is a practical factor. Millions have been productive ofcomposure. It is not unnatural, either. "

It was but a short time later that the warning bell was rung. Stewardspassed through the crowds calling out, "All ashore, if you please--allashore. " Final embraces were in order on all sides. People shook handswith fervour and laughed a little nervously. Women kissed each other andpoured forth hurried messages to be delivered on the other side ofthe Atlantic. Having kissed and parted, some of them rushed back andindulged in little clutches again. Notwithstanding that the tide ofhumanity surges across the Atlantic almost as regularly as the dailytide surges in on its shores, a wave of emotion sweeps through everyship at such partings. 

Salter stood on deck and watched the crowd dispersing. Some of thepeople were laughing and some had red eyes. Groups collected on thewharf and tried to say still more last words to their friends crowdingagainst the rail. 

The Worthingtons kept their places and were still looking out, by thistime disappointedly. It seemed that the friend or friends theyexpected were not coming. Salter saw that Miss Vanderpoel looked moredisappointed than the rest. She leaned forward and strained her eyes tosee. Just at the last moment there was the sound of trampling horses androlling wheels again. From the arriving carriage descended hastily anelderly woman, who lifted out a little boy excited almost to tears. Hewas a dear, chubby little person in flapping sailor trousers, and hecarried a splendidly-caparisoned toy donkey in his arms. Salter couldnot help feeling slightly excited himself as they rushed forward. Hewondered if they were passengers who would be left behind. 

They were not passengers, but the arrivals Miss Vanderpoel had beenexpecting so ardently. They had come to say good-bye to her and were toolate for that, at least, as the gangway was just about to be withdrawn. 

Miss Vanderpoel leaned forward with an amazingly fervid expression onher face. 

"Tommy! Tommy!" she cried to the little boy. "Here I am, Tommy. We cansay good-bye from here. "

The little boy, looking up, broke into a wail of despair. 

"Betty! Betty! Betty!" he cried. "I wanted to kiss you, Betty. "

Betty held out her arms. She did it with entire forgetfulness of theexistence of any lookers-on, and with such outreaching love on herface that it seemed as if the child must feel her touch. She made abeautiful, warm, consoling bud of her mouth. 

"We'll kiss each other from here, Tommy, " she said. "See, we can. Kissme, and I will kiss you. "

Tommy held out his arms and the magnificent donkey. "Betty, " he cried, "I brought you my donkey. I wanted to give it to you for a present, because you liked it. "

Miss Vanderpoel bent further forward and addressed the elderly woman. 

"Matilda, " she said, "please pack Master Tommy's present and send it tome! I want it very much. "

Tender smiles irradiated the small face. The gangway was withdrawn, and, amid the familiar sounds of a big craft's first struggle, the ship beganto move. Miss Vanderpoel still bent forward and held out her arms. 

"I will soon come back, Tommy, " she cried, "and we are always friends. "

The child held out his short blue serge arms also, and Salter watchinghim could not but be touched for all his gloom of mind. 

"I wanted to kiss you, Betty, " he heard in farewell. "I did so want tokiss you. "

And so they steamed away upon the blue. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE SECOND-CLASS PASSENGER

Up to a certain point the voyage was like all other voyages. During thefirst two days there were passengers who did not appear on deck, butas the weather was fair for the season of the year, there were fewerabsentees than is usual. Indeed, on the third day the deck chairs wereall filled, people who were given to tramping during their voyages hadbegun to walk their customary quota of carefully-measured miles theday. There were a few pale faces dozing here and there, but the generalaspect of things had begun to be sprightly. Shuffleboard players andquoit enthusiasts began to bestir themselves, the deck steward appearedregularly with light repasts of beef tea and biscuits, and the brillianthues of red, blue, or yellow novels made frequent spots of colour uponthe promenade. Persons of some initiative went to the length of makingtentative observations to their next-chair neighbours. The second-cabinpassengers were cheerful, and the steerage passengers, having tumbledup, formed friendly groups and began to joke with each other. 

The Worthingtons had plainly the good fortune to be respectable sailors. They reappeared on the second day and established regular habits, afterthe manner of accustomed travellers. Miss Vanderpoel's habits wereregular from the first, and when Salter saw her he was impressed evenmore at the outset with her air of being at home instead of on boardship. Her practically well-chosen corner was an agreeable place to lookat. Her chair was built for ease of angle and width, her cushions wereof dark rich colours, her travelling rugs were of black fox fur, andshe owned an adjustable table for books and accompaniments. She appearedearly in the morning and walked until the sea air crimsoned her cheeks, she sat and read with evident enjoyment, she talked to her companionsand plainly entertained them. 

Salter, being bored and in bad spirits, found himself watching herrather often, but he knew that but for the small, comic episode ofTommy, he would have definitely disliked her. The dislike would not havebeen fair, but it would have existed in spite of himself. It wouldnot have been fair because it would have been founded simply upon theignoble resentment of envy, upon the poor truth that he was not in thestate of mind to avoid resenting the injustice of fate in bestowingmulti-millions upon one person and his offspring. He resented his ownresentment, but was obliged to acknowledge its existence in his humour. He himself, especially and peculiarly, had always known the bitternessof poverty, the humiliation of seeing where money could be well used, indeed, ought to be used, and at the same time having ground into himthe fact that there was no money to lay one's hand on. He had hated iteven as a boy, because in his case, and that of his people, the wholething was undignified and unbecoming. It was humiliating to him now tobring home to himself the fact that the thing for which he was inclinedto dislike this tall, up-standing girl was her unconscious (he realisedthe unconsciousness of it) air of having always lived in the atmosphereof millions, of never having known a reason why she should not haveanything she had a desire for. Perhaps, upon the whole, he said tohimself, it was his own ill luck and sense of defeat which made hercorner, with its cushions and comforts, her properly attentive maid, and her cold weather sables expressive of a fortune too colossal to bedecent. 

The episode of the plump, despairing Tommy he had liked, however. Therehad been a fine naturalness about it and a fine practicalness in herprompt order to the elderly nurse that the richly-caparisoned donkeyshould be sent to her. This had at once made it clear to the donor thathis gift was too valuable to be left behind. 

"She did not care twopence for the lot of us, " was his summing up. "Shemight have been nothing but the nicest possible warm-hearted nursemaidor a cottage woman who loved the child. "

He was quite aware that though he had found himself more than onceobserving her, she herself had probably not recognised the trivial factof his existing upon that other side of the barrier which separated thehigher grade of passenger from the lower. There was, indeed, no reasonwhy she should have singled him out for observation, and she was, infact, too frequently absorbed in her own reflections to be in theframe of mind to remark her fellow passengers to the extent which wasgenerally customary with her. During her crossings of the Atlantic sheusually made mental observation of the people on board. This time, whenshe was not talking to the Worthingtons, or reading, she was thinking ofthe possibilities of her visit to Stornham. She used to walk about thedeck thinking of them and, sitting in her chair, sum them up as her eyesrested on the rolling and breaking waves. 

There were many things to be considered, and one of the first was theperfectly sane suggestion her father had made. 

"Suppose she does not want to be rescued? Suppose you find her acomfortable fine lady who adores her husband. "

Such a thing was possible, though Bettina did not think it probable. Sheintended, however, to prepare herself even for this. If she found LadyAnstruthers plump and roseate, pleased with herself and her position, she was quite equal to making her visit appear a casual and conventionalaffair. 

"I ought to wish it to be so, " she thought, "and, yet, howdisappointingly I should feel she had changed. Still, even ethicalreasons would not excuse one for wishing her to be miserable. " She was acreature with a number of passionate ideals which warred frequently withthe practical side of her mentality. Often she used to walk up and downthe deck or lean upon the ship's side, her eyes stormy with emotions. 

"I do not want to find Rosy a heartless woman, and I do not want to findher wretched. What do I want? Only the usual thing--that what cannot beundone had never been done. People are always wishing that. "

She was standing near the second-cabin barrier thinking this, the firsttime she saw the passenger with the red hair. She had paused by merechance, and while her eyes were stormy with her thought, she suddenlybecame conscious that she was looking directly into other eyes asdarkling as her own. They were those of a man on the wrong side of thebarrier. He had a troubled, brooding face, and, as their gaze met, each of them started slightly and turned away with the sense of havingunconsciously intruded and having been intruded upon. 

"That rough-looking man, " she commented to herself, "is as anxious anddisturbed as I am. "

Salter did look rough, it was true. His well-worn clothes had sufferedsomewhat from the restrictions of a second-class cabin shared with twoother men. But the aspect which had presented itself to her brief glancehad been not so much roughness of clothing as of mood expressing itselfin his countenance. He was thinking harshly and angrily of the lifeahead of him. 

These looks of theirs which had so inadvertently encountered eachother were of that order which sometimes startles one when in passing astranger one finds one's eyes entangled for a second in his or hers, asthe case may be. At such times it seems for that instant difficult todisentangle one's gaze. But neither of these two thought of the othermuch, after hurrying away. Each was too fully mastered by personal mood. 

There would, indeed, have been no reason for their encountering eachother further but for "the accident, " as it was called when spoken ofafterwards, the accident which might so easily have been a catastrophe. It occurred that night. This was two nights before they were to land. 

Everybody had begun to come under the influence of that cheerfulness ofhumour, the sense of relief bordering on gaiety, which generally elatespeople when a voyage is drawing to a close. If one has been dull, onebegins to gather one's self together, rejoiced that the boredom is over. In any case, there are plans to be made, thought of, or discussed. 

"You wish to go to Stornham at once?" Mrs. Worthington said to Bettina. "How pleased Lady Anstruthers and Sir Nigel must be at the idea ofseeing you with them after so long. "

"I can scarcely tell you how I am looking forward to it, " Bettyanswered. 

She sat in her corner among her cushions looking at the dark waterwhich seemed to sweep past the ship, and listening to the throb of theengines. She was not gay. She was wondering how far the plans she hadmade would prove feasible. Mrs. Worthington was not aware that her visitto Stornham Court was to be unannounced. It had not been necessary toexplain the matter. The whole affair was simple and decorous enough. Miss Vanderpoel was to bid good-bye to her friends and go at once to hersister, Lady Anstruthers, whose husband's country seat was but a shortjourney from London. Bettina and her father had arranged that the factshould be kept from the society paragraphist. This had required someadroit management, but had actually been accomplished. 

As the waves swished past her, Bettina was saying to herself, "Whatwill Rosy say when she sees me! What shall I say when I see Rosy? We aredrawing nearer to each other with every wave that passes. "

A fog which swept up suddenly sent them all below rather early. TheWorthingtons laughed and talked a little in their staterooms, butpresently became quiet and had evidently gone to bed. Bettina wasrestless and moved about her room alone after she had sent away hermaid. She at last sat down and finished a letter she had been writing toher father. 

"As I near the land, " she wrote, "I feel a sort of excitement. Severaltimes to-day I have recalled so distinctly the picture of Rosy as I sawher last, when we all stood crowded upon the wharf at New York to seeher off. She and Nigel were leaning upon the rail of the upper deck. She looked such a delicate, airy little creature, quite like a prettyschoolgirl with tears in her eyes. She was laughing and crying at thesame time, and kissing both her hands to us again and again. I wascrying passionately myself, though I tried to conceal the fact, and Iremember that each time I looked from Rosy to Nigel's heavy face thepoignancy of my anguish made me break forth again. I wonder if it wasbecause I was a child, that he looked such a contemptuous brute, evenwhen he pretended to smile. It is twelve years since then. I wonder--howI wonder, what I shall find. "

She stopped writing and sat a few moments, her chin upon her hand, thinking. Suddenly she sprang to her feet in alarm. The stillness of thenight was broken by wild shouts, a running of feet outside, a tumult ofmingled sounds and motion, a dash and rush of surging water, a strangethumping and straining of engines, and a moment later she was hurledfrom one side of her stateroom to the other by a crashing shock whichseemed to heave the ship out of the sea, shuddering as if the end of allthings had come. 

It was so sudden and horrible a thing that, though she had only beenflung upon a pile of rugs and cushions and was unhurt, she felt as ifshe had been struck on the head and plunged into wild delirium. Abovethe sound of the dashing and rocking waves, the straining and roaring ofhacking engines and the pandemonium of voices rose from one end of theship to the other, one wild, despairing, long-drawn shriek of women andchildren. Bettina turned sick at the mad terror in it--the insensate, awful horror. 

"Something has run into us!" she gasped, getting up with her heartleaping in her throat. 

She could hear the Worthingtons' tempest of terrified confusion throughthe partitions between them, and she remembered afterwards that in thespace of two or three seconds, and in the midst of their clamour, ahundred incongruous thoughts leaped through her brain. Perhaps they werethis moment going down. Now she knew what it was like! This thing shehad read of in newspapers! Now she was going down in mid-ocean, she, Betty Vanderpoel! And, as she sprang to clutch her fur coat, thereflashed before her mental vision a gruesome picture of the headlinesin the newspapers and the inevitable reference to the millions sherepresented. 

"I must keep calm, " she heard herself say, as she fastened thelong coat, clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering. "PoorDaddy--poor Daddy!"

Maddening new sounds were all about her, sounds of water dashing andchurning, sounds of voices bellowing out commands, straining and leapingsounds of the engines. What was it--what was it? She must at leastfind out. Everybody was going mad in the staterooms, the stewards wererushing about, trying to quiet people, their own voices shaking andbreaking into cracked notes. If the worst had happened, everyone wouldbe fighting for life in a few minutes. Out on deck she must get and findout for herself what the worst was. 

She was the first woman outside, though the wails and shrieks swelledbelow, and half-dressed, ghastly creatures tumbled gasping up thecompanion-way. 

"What is it?" she heard. "My God! what's happened? Where's the Captain!Are we going down! The boats! The boats!"

It was useless to speak to the seamen rushing by. They did not see, muchless hear! She caught sight of a man who could not be a sailor, sincehe was standing still. She made her way to him, thankful that she hadmanaged to stop her teeth chattering. 

"What has happened to us?" she said. 

He turned and looked at her straitly. He was the second-cabin passengerwith the red hair. 

"A tramp steamer has run into us in the fog, " he answered. 

"How much harm is done?"

"They are trying to find out. I am standing here on the chance ofhearing something. It is madness to ask any man questions. "

They spoke to each other in short, sharp sentences, knowing there was notime to lose. 

"Are you horribly frightened?" he asked. 

She stamped her foot. 

"I hate it--I hate it!" she said, flinging out her hand towards theblack, heaving water. "The plunge--the choking! No one could hate itmore. But I want to DO something!"

She was turning away when he caught her hand and held her. 

"Wait a second, " he said. "I hate it as much as you do, but I believe wetwo can keep our heads. Those who can do that may help, perhaps. Let ustry to quiet the people. As soon as I find out anything I will come toyour friends' stateroom. You are near the boats there. Then I shall goback to the second cabin. You work on your side and I'll work on mine. That's all. "

"Thank you. Tell the Worthingtons. I'm going to the saloon deck. " Shewas off as she spoke. 

Upon the stairway she found herself in the midst of a strugglingpanic-stricken mob, tripping over each other on the steps, and clutchingat any garment nearest, to drag themselves up as they fell, or were onthe point of falling. Everyone was crying out in question and appeal. 

Bettina stood still, a firm, tall obstacle, and clutched at the hystericwoman who was hurled against her. 

"I've been on deck, " she said. "A tramp steamer has run into us. No onehas time to answer questions. The first thing to do is to put on warmclothes and secure the life belts in case you need them. "

At once everyone turned upon her as if she was an authority. She repliedwith almost fierce determination to the torrent of words poured forth. 

"I know nothing further--only that if one is not a fool one must makesure of clothes and belts. "

"Quite right, Miss Vanderpoel, " said one young man, touching his cap innervous propitiation. 

"Stop screaming, " Betty said mercilessly to the woman. "It'sidiotic--the more noise you make the less chance you have. How can menkeep their wits among a mob of shrieking, mad women?"

That the remote Miss Vanderpoel should have emerged from her luxuriouscorner to frankly bully the lot of them was an excellent shock for thecrowd. Men, who had been in danger of losing their heads and becomingas uncontrolled as the women, suddenly realised the fact and pulledthemselves together. Bettina made her way at once to the Worthingtons'staterooms. 

There she found frenzy reigning. Blanche and Marie Worthington weredarting to and fro, dragging about first one thing and then another. They were silly with fright, and dashed at, and dropped alternately, life belts, shoes, jewel cases, and wraps, while they sobbed and criedout hysterically. "Oh, what shall we do with mother! What shall we do!"

The manners of Betty Vanderpoel's sharp schoolgirl days returned to herin full force. She seized Blanche by the shoulder and shook her. 

"What a donkey you are!" she said. "Put on your clothes. There theyare, " pushing her to the place where they hung. "Marie--dress yourselfthis moment. We may be in no real danger at all. "

"Do you think not! Oh, Betty!" they wailed in concert. "Oh, what shallwe do with mother!"

"Where is your mother?"

"She fainted--Louise----"

Betty was in Mrs. Worthington's cabin before they had finished speaking. The poor woman had fainted, and struck her cheek against a chair. Shelay on the floor in her nightgown, with blood trickling from a cut onher face. Her maid, Louise, was wringing her hands, and doing nothingwhatever. 

"If you don't bring the brandy this minute, " said the beautiful MissVanderpoel, "I'll box your ears. Believe me, my girl. " She looked socapable of doing it that the woman was startled and actually offendedinto a return of her senses. Miss Vanderpoel had usually the bestpossible manners in dealing with her inferiors. 

Betty poured brandy down Mrs. Worthington's throat and applied strongsmelling salts until she gasped back to consciousness. She had justburst into frightened sobs, when Betty heard confusion and exclamationsin the adjoining room. Blanche and Marie had cried out, and a man'svoice was speaking. Betty went to them. They were in various stages ofundress, and the red-haired second-cabin passenger was standing at thedoor. 

"I promised Miss Vanderpoel----" he was saying, when Betty came forward. He turned to her promptly. 

"I come to tell you that it seems absolutely to be relied on that thereis no immediate danger. The tramp is more injured than we are. "

"Oh, are you sure? Are you sure?" panted Blanche, catching at hissleeve. 

"Yes, " he answered. "Can I do anything for you?" he said to Bettina, whowas on the point of speaking. 

"Will you be good enough to help me to assist Mrs. Worthington into herberth, and then try to find the doctor. "

He went into the next room without speaking. To Mrs. Worthington hespoke briefly a few words of reassurance. He was a powerful man, andlaid her on her berth without dragging her about uncomfortably, ormaking her feel that her weight was greater than even in her mostdesponding moments she had suspected. Even her helplessly hysteric moodwas illuminated by a ray of grateful appreciation. 

"Oh, thank you--thank you, " she murmured. "And you are quite sure thereis no actual danger, Mr. ----?"

"Salter, " he terminated for her. "You may feel safe. The damage isreally only slight, after all. "

"It is so good of you to come and tell us, " said the poor lady, stilltremulous. "The shock was awful. Our introduction has been an alarmingone. I--I don't think we have met during the voyage. "

"No, " replied Salter. "I am in the second cabin. "

"Oh! thank you. It's so good of you, " she faltered amiably, for want ofinspiration. As he went out of the stateroom, Salter spoke to Bettina. 

"I will send the doctor, if I can find him, " he said. "I think, perhaps, you had better take some brandy yourself. I shall. "

"It's queer how little one seems to realise even that there aresecond-cabin passengers, " commented Mrs. Worthington feebly. "That was anice man, and perfectly respectable. He even had a kind of--of manner. "

CHAPTER IX

LADY JANE GREY

It seemed upon the whole even absurd that after a shock so awful and apanic wild enough to cause people to expose their very souls--forthere were, of course, endless anecdotes to be related afterwards, illustrative of grotesque terror, cowardice, and utter abandonmentof all shadows of convention--that all should end in an anticlimax oftrifling danger, upon which, in a day or two, jokes might be made. Eventhe tramp steamer had not been seriously injured, though its injurieswere likely to be less easy of repair than those of the Meridiana. 

"Still, " as a passenger remarked, when she steamed into the dock atLiverpool, "we might all be at the bottom of the Atlantic Oceanthis morning. Just think what columns there would have been in thenewspapers. Imagine Miss Vanderpoel's being drowned. "

"I was very rude to Louise, when I found her wringing her hands overyou, and I was rude to Blanche, " Bettina said to Mrs. Worthington. "Infact I believe I was rude to a number of people that night. I am ratherashamed. "

"You called me a donkey, " said Blanche, "but it was the best thing youcould have done. You frightened me into putting on my shoes, instead oftrying to comb my hair with them. It was startling to see you march intothe stateroom, the only person who had not been turned into a gibberingidiot. I know I was gibbering, and I know Marie was. "

"We both gibbered at the red-haired man when he came in, " said Marie. "We clutched at him and gibbered together. Where is the red-haired man, Betty? Perhaps we made him ill. I've not seen him since that moment. "

"He is in the second cabin, I suppose, " Bettina answered, "but I havenot seen him, either. "

"We ought to get up a testimonial and give it to him, because he didnot gibber, " said Blanche. "He was as rude and as sensible as you were, Betty. "

They did not see him again, in fact, at that time. He had reasons of hisown for preferring to remain unseen. The truth was that the nearer hisapproach to his native shores, the nastier, he was perfectly conscious, his temper became, and he did not wish to expose himself by any incidentwhich might cause him stupidly and obviously to lose it. 

The maid, Louise, however, recognised him among her companions in thethird-class carriage in which she travelled to town. To her mind, whoseopinions were regulated by neatly arranged standards, he looked moroseand shabbily dressed. Some of the other second-cabin passengers had madethemselves quite smart in various, not too distinguished ways. He hadnot changed his dress at all, and the large valise upon the luggagerack was worn and battered as if with long and rough usage. The womanwondered a little if he would address her, and inquire after the healthof her mistress. But, being an astute creature, she only wondered thisfor an instant, the next she realised that, for one reason or another, it was clear that he was not of the tribe of second-rate persons whopursue an accidental acquaintance with their superiors in fortune, through sociable interchange with their footmen or maids. 

When the train slackened its speed at the platform of the station, hegot up, reaching down his valise and leaving the carriage, strode to thenearest hansom cab, waving the porter aside. 

"Charing Cross, " he called out to the driver, jumped in, and was rattledaway. 

. . . . . 

During the years which had passed since Rosalie Vanderpoel first came toLondon as Lady Anstruthers, numbers of huge luxurious hotels had grownup, principally, as it seemed, that Americans should swarm into themand live at an expense which reminded them of their native land. Suchestablishments would never have been built for English people, whosehabit it is merely to "stop" at hotels, not to LIVE in them. Thetendency of the American is to live in his hotel, even though hisintention may be only to remain in it two days. He is accustomed todoing himself extremely well in proportion to his resources, whetherthey be great or small, and the comforts, as also the luxuries, heallows himself and his domestic appendages are in a proportion muchhigher in its relation to these resources than it would be were heEnglish, French, German, or Italians. As a consequence, he expects, whenhe goes forth, whether holiday-making or on business, that his hostelryshall surround him, either with holiday luxuries and gaiety, or withsuch lavishness of comfort as shall alleviate the wear and tear ofbusiness cares and fatigues. The rich man demands something almost asgood as he has left at home, the man of moderate means something muchbetter. Certain persons given to regarding public wants and desires asfoundations for the fortune of business schemes having discoveredthis, the enormous and sumptuous hotel evolved itself from their astuteknowledge of common facts. At the entrances of these hotels, omnibuses and cabs, laden with trunks and packages frequentlybearing labels marked with red letters "S. S. So-and-So, Stateroom--Hold--Baggage-room, " drew up and deposited their contentsand burdens at regular intervals. Then men with keen, and often humorousfaces or almost painfully anxious ones, their exceedingly well-dressedwives, and more or less attractive and vivacious-looking daughters, their eager little girls, and un-English-looking little boys, passedthrough the corridors in flocks and took possession of suites of rooms, sometimes for twenty-four hours, sometimes for six weeks. 

The Worthingtons took possession of such a suite in such a hotel. Bettina Vanderpoel's apartments faced the Embankment. From her windowsshe could look out at the broad splendid, muddy Thames, slowly rollingin its grave, stately way beneath its bridges, bearing with it heavylumbering barges, excited tooting little penny steamers and craftof various shapes and sizes, the errand or burden of each meaning adifferent story. 

It had been to Bettina one of her pleasures of the finest epicureanflavour to reflect that she had never had any brief and superficialknowledge of England, as she had never been to the country at all inthose earlier years, when her knowledge of places must necessarily havebeen always the incomplete one of either a schoolgirl traveller ora schoolgirl resident, whose views were limited by the walls ofrestriction built around her. 

If relations of the usual ease and friendliness had existed between LadyAnstruthers and her family, Bettina would, doubtless, have known hersister's adopted country well. It would have been a thing so naturalas to be almost inevitable, that she would have crossed the Channel tospend her holidays at Stornham. As matters had stood, however, the childherself, in the days when she had been a child, had had most definiteprivate views on the subject of visits to England. She had made up heryoung mind absolutely that she would not, if it were decently possibleto avoid it, set her foot upon English soil until she was old enoughand strong enough to carry out what had been at first her passionatelyromantic plans for discovering and facing the truth of the reason forthe apparent change in Rosy. When she went to England, she would go toRosy. As she had grown older, having in the course of education andtravel seen most Continental countries, she had liked to think thatshe had saved, put aside for less hasty consumption and more delicateappreciation of flavours, as it were, the country she was conscious shecared for most. 

"It is England we love, we Americans, " she had said to her father. "Whatcould be more natural? We belong to it--it belongs to us. I could neverbe convinced that the old tie of blood does not count. All nationalitieshave come to us since we became a nation, but most of us in thebeginning came from England. We are touching about it, too. We triflewith France and labour with Germany, we sentimentalise over Italy andecstacise over Spain--but England we love. How it moves us when we goto it, how we gush if we are simple and effusive, how we are stirredimaginatively if we are of the perceptive class. I have heard thecommonest little half-educated woman say the prettiest, clumsy, emotional things about what she has seen there. A New Englandschoolma'am, who has made a Cook's tour, will almost have tears in hervoice as she wanders on with her commonplaces about hawthorn hedges andthatched cottages and white or red farms. Why are we not unconsciouslypathetic about German cottages and Italian villas? Because we have not, in centuries past, had the habit of being born in them. It is onlyan English cottage and an English lane, whether white with hawthornblossoms or bare with winter, that wakes in us that little yearning, grovelling tenderness that is so sweet. It is only nature calling ushome. "

Mrs. Worthington came in during the course of the morning to find herstanding before her window looking out at the Thames, the Embankment, the hansom cabs themselves, with an absolutely serious absorption. Thischanged to a smile as she turned to greet her. 

"I am delighted, " she said. "I could scarcely tell you how much. Theimpression is all new and I am excited a little by everything. I am sointensely glad that I have saved it so long and that I have known itonly as part of literature. I am even charmed that it rains, and thatthe cabmen's mackintoshes are shining and wet. " She drew forward achair, and Mrs. Worthington sat down, looking at her with involuntaryadmiration. 

"You look as if you were delighted, " she said. "Your eyes--you haveamazing eyes, Betty! I am trying to picture to myself what LadyAnstruthers will feel when she sees you. What were you like when shemarried?"

Bettina sat down, smiling and looking, indeed, quite incredibly lovely. She was capable of a warmth and a sweetness which were as embracing asother qualities she possessed were powerful. 

"I was eight years old, " she said. "I was a rude little girl, withlong legs and a high, determined voice. I know I was rude. I rememberanswering back. "

"I seem to have heard that you did not like your brother-in-law, andthat you were opposed to the marriage. "

"Imagine the undisciplined audacity of a child of eight 'opposing' themarriage of her grown-up sister. I was quite capable of it. You see inthose days we had not been trained at all (one had only been allowedtremendous liberty), and interfered conversationally with one's eldersand betters at any moment. I was an American little girl, and Americanlittle girls were really--they really were!" with a laugh, whose musicalsound was after all wholly non-committal. 

"You did not treat Sir Nigel Anstruthers as one of your betters. "

"He was one of my elders, at all events, and becomingness of bearingshould have taught me to hold my little tongue. I am giving some thoughtnow to the kind of thing I must invent as a suitable apology when I findhim a really delightful person, full of virtues and accomplishments. Perhaps he has a horror of me. "

"I should like to be present at your first meeting, " Mrs. Worthingtonreflected. "You are going down to Stornham to-morrow?"

"That is my plan. When I write to you on my arrival, I will tell you ifI encountered the horror. " Then, with a swift change of subject and alifting of her slender, velvet line of eyebrow, "I am only deploringthat I have not time to visit the Tower. "

Mrs. Worthington was betrayed into a momentary glance of uncertainty, almost verging in its significance on a gasp. 

"The Tower? Of London? Dear Betty!"

Bettina's laugh was mellow with revelation. 

"Ah!" she said. "You don't know my point of view; it's plain enough. You see, when I delight in these things, I think I delight most in mydelight in them. It means that I am almost having the kind of feelingthe fresh American souls had who landed here thirty years ago andrevelled in the resemblance to Dickens's characters they met with inthe streets, and were historically thrilled by the places where people'sheads were chopped off. Imagine their reflections on Charles I. , whenthey stood in Whitehall gazing on the very spot where that poor lastword was uttered--'Remember. ' And think of their joy when each crossingsweeper they gave disproportionate largess to, seemed Joe All Alones inthe slightest disguise. "

"You don't mean to say----" Mrs. Worthington was vaguely awakening tothe situation. 

"That the charm of my visit, to myself, is that I realise that I amrather like that. I have positively preserved something because I havekept away. You have been here so often and know things so well, and youwere even so sophisticated when you began, that you have never reallyhad the flavours and emotions. I am sophisticated, too, sophisticatedenough to have cherished my flavours as a gourmet tries to save thebouquet of old wine. You think that the Tower is the pleasure ofhousemaids on a Bank Holiday. But it quite makes me quiver to thinkof it, " laughing again. "That I laugh, is the sign that I am notas beautifully, freshly capable of enjoyment as those genuine firstAmericans were, and in a way I am sorry for it. "

Mrs. Worthington laughed also, and with an enjoyment. 

"You are very clever, Betty, " she said. 

"No, no, " answered Bettina, "or, if I am, almost everybody is clever inthese days. We are nearly all of us comparatively intelligent. "

"You are very interesting at all events, and the Anstruthers will exultin you. If they are dull in the country, you will save them. "

"I am very interested, at all events, " said Bettina, "and interest likemine is quite passe. A clever American who lives in England, and is thepet of duchesses, once said to me (he always speaks of Americans as ifthey were a distant and recently discovered species), 'When they firstcame over they were a novelty. Their enthusiasm amused people, but now, you see, it has become vieux jeu. Young women, whose specialty was to beexcited by the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, are not noveltiesany longer. In fact, it's been done, and it's done FOR as a specialty. 'And I am excited about the Tower of London. I may be able to restrainmy feelings at the sight of the Beef Eaters, but they will upset me alittle, and I must brace myself, I must indeed. "

"Truly, Betty?" said Mrs. Worthington, regarding her with curiosity, arising from a faint doubt of her entire seriousness, mingled with afainter doubt of her entire levity. 

Betty flung out her hands in a slight, but very involuntary-looking, gesture, and shook her head. 

"Ah!" she said, "it was all TRUE, you know. They were all horriblyreal--the things that were shuddered over and sentimentalised about. Sophistication, combined with imagination, makes them materialise again, to me, at least, now I am here. The gulf between a historical figure anda man or woman who could bleed and cry out in human words was broad whenone was at school. Lady Jane Grey, for instance, how nebulous she wasand how little one cared. She seemed invented merely to add a detailto one's lesson in English history. But, as we drove across WaterlooBridge, I caught a glimpse of the Tower, and what do you suppose I beganto think of? It was monstrous. I saw a door in the Tower and the stonesteps, and the square space, and in the chill clear, early morning alittle slender, helpless girl led out, a little, fair, real thing likeRosy, all alone--everyone she belonged to far away, not a man nearwho dared utter a word of pity when she turned her awful, meek, young, desperate eyes upon him. She was a pious child, and, no doubt, shelifted her eyes to the sky. I wonder if it was blue and its bluenessbroke her heart, because it looked as if it might have pitied such ayoung, patient girl thing led out in the fair morning to walk to thehacked block and give her trembling pardon to the black-visored man withthe axe, and then 'commending her soul to God' to stretch her sweet slimneck out upon it. "

"Oh, Betty, dear!" Mrs. Worthington expostulated. 

Bettina sprang to her and took her hand in pretty appeal. 

"I beg pardon! I beg pardon, I really do, " she exclaimed. "I didnot intend deliberately to be painful. But that--beneath thesophistication--is something of what I bring to England. "

CHAPTER X

"IS LADY ANSTRUTHERS AT HOME?"

All that she had brought with her to England, combined with what she hadcalled "sophistication, " but which was rather her exquisite appreciationof values and effects, she took with her when she went the next day toCharing Cross Station and arranged herself at her ease in the railwaycarriage, while her maid bought their tickets for Stornham. 

What the people in the station saw, the guards and porters, the men inthe book stalls, the travellers hurrying past, was a striking-lookinggirl, whose colouring and carriage made one turn to glance after her, and who, having bought some periodicals and papers, took her place in afirst-class compartment and watched the passersby interestedly throughthe open window. Having been looked at and remarked on during herwhole life, Bettina did not find it disturbing that more than onecorduroy-clothed porter and fresh-coloured, elderly gentleman, orfreshly attired young one, having caught a glimpse of her through herwindow, made it convenient to saunter past or hover round. She lookedat them much more frankly than they looked at her. To her they were allspecimens of the types she was at present interested in. For practicalreasons she was summing up English character with more deliberateintention than she had felt in the years when she had gradually learnedto know Continental types and differentiate such peculiarities as weresignificant of their ranks and nations. As the first Reuben Vanderpoelhad studied the countenances and indicative methods of the inhabitantsof the new parts of the country in which it was his intention todo business, so the modernity of his descendant applied itself toobservation for reasons parallel in nature though not in actual kind. As he had brought beads and firewater to bear as agents upon savageswho would barter for them skins and products which might be turned intomoney, so she brought her nineteenth-century beauty, steadfastness ofpurpose and alertness of brain to bear upon the matter the practicaldealing with which was the end she held in view. To bear herself in thismatter with as practical a control of situations as that with whichher great-grandfather would have borne himself in making a trade with apreviously unknown tribe of Indians was quite her intention, though ithad not occurred to her to put it to herself in any such form. Still, whether she was aware of the fact or not, her point of view was exactlywhat the first Reuben Vanderpoel's had been on many very differentoccasions. She had before her the task of dealing with facts and factorsof which at present she knew but little. Astuteness of perception, self-command, and adaptability were her chief resources. She was ready, either for calm, bold approach, or equally calm and wholly non-committalretreat. 

The perceptions she had brought with her filled her journey into Kentwith delicious things, delicious recognition of beauties she had beforeknown the existence of only through the reading of books, and thedwelling upon their charms as reproduced, more or less perfectly, on canvas. She saw roll by her, with the passing of the train, theloveliness of land and picturesqueness of living which she had savedfor herself with epicurean intention for years. Her fancy, when detachedfrom her thoughts of her sister, had been epicurean, and she had beenquite aware that it was so. When she had left the suburbs and thosevillages already touched with suburbanity behind, she felt herselfsettle into a glow of luxurious enjoyment in the freshness ofher pleasure in the familiar, and yet unfamiliar, objects in thethick-hedged fields, whose broad-branched, thick-foliaged oaks andbeeches were more embowering in their shade, and sweeter in their greenthan anything she remembered that other countries had offered her, even at their best. Within the fields the hawthorn hedges beautifullyenclosed were groups of resigned mother sheep with their young lambsabout them. The curious pointed tops of the red hopkilns, piercing thetrees near the farmhouses, wore an almost intentional air of addingpicturesque detail. There were clusters of old buildings and dotsof cottages and cottage gardens which made her now and then utterexclamations of delight. Little inarticulate Rosy had seen and felt itall twelve years before on her hopeless bridal home-coming when Nigelhad sat huddled unbecomingly in the corner of the railway carriage. Herpower of expression had been limited to little joyful gasps and obviouslaudatory adjectives, smothered in their birth by her first glance ather bridegroom. Betty, in seeing it, knew all the exquisiteness of herown pleasure, and all the meanings of it. 

Yes, it was England--England. It was the England of Constable andMorland, of Miss Mitford and Miss Austen, the Brontes and George Eliot. The land which softly rolled and clothed itself in the rich verdure ofmany trees, sometimes in lovely clusters, sometimes in covering copse, was Constable's; the ripe young woman with the fat-legged childrenand the farmyard beasts about her, as she fed the hens from the woodenpiggin under her arm, was Morland's own. The village street might beMiss Mitford's, the well-to-do house Jane Austen's own fancy, in itswarm brick and comfortable decorum. She laughed a little as she thoughtit. 

"That is American, " she said, "the habit of comparing every stickand stone and breathing thing to some literary parallel. We almostinvariably say that things remind us of pictures or books--most usuallybooks. It seems a little crude, but perhaps it means that we are anintensely literary and artistic people. "

She continued to find comparisons revealing to her their appositeness, until her journey had ended by the train's slackening speed and comingto a standstill before the rural-looking little station which hadpresented its quaint aspect to Lady Anstruthers on her home-coming ofyears before. 

It had not, during the years which certainly had given time for change, altered in the least. The station master had grown stouter and morerosy, and came forward with his respectful, hospitable air, to attend tothe unusual-looking young lady, who was the only first-class passenger. He thought she must be a visitor expected at some country house, butnone of the carriages, whose coachmen were his familiar acquaintances, were in waiting. That such a fine young lady should be paying a visitat any house whose owners did not send an equipage to attend her coming, struck him as unusual. The brougham from the "Crown, " though a decentcountry town vehicle, seemed inadequate. Yet, there it stood drawn upoutside the station, and she went to it with the manner of a young ladywho had ordered its attendance and knew it would be there. 

Wells felt a good deal of interest. Among the many young ladies whodescended from the first-class compartments and passed through thelittle waiting-room on their way to the carriages of the gentry theywere going to visit, he did not know when a young lady had "caught hiseye, " so to speak, as this one did. She was not exactly the kind ofyoung lady one would immediately class mentally as "a foreigner, " butthe blue of her eyes was so deep, and her hair and eyelashes so dark, that these things, combining themselves with a certain "way" she had, made him feel her to be of a type unfamiliar to the region, at least. 

He was struck, also, by the fact that the young lady had no maid withher. The truth was that Bettina had purposely left her maid in town. Ifawkward things occurred, the presence of an attendant would be a sortof complication. It was better, on the first approach, to be whollyunencumbered. 

"How far are we from Stornham Court?" she inquired. 

"Five miles, my lady, " he answered, touching his cap. She expressedsomething which to the rural and ingenuous, whose standards weredefined, demanded a recognition of probable rank. 

"I'd like to know, " was his comment to his wife when he went home todinner, "who has gone to Stornham Court to-day. There's few enoughvisitors go there, and none such as her, for certain. She don't liveanywhere on the line above here, either, for I've never seen her facebefore. She was a tall, handsome one--she was, but it isn't just thatmade you look after her. She was a clever one with a spirit, I'll bebound. I was wondering what her ladyship would have to say to her. "

"Perhaps she was one of HIS fine ladies?" suggestively. 

"That she wasn't, either. And, as for that, I wonder what he'd have tosay to such as she is. "

There was complexity of element enough in the thing she was on her wayto do, Bettina was thinking, as she was driven over the white ribbonof country road that unrolled over rise and hollow, between thesheep-dotted greenness of fields and the scented hedges. The soft beautyenclosing her was a little shut out from her by her mental attitude. Shebrought forward for her own decisions upon suitable action a number ofpossible situations she might find herself called upon to confront. The one thing necessary was that she should be prepared for anythingwhatever, even for Rosy's not being pleased to see her, or for findingSir Nigel a thoroughly reformed and amiable character. 

"It is the thing which seemingly CANNOT happen which one is most likelyto find one's self face to face with. It will be a little awkward toarrange, if he has developed every domestic virtue, and is delighted tosee me. "

Under such rather confusing conditions her plan would be to present tothem, as an affectionate surprise, the unheralded visit, which mightappear a trifle uncalled for. She felt happily sure of herself under anycircumstances not partaking of the nature of collisions at sea. Yet shehad not behaved absolutely ill at the time of the threatened catastrophein the Meridiana. Her remembrance, an oddly sudden one, of the definitemanner of the red-haired second-class passenger, assured her of that. Hehad certainly had all his senses about him, and he had spoken to her asa person to be counted on. 

Her pulse beat a little more hurriedly as the brougham entered Stornhamvillage. It was picturesque, but struck her as looking neglected. Manyof the cottages had an air of dilapidation. There were many brokenwindows and unmended garden palings. A suggested lack of whitewash inseveral cases was not cheerful. 

"I know nothing of the duties of English landlords, " she said, lookingthrough her carriage window, "but I should do it myself, if I wereRosy. "

She saw, as she was taken through the park gateway, that that structurewas out of order, and that damaged diamond panes peered out from underthe thickness of the ivy massing itself over the lodge. 

"Ah!" was her thought, "it does not promise as it should. Happy peopledo not let things fall to pieces. "

Even winding avenue, and spreading sward, and gorse, and broom, andbracken, enfolding all the earth beneath huge trees, were not fairenough to remove a sudden remote fear which arose in her rapidlyreasoning mind. It suggested to her a point of view so new that, whileshe was amazed at herself for not having contemplated it before, shefound herself wishing that the coachman would drive rather more slowly, actually that she might have more time to reflect. 

They were nearing a dip in the park, where there was a lonely lookingpool. The bracken was thick and high there, and the sun, which had justbroken through a cloud, had pierced the trees with a golden gleam. 

A little withdrawn from this shaft of brightness stood two figures, adowdy little woman and a hunchbacked boy. The woman held some fernsin her hand, and the boy was sitting down and resting his chin on hishands, which were folded on the top of a stick. 

"Stop here for a moment, " Bettina said to the coachman. "I want to askthat woman a question. "

She had thought that she might discover if her sister was at the Court. She realised that to know would be a point of advantage. She leanedforward and spoke. 

"I beg your pardon, " she said, "I wonder if you can tell me----"

The woman came forward a little. She had a listless step and a faded, listless face. 

"What did you ask?" she said. 

Betty leaned still further forward. 

"Can you tell me----" she began and stopped. A sense of stricture inthe throat stopped her, as her eyes took in the washed-out colour ofthe thin face, the washed-out colour of the thin hair--thin drab hair, dragged in straight, hard unbecomingness from the forehead and cheeks. 

Was it true that her heart was thumping, as she had heard it said thatagitation made hearts thump?

She began again. 

"Can you--tell me if--Lady Anstruthers is at home?" she inquired. As shesaid it she felt the blood surge up from the furious heart, and thehand she had laid on the handle of the door of the brougham clutched itinvoluntarily. 

The dowdy little woman answered her indifferently, staring at her alittle. 

"I am Lady Anstruthers, " she said. 

Bettina opened the carriage door and stood upon the ground. 

"Go on to the house, " she gave order to the coachman, and, with asomewhat startled look, he drove away. 

"Rosy!" Bettina's voice was a hushed, almost awed, thing. "YOU areRosy?"

The faded little wreck of a creature began to look frightened. 

"Rosy!" she repeated, with a small, wry, painful smile. 

She was the next moment held in the folding of strong, young arms, against a quickly beating heart. She was being wildly kissed, and thevery air seemed rich with warmth and life. 

"I am Betty, " she heard. "Look at me, Rosy! I am Betty. Look at me andremember!"

Lady Anstruthers gasped, and broke into a faint, hysteric laugh. Shesuddenly clutched at Bettina's arm. For a minute her gaze was wild asshe looked up. 

"Betty, " she cried out. "No! No! No! I can't believe it! I can't! Ican't!"

That just this thing could have taken place in her, Bettina hadnever thought. As she had reflected on her way from the station, theimpossible is what one finds one's self face to face with. Twelve yearsshould not have changed a pretty blonde thing of nineteen to a worn, unintelligent-looking dowdy of the order of dowdiness which seems tohave lived beyond age and sex. She looked even stupid, or at leaststupefied. At this moment she was a silly, middle-aged woman, who didnot know what to do. For a few seconds Bettina wondered if she was gladto see her, or only felt awkward and unequal to the situation. 

"I can't believe you, " she cried out again, and began to shiver. "Betty!Little Betty? No! No! it isn't!"

She turned to the boy, who had lifted his chin from his stick, and wasstaring. 

"Ughtred! Ughtred!" she called to him. "Come! She says--she says----"

She sat down upon a clump of heather and began to cry. She hid her facein her spare hands and broke into sobbing. 

"Oh, Betty! No!" she gasped. "It's so long ago--it's so far away. Younever came--no one--no one--came!"

The hunchbacked boy drew near. He had limped up on his stick. He spokelike an elderly, affectionate gnome, not like a child. 

"Don't do that, mother, " he said. "Don't let it upset you so, whateverit is. "

"It's so long ago; it's so far away!" she wept, with catches in herbreath and voice. "You never came!"

Betty knelt down and enfolded her again. Her bell-like voice was firmand clear. 

"I have come now, " she said. "And it is not far away. A cable will reachfather in two hours. "

Pursuing a certain vivid thought in her mind, she looked at her watch. 

"If you spoke to mother by cable this moment, " she added, withaccustomed coolness, and she felt her sister actually start as shespoke, "she could answer you by five o'clock. "

Lady Anstruther's start ended in a laugh and gasp more hysteric than herfirst. There was even a kind of wan awakening in her face, as she liftedit to look at the wonderful newcomer. She caught her hand and held it, trembling, as she weakly laughed. 

"It must be Betty, " she cried. "That little stern way! It is so likeher. Betty--Betty--dear!" She fell into a sobbing, shaken heap uponthe heather. The harrowing thought passed through Betty's mind that shelooked almost like a limp bundle of shabby clothes. She was so helplessin her pathetic, apologetic hysteria. 

"I shall--be better, " she gasped. "It's nothing. Ughtred, tell her. "

"She's very weak, really, " said the boy Ughtred, in his mature way. "Shecan't help it sometimes. I'll get some water from the pool. "

"Let me go, " said Betty, and she darted down to the water. She wasback in a moment. The boy was rubbing and patting his mother's handstenderly. 

"At any rate, " he remarked, as one consoled by a reflection, "father isnot at home. "

CHAPTER XI

"I THOUGHT YOU HAD ALL FORGOTTEN. "

As, after a singular half hour spent among the bracken under the trees, they began their return to the house, Bettina felt that her sense ofadventure had altered its character. She was still in the midst of aremarkable sort of exploit, which might end anywhere or in anything, but it had become at once more prosaic in detail and more intense in itssignificance. What its significance might prove likely to be whenshe faced it, she had not known, it is true. But this was differentfrom--from anything. As they walked up the sun-dappled avenue she keptglancing aside at Rosy, and endeavouring to draw useful conclusions. Thepoor girl's air of being a plain, insignificant frump, long past youth, struck an extraordinary and, for the time, unexplainable note. Herill-cut, out-of-date dress, the cheap suit of the hunchbacked boy, who limped patiently along, helped by his crutch, suggested possibleexplanations which were without doubt connected with the thoughtwhich had risen in Bettina's mind, as she had been driven through thebroken-hinged entrance gate. What extraordinary disposal was beingmade of Rosy's money? But her each glance at her sister also suggestedcomplication upon complication. 

The singular half hour under the trees by the pool, spent, after thefirst hysteric moments were over, in vague exclaimings and questions, which seemed half frightened and all at sea, had gradually shown herthat she was talking to a creature wholly other than the Rosalie who hadso well known and loved them all, and whom they had so well loved andknown. They did not know this one, and she did not know them, she waseven a little afraid of the stir and movement of their life and being. The Rosy they had known seemed to be imprisoned within the wall theyears of her separated life had built about her. At each breath she drewBettina saw how long the years had been to her, and how far her home hadseemed to lie away, so far that it could not touch her, and was onlya sort of dream, the recalling of which made her suddenly begin to cryagain every few minutes. To Bettina's sensitively alert mind it wasplain that it would not do in the least to drag her suddenly out of herprison, or cloister, whichsoever it might be. To do so would be likeforcing a creature accustomed only to darkness, to stare at the blazingsun. To have burst upon her with the old impetuous, candid fondnesswould have been to frighten and shock her as if with something borderingon indecency. She could not have stood it; perhaps such fondness wasso remote from her in these days that she had even ceased to be able tounderstand it. 

"Where are your little girls?" Bettina asked, remembering that there hadbeen notice given of the advent of two girl babies. 

"They died, " Lady Anstruthers answered unemotionally. "They both diedbefore they were a year old. There is only Ughtred. "

Betty glanced at the boy and saw a small flame of red creep up on hischeek. Instinctively she knew what it meant, and she put out her handand lightly touched his shoulder. 

"I hope you'll like me, Ughtred, " she said. 

He almost started at the sound of her voice, but when he turned his facetowards her he only grew redder, and looked awkward without answering. His manner was that of a boy who was unused to the amenities of politesociety, and who was only made shy by them. 

Without warning, a moment or so later, Bettina stopped in the middleof the avenue, and looked up at the arching giant branches of the treeswhich had reached out from one side to the other, as if to clasp handsor encompass an interlacing embrace. As far as the eye reached, they didthis, and the beholder stood as in a high stately pergola, with breaksof deep azure sky between. Several mellow, cawing rooks were floatingsolemnly beneath or above the branches, now wand then settling in somehighest one or disappearing in the thick greenness. 

Lady Anstruthers stopped when her sister did so, and glanced at her invague inquiry. It was plain that she had outlived even her sense of thebeauty surrounding her. 

"What are you looking at, Betty?" she asked. 

"At all of it, " Betty answered. "It is so wonderful. "

"She likes it, " said Ughtred, and then rather slunk a step behind hismother, as if he were ashamed of himself. 

"The house is just beyond those trees, " said Lady Anstruthers. 

They came in full view of it three minutes later. When she saw it, Bettyuttered an exclamation and stopped again to enjoy effects. 

"She likes that, too, " said Ughtred, and, although he said itsheepishly, there was imperfectly concealed beneath the awkwardness apleasure in the fact. 

"Do you?" asked Rosalie, with her small, painful smile. 

Betty laughed. 

"It is too picturesque, in its special way, to be quite credible, " shesaid. 

"I thought that when I first saw it, " said Rosy. 

"Don't you think so, now?"

"Well, " was the rather uncertain reply, "as Nigel says, there's not muchgood in a place that is falling to pieces. "

"Why let it fall to pieces?" Betty put it to her with impartialpromptness. 

"We haven't money enough to hold it together, " resignedly. 

As they climbed the low, broad, lichen-blotched steps, whose brokenstone balustrades were almost hidden in clutching, untrimmed ivy, Bettyfelt them to be almost incredible, too. The uneven stones of the terracethe steps mounted to were lichen-blotched and broken also. Tufts ofgreen growths had forced themselves between the flags, and added anuntidy beauty. The ivy tossed in branches over the red roof and walls ofthe house. It had been left unclipped, until it was rather an endlesslyclambering tree than a creeper. The hall they entered had the beautyof spacious form and good, old oaken panelling. There were deep windowseats and an ancient high-backed settle or so, and a massive table bythe fireless hearth. But there were no pictures in places where pictureshad evidently once hung, and the only coverings on the stone floor werethe faded remnants of a central rug and a worn tiger skin, the headalmost bald and a glass eye knocked out. 

Bettina took in the unpromising details without a quiver of theextravagant lashes. These, indeed, and the eyes pertaining to them, seemed rather to sweep the fine roof, and a certain minstrel's galleryand staircase, than which nothing could have been much finer, with thelook of an appreciative admirer of architectural features and old oak. She had not journeyed to Stornham Court with the intention of disturbingRosy, or of being herself obviously disturbed. She had come toobserve situations and rearrange them with that intelligence of whichunconsidered emotion or exclamation form no part. 

"It is the first old English house I have seen, " she said, with a sighof pleasure. "I am so glad, Rosy--I am so glad that it is yours. "

She put a hand on each of Rosy's thin shoulders--she felt sharplydefined bones as she did so--and bent to kiss her. It was the naturalaffectionate expression of her feeling, but tears started to Rosy'seyes, and the boy Ughtred, who had sat down in a window seat, turned redagain, and shifted in his place. 

"Oh, Betty!" was Rosy's faint nervous exclamation, "you seem sobeautiful and--so--so strange--that you frighten me. "

Betty laughed with the softest possible cheerfulness, shaking her alittle. 

"I shall not seem strange long, " she said, "after I have stayed with youa few weeks, if you will let me stay with you. "

"Let you! Let you!" in a sort of gasp. 

Poor little Lady Anstruthers sank on to a settle and began to cry again. It was plain that she always cried when things occurred. Ughtred'sspeech from his window seat testified at once to that. 

"Don't cry, mother, " he said. "You know how we've talked that overtogether. It's her nerves, " he explained to Bettina. "We know it onlymakes things worse, but she can't stop it. "

Bettina sat on the settle, too. She herself was not then aware of thewonderful feeling the poor little spare figure experienced, as hersoftly strong young arms curved about it. She was only aware that sheherself felt that this was a heart-breaking thing, and that she mustnot--MUST not let it be seen how much she recognised its woefulness. This was pretty, fair Rosy, who had never done a harm in her happylife--this forlorn thing was her Rosy. 

"Never mind, " she said, half laughing again. "I rather want to crymyself, and I am stronger than she is. I am immensely strong. "

"Yes! Yes!" said Lady Anstruthers, wiping her eyes, and making atremendous effort at self-respecting composure. "You are strong. I havegrown so weak in--well, in every way. Betty, I'm afraid this is a poorwelcome. You see--I'm afraid you'll find it all so different from--fromNew York. "

"I wanted to find it different, " said Betty. 

"But--but--I mean--you know----" Lady Anstruthers turned helplessly tothe boy. Bettina was struck with the painful truth that she looked evensilly as she turned to him. "Ughtred--tell her, " she ended, and hung herhead. 

Ughtred had got down at once from his seat and limped forward. Hisunprepossessing face looked as if he pulled his childishness togetherwith an unchildish effort. 

"She means, " he said, in his awkward way, "that she doesn't know howto make you comfortable. The rooms are all so shabby--everything is soshabby. Perhaps you won't stay when you see. "

Bettina perceptibly increased the firmness of her hold on her sister'sbody. It was as if she drew it nearer to her side in a kind of takingpossession. She knew that the moment had come when she might go thisfar, at least, without expressing alarming things. 

"You cannot show me anything that will frighten me, " was the answershe made. "I have come to stay, Rosy. We can make things right if theyrequire it. Why not?"

Lady Anstruthers started a little, and stared at her. She knew tenthousand reasons why things had not been made right, and the casualinference that such reasons could be lightly swept away as if by themere wave of a hand, implied a power appertaining to a time seeming solost forever that it was too much for her. 

"Oh, Betty, Betty!" she cried, "you talk as if--you are so----!"

The fact, so simple to the members of the abnormal class to which she ofa truth belonged, the class which heaped up its millions, the absoluteknowledge that there was a great deal of money in the world and that shewas of those who were among its chief owners, had ceased to seem a fact, and had vanished into the region of fairy stories. 

That she could not believe it a reality revealed itself to Bettina, asby a flash, which was also a revelation of many things. There would beunpleasing truths to be learned, and she had not made her pilgrimage fornothing. But--in any event--there were advantages without doubt in thecircumstance which subjected one to being perpetually pointed out as adaughter of a multi-millionaire. As this argued itself out for her withrapid lucidity, she bent and kissed Rosy once more. She even tried todo it lightly, and not to allow the rush of love and pity in her soul tobetray her. 

"I talk as if--as if I were Betty, " she said. "You have forgotten. Ihave not. I have been looking forward to this for years. I have beenplanning to come to you since I was eleven years old. And here we sit. "

"You didn't forget? You didn't?" faltered the poor wreck of Rosy. "Oh!Oh! I thought you had all forgotten me--quite--quite!"

And her face went down in her spare, small hands, and she began to cryagain. 

CHAPTER XII

UGHTRED

Bettina stood alone in her bedroom a couple of hours later. LadyAnstruthers had taken her to it, preparing her for its limitations byexplaining that she would find it quite different from her room inNew York. She had been pathetically nervous and flushed about it, andBettina had also been aware that the apartment itself had been hastily, and with much moving of objects from one chamber to another, made readyfor her. 

The room was large and square and low. It was panelled in small squaresof white wood. The panels were old enough to be cracked here and there, and the paint was stained and yellow with time, where it was not knockedor worn off. There was a small paned, leaded window which filled alarge part of one side of the room, and its deep seat was an agreeablefeature. Sitting in it, one looked out over several red-walled gardens, and through breaks in the trees of the park to a fair beyond. Bettinastood before this window for a few moments, and then took a seat in theembrasure, that she might gaze out and reflect at leisure. 

Her genius, as has before been mentioned, was the genius for living, for being vital. Many people merely exist, are kept alive by others, orcontinue to vegetate because the persistent action of normal functionswill allow of their doing no less. Bettina Vanderpoel had lived vividly, and in the midst of a self-created atmosphere of action from herfirst hour. It was not possible for her to be one of the horde of merespectators. Wheresoever she moved there was some occult stirring of themental, and even physical, air. Her pulses beat too strongly, her bloodran too fast to allow of inaction of mind or body. When, in passingthrough the village, she had seen the broken windows and the hangingpalings of the cottages, it had been inevitable that, at once, sheshould, in thought, repair them, set them straight. Disorder filled herwith a sort of impatience which was akin to physical distress. If shehad been born a poor woman she would have worked hard for her living, and found an interest, almost an exhilaration, in her labour. Such giftsas she had would have been applied to the tasks she undertook. It hadfrequently given her pleasure to imagine herself earning her livelihoodas a seamstress, a housemaid, a nurse. She knew what she could have putinto her service, and how she could have found it absorbing. Imaginationand initiative could make any service absorbing. The actual truth wasthat if she had been a housemaid, the room she set in order would havetaken a character under her touch; if she had been a seamstress, herwork would have been swiftly done, her imagination would have inventedfor her combinations of form and colour; if she had been a nursemaid, the children under her care would never have been sufficiently boredto become tiresome or intractable, and they also would have gainedcharacter to which would have been added an undeniable vividness ofoutlook. She could not have left them alone, so to speak. In obeying themere laws of her being, she would have stimulated them. Unconsciouslyshe had stimulated her fellow pupils at school; when she was hiscompanion, her father had always felt himself stirred to interest andenterprise. 

"You ought to have been a man, Betty, " he used to say to her sometimes. 

But Betty had not agreed with him. 

"You say that, " she once replied to him, "because you see I am inclinedto do things, to change them, if they need changing. Well, one is eitherborn like that, or one is not. Sometimes I think that perhaps the peoplewho must ACT are of a distinct race. A kind of vigorous restlessnessdrives them. I remember that when I was a child I could not see a pinlying upon the ground without picking it up, or pass a drawer whichneeded closing, without giving it a push. But there has always been asmuch for women to do as for men. "

There was much to be done here of one sort of thing and another. Thatwas certain. As she gazed through the small panes of her large windows, she found herself overlooking part of a wilderness of garden, whichrevealed itself through an arch in an overgrown laurel hedge. She hadglimpses of unkempt grass paths and unclipped topiary work which hadlost its original form. Among a tangle of weeds rose the heads of clumpsof daffodils, stirred by a passing wind of spring. In the park beyond acuckoo was calling. 

She was conscious both of the forlorn beauty and significance of theneglected garden, and of the clear quaintness of the cuckoo call, as shethought of other things. 

"Her spirit and her health are broken, " was her summing up. "Herprettiness has faded to a rag. She is as nervous as an ill-treatedchild. She has lost her wits. I do not know where to begin with her. I must let her tell me things as gradually as she chooses. Until I seeNigel I shall not know what his method with her has been. She looks asif she had ceased to care for things, even for herself. What shall Iwrite to mother?"

She knew what she should write to her father. With him she could beexplicit. She could record what she had found and what it suggestedto her. She could also make clear her reason for hesitance anddeliberation. His discretion and affection would comprehend the thingwhich she herself felt and which affection not combined with discretionmight not take in. He would understand, when she told him that one ofthe first things which had struck her, had been that Rosy herself, herhelplessness and timidity, might, for a period at least, form obstaclesin their path of action. He not only loved Rosy, but realised how slighta sweet thing she had always been, and he would know how far a slightcreature's gentleness might be overpowered and beaten down. 

There was so much that her mother must be spared, there was indeedso little that it would be wise to tell her, that Bettina sat gentlyrubbing her forehead as she thought of it. The truth was that she musttell her nothing, until all was over, accomplished, decided. Whatsoeverthere was to be "over, " whatsoever the action finally taken, must bea matter lying as far as possible between her father and herself. Mrs. Vanderpoel's trouble would be too keen, her anxiety too great to keep toherself, even if she were not overwhelmed by them. She must be told ofthe beauties and dimensions of Stornham, all relatable details of Rosy'slife must be generously dwelt on. Above all Rosy must be made to writeletters, and with an air of freedom however specious. 

A knock on the door broke the thread of her reflection. It was alow-sounding knock, and she answered the summons herself, because shethought it might be Rosy's. 

It was not Lady Anstruthers who stood outside, but Ughtred, who balancedhimself on his crutches, and lifted his small, too mature, face. 

"May I come in?" he asked. 

Here was the unexpected again, but she did not allow him to see hersurprise. 

"Yes, " she said. "Certainly you may. "

He swung in and then turned to speak to her. 

"Please shut the door and lock it, " he said. 

There was sudden illumination in this, but of an order almost whimsical. That modern people in modern days should feel bolts and bars a necessityof ordinary intercourse was suggestive. She was plainly about to receiveenlightenment. She turned the key and followed the halting figure acrossthe room. 

"What are you afraid of?" she asked. 

"When mother and I talk things over, " he said, "we always do it where noone can see or hear. It's the only way to be safe. "

"Safe from what?"

His eyes fixed themselves on her as he answered her almost sullenly. 

"Safe from people who might listen and go and tell that we had beentalking. "

In his thwarted-looking, odd child-face there was a shade of appeal notwholly hidden by his evident wish not to be boylike. Betty felt a desireto kneel down suddenly and embrace him, but she knew he was not preparedfor such a demonstration. He looked like a creature who had livedcontinually at bay, and had learned to adjust himself to any situationwith caution and restraint. 

"Sit down, Ughtred, " she said, and when he did so she herself sat down, but not too near him. 

Resting his chin on the handle of a crutch, he gazed at her almostprotestingly. 

"I always have to do these things, " he said, "and I am not cleverenough, or old enough. I am only eleven. "

The mention of the number of his years was plainly not apologetic, butwas a mere statement of his limitations. There the fact was, and he mustmake the best of it he could. 

"What things do you mean?"

"Trying to make things easier--explaining things when she cannot thinkof excuses. To-day it is telling you what she is too frightened to tellyou herself. I said to her that you must be told. It made her nervousand miserable, but I knew you must. "

"Yes, I must, " Betty answered. "I am glad she has you to depend on, Ughtred. "

His crutch grated on the floor and his boy eyes forbade her to believethat their sudden lustre was in any way connected with restrainedemotion. 

"I know I seem queer and like a little old man, " he said. "Mother criesabout it sometimes. But it can't be helped. It is because she has neverhad anyone but me to help her. When I was very little, I found out howfrightened and miserable she was. After his rages, " he used no name, "she used to run into my nursery and snatch me up in her arms and hideher face in my pinafore. Sometimes she stuffed it into her mouth and bitit to keep herself from screaming. Once--before I was seven--I ran intotheir room and shouted out, and tried to fight for her. He was goingout, and had his riding whip in his hand, and he caught hold of me andstruck me with it--until he was tired. "

Betty stood upright. 

"What! What! What!" she cried out. 

He merely nodded his head shortly. She saw what the thing had been bythe way his face lost colour. 

"Of course he said it was because I was impudent, and neededpunishment, " he said. "He said she had encouraged me in Americanimpudence. It was worse for her than for me. She kneeled down andscreamed out as if she was crazy, that she would give him what he wantedif he would stop. "

"Wait, " said Betty, drawing in her breath sharply. "'He, ' is Sir Nigel?And he wanted something. "

He nodded again

"Tell me, " she demanded, "has he ever struck her?"

"Once, " he answered slowly, "before I was born--he struck her and shefell against something. That is why I am like this. " And he touched hisshoulder. 

The feeling which surged through Betty Vanderpoel's being forced her togo and stand with her face turned towards the windows, her hands holdingeach other tightly behind her back. 

"I must keep still, " she said. "I must make myself keep still. "

She spoke unconsciously half aloud, and Ughtred heard her and repliedhurriedly. 

"Yes, " he said, "you must make yourself keep still. That is what we haveto do whatever happens. That is one of the things mother wanted you toknow. She is afraid. She daren't let you----"

She turned from the window, standing at her full height and looking verytall for a girl. 

"She is afraid? She daren't? See--that will come to an end now. Thereare things which can be done. "

He flushed nervously. 

"That is what she was afraid you would say, " he spoke fast and his handstrembled. "She is nearly wild about it, because she knows he will try todo something that will make you feel as if she does not want you. "

"She is afraid of that?" Betty exclaimed. 

"He'd do it! He'd do it--if you did not know beforehand. "

"Oh!" said Betty, with unflinching clearness. "He is a liar, is he?"

The helpless rage in the unchildish eyes, the shaking voice, as he criedout in answer, were a shock. It was as if he wildly rejoiced that shehad spoken the word. 

"Yes, he's a liar--a liar!" he shrilled. "He's a liar and a bully and acoward. He'd--he'd be a murderer if he dared--but he daren't. " Andhis face dropped on his arms folded on his crutch, and he broke intoa passion of crying. Then Betty knew she might go to him. She went andknelt down and put her arm round him. 

"Ughtred, " she said, "cry, if you like, I should do it, if I were you. But I tell you it can all be altered--and it shall be. "

He seemed quite like a little boy when he put out his hand to hers andspoke sobbingly:

"She--she says--that because you have only just come from America--andin America people--can do things--you will think you can do thingshere--and you don't know. He will tell lies about you lies you can'tbear. She sat wringing her hands when she thought of it. She won'tlet you be hurt because you want to help her. " He stopped abruptly andclutched her shoulder. 

"Aunt Betty! Aunt Betty--whatever happens--whatever he makes her seemlike--you are to know that it is not true. Now you have come--now shehas seen you it would KILL her if you were driven away and thought shewanted you to go. "

"I shall not think that, " she answered, slowly, because she realisedthat it was well that she had been warned in time. "Ughtred, are youtrying to tell me that above all things I must not let him think thatI came here to help you, because if he is angry he will make us allsuffer--and your mother most of all?"

"He'll find a way. We always know he will. He would either be so rudethat you would not stay here--or he would make mother seem rude--or hewould write lies to grandfather. Aunt Betty, she scarcely believes youare real yet. If she won't tell you things at first, please don't mind. "He looked quite like a child again in his appeal to her, to try tounderstand a state of affairs so complicated. "Could you--could you waituntil you have let her get--get used to you?"

"Used to thinking that there may be someone in the world to help her?"slowly. "Yes, I will. Has anyone ever tried to help her?"

"Once or twice people found out and were sorry at first, but it onlymade it worse, because he made them believe things. "

"I shall not TRY, Ughtred, " said Betty, a remote spark kindling in thedeeps of the pupils of her steel-blue eyes. "I shall not TRY. Now I amgoing to ask you some questions. "

Before he left her she had asked many questions which were pertinentand searching, and she had learned things she realised she could havelearned in no other way and from no other person. But for his uncannysense of the responsibility he clearly had assumed in the days when hewore pinafores, and which had brought him to her room to prepare hermind for what she would find herself confronted with in the way ofapparently unexplainable obstacles, there was a strong likelihood thatat the outset she might have found herself more than once dangerouslyat a loss. Yes, she would have been at a loss, puzzled, perhaps greatlydiscouraged. She was face to face with a complication so extraordinary. 

That one man, through mere persistent steadiness in evil temper anddomestic tyranny, should have so broken the creatures of his householdinto abject submission and hopelessness, seemed too incredible. Such apower appeared as remote from civilised existence in London and New Yorkas did that which had inflicted tortures in the dungeons of castles ofold. Prisoners in such dungeons could utter no cry which could reach theoutside world; the prisoners at Stornham Court, not four hours from HydePark Corner, could utter none the world could hear, or comprehend if itheard it. Sheer lack of power to resist bound them hand and foot. Andshe, Betty Vanderpoel, was here upon the spot, and, as far as she couldunderstand, was being implored to take no steps, to do nothing. Theatmosphere in which she had spent her life, the world she had beenborn into, had not made for fearfulness that one would be at any timedefenceless against circumstances and be obliged to submit to outrage. To be a Vanderpoel was, it was true, to be a shining mark for envy asfor admiration, but the fact removed obstacles as a rule, and to findone's self standing before a situation with one's hands, figurativelyspeaking, tied, was new enough to arouse unusual sensations. Sherecalled, with an ironic sense of bewilderment, as a sort of materialevidence of her own reality, the fact that not a week ago she hadstepped on to English soil from the gangway of a solid Atlantic liner. It aided her to resist the feeling that she had been swept back into theMiddle Ages. 

"When he is angry, " was one of the first questions she put to Ughtred, "what does he give as his reason? He must profess to have a reason. "

"When he gets in a rage he says it is because mother is silly andcommon, and I am badly brought up. But we always know he wants money, and it makes him furious. He could kill us with rage. "

"Oh!" said Betty. "I see. "

"It began that time when he struck her. He said then that it was notdecent that a woman who was married should keep her own money. He madeher give him almost everything she had, but she wants to keep some forme. He tries to make her get more from grandfather, but she will notwrite begging letters, and she won't give him what she is saving forme. "

It was a simple and sordid enough explanation in one sense, and it wasone of which Bettina had known, not one parallel, but several. Havingmarried to ensure himself power over unquestioned resources, the man hadfelt himself disgustingly taken in, and avenged himself accordingly. Inhim had been born the makings of a domestic tyrant who, even had he beenfavoured by fortune, would have wreaked his humours upon the defencelessthings made his property by ties of blood and marriage, and who, beingunfavoured, would do worse. Betty could see what the years had held forRosy, and how her weakness and timidity had been considered as positiveassets. A woman who will cry when she is bullied, may be counted upon tosubmit after she has cried. Rosy had submitted up to a certain point andthen, with the stubbornness of a weak creature, had stood at timid bayfor her young. 

What Betty gathered was that, after the long and terrible illness whichhad followed Ughtred's birth, she had risen from what had been so nearlyher deathbed, prostrated in both mind and body. Ughtred did not know allthat he revealed when he touched upon the time which he said his mothercould not quite remember--when she had sat for months staring vacantlyout of her window, trying to recall something terrible which hadhappened, and which she wanted to tell her mother, if the day ever camewhen she could write to her again. She had never remembered clearly thedetails of the thing she had wanted to tell, and Nigel had insistedthat her fancy was part of her past delirium. He had said that at thebeginning of her delirium she had attacked and insulted his mother andhimself but they had excused her because they realised afterwards whatthe cause of her excitement had been. For a long time she had been toobrokenly weak to question or disbelieve, but, later she had vaguelyknown that he had been lying to her, though she could not refute whathe said. She recalled, in course of time, a horrible scene in which allthree of them had raved at each other, and she herself had shrieked andlaughed and hurled wild words at Nigel, and he had struck her. That sheknew and never forgot. She had been ill a year, her hair had fallen out, her skin had faded and she had begun to feel like a nervous, tired oldwoman instead of a girl. Girlhood, with all the past, had become unrealand too far away to be more than a dream. Nothing had remained real butStornham and Nigel and the little hunchbacked baby. She was glad whenthe Dowager died and when Nigel spent his time in London or on theContinent and left her with Ughtred. When he said that he must spend hermoney on the estate, she had acquiesced without comment, because thatinsured his going away. She saw that no improvement or repairs weremade, but she could do nothing and was too listless to make the attempt. She only wanted to be left alone with Ughtred, and she exhibitedwillpower only in defence of her child and in her obstinacy with regardto asking money of her father. 

"She thought, somehow, that grandfather and grandmother did not carefor her any more--that they had forgotten her and only cared for you, "Ughtred explained. "She used to talk to me about you. She said you mustbe so clever and so handsome that no one could remember her. Sometimesshe cried and said she did not want any of you to see her again, becauseshe was only a hideous, little, thin, yellow old woman. When I was verylittle she told me stories about New York and Fifth Avenue. I thoughtthey were not real places--I though they were places in fairyland. "

Betty patted his shoulder and looked away for a moment when he saidthis. In her remote and helpless loneliness, to Rosy's homesick, yearning soul, noisy, rattling New York, Fifth Avenue with its trafficand people, its brown-stone houses and ricketty stages, had seemed likeTHAT--so splendid and bright and heart-filling, that she had paintedthem in colours which could belong only to fairyland. It said so much. 

The thing she had suspected as she had talked to her sister was, beforethe interview ended, made curiously clear. The first obstacle in herpathway would be the shrinking of a creature who had been so long underdominion that the mere thought of seeing any steps taken towards herrescue filled her with alarm. One might be prepared for her almostpraying to be let alone, because she felt that the process of hersalvation would bring about such shocks and torments as she could notendure the facing of. 

"She will have to get used to you, " Ughtred kept saying. "She will haveto get used to thinking things. "

"I will be careful, " Bettina answered. "She shall not be troubled. I didnot come to trouble her. "

CHAPTER XIII

ONE OF THE NEW YORK DRESSES

As she went down the staircase later, on her way to dinner, MissVanderpoel saw on all sides signs of the extent of the nakedness ofthe land. She was in a fine old house, stripped of most of its saleablebelongings, uncared for, deteriorating year by year, gradually going toruin. One need not possess particular keenness of sight to observethis, and she had chanced to see old houses in like condition in othercountries than England. A man-servant, in a shabby livery, opened thedrawing-room door for her. He was not a picturesque servitor of fallenfortunes, but an awkward person who was not accustomed to his duties. Betty wondered if he had been called in from the gardens to meet thenecessities of the moment. His furtive glance at the tall young womanwho passed him, took in with sudden embarrassment the fact that sheplainly did not belong to the dispirited world bounded by StornhamCourt. Without sparkling gems or trailing richness in her wake, she wassuggestively splendid. He did not know whether it was her hair or thebuild of her neck and shoulders that did it, but it was revealed to himthat tiaras and collars of stones which blazed belonged without doubtto her equipment. He recalled that there was a legend to the effect thatthe present Lady Anstruthers, who looked like a rag doll, had been thedaughter of a rich American, and that better things might have beenexpected of her if she had not been such a poor-spirited creature. Ifthis was her sister, she perhaps was a young woman of fortune, and thatshe was not of poor spirit was plain. 

The large drawing-room presented but another aspect of the barenessof the rest of the house. In times probably long past, possibly in theDowager Lady Anstruthers' early years of marriage, the walls had beenhung with white and gold paper of a pattern which dominated the scene, and had been furnished with gilded chairs, tables, and ottomans. Someof these last had evidently been removed as they became too much out ofrepair for use or ornament. Such as remained, tarnished as to gildingand worn in the matter of upholstery, stood sparsely scattered on adesert of carpet, whose huge, flowered medallions had faded almost fromview. 

Lady Anstruthers, looking shy and awkward as she fingered an ornament ona small table, seemed singularly a part of her background. Her eveningdress, slipping off her thin shoulders, was as faded and out of dateas her carpet. It had once been delicately blue and gauzy, but itsgauziness hung in crushed folds and its blue was almost grey. It wasalso the dress of a girl, not that of a colourless, worn woman, and herconsciousness of its unfitness showed in her small-featured face as shecame forward. 

"Do you--recognise it, Betty?" she asked hesitatingly. "It was one of myNew York dresses. I put it on because--because----" and her stammeringended helplessly. 

"Because you wanted to remind me, " Betty said. If she felt it easier tobegin with an excuse she should be provided with one. 

Perhaps but for this readiness to fall into any tone she chose to adoptRosy might have endeavoured to carry her poor farce on, but as it wasshe suddenly gave it up. 

"I put it on because I have no other, " she said. "We never have visitorsand I haven't dressed for dinner for so long that I seem to have nothingleft that is fit to wear. I dragged this out because it was better thananything else. It was pretty once----" she gave a little laugh, "twelveyears ago. How long years seem! Was I--was I pretty, Betty--twelve yearsago?"

"Twelve years is not such a long time. " Betty took her hand and drew herto a sofa. "Let us sit down and talk about it. "

"There is nothing much to talk about. This is it----" taking in the roomwith a wave of her hand. "I am it. Ughtred is it. "

"Then let us talk about England, " was Bettina's light skim over the thinice. 

A red spot grew on each of Lady Anstruthers' cheek bones and made herfaded eyes look intense. 

"Let us talk about America, " her little birdclaw of a hand clingingfeverishly. "Is New York still--still----"

"It is still there, " Betty answered with one of the adorable smileswhich showed a deep dimple near her lip. "But it is much nearer Englandthan it used to be. "

"Nearer!" The hand tightened as Rosy caught her breath. 

Betty bent rather suddenly and kissed her. It was the easiest way ofhiding the look she knew had risen to her eyes. She began to talk gaily, half laughingly. 

"It is quite near, " she said. "Don't you realise it? Americans swoopover here by thousands every year. They come for business, they come forpleasure, they come for rest. They cannot keep away. They come to buyand sell--pictures and books and luxuries and lands. They come to giveand take. They are building a bridge from shore to shore of their work, and their thoughts, and their plannings, out of the lives and souls ofthem. It will be a great bridge and great things will pass over it. "She kissed the faded cheek again. She wanted to sweep Rosy away from thedreariness of "it. " Lady Anstruthers looked at her with faintly smilingeyes. She did not follow all this quite readily, but she felt pleasedand vaguely comforted. 

"I know how they come here and marry, " she said. "The new Duchess ofDownes is an American. She had a fortune of two million pounds. "

"If she chooses to rebuild a great house and a great name, " said Betty, lifting her shoulders lightly, "why not--if it is an honest bargain? Isuppose it is part of the building of the bridge. "

Little Lady Anstruthers, trying to pull up the sleeves of the gauzybodice slipping off her small, sharp bones, stared at her half inwondering adoration, half in alarm. 

"Betty--you--you are so handsome--and so clever and strange, " shefluttered. "Oh, Betty, stand up so that I can see how tall and handsomeyou are!"

Betty did as she was told, and upon her feet she was a young woman oflong lines, and fine curves so inspiring to behold that Lady Anstruthersclasped her hands together on her knees in an excited gesture. 

"Oh, yes! Oh, yes!" she cried. "You are just as wonderful as you lookedwhen I turned and saw you under the trees. You almost make me afraid. "

"Because I am wonderful?" said Betty. "Then I will not be wonderful anymore. "

"It is not because I think you wonderful, but because other people will. Would you rebuild a great house?" hesitatingly. 

The fine line of Betty's black brows drew itself slightly together. 

"No, " she said. 

"Wouldn't you?"

"How could the man who owned it persuade me that he was in earnest if hesaid he loved me? How could I persuade him that I was worth caring forand not a mere ambitious fool? There would be too much against us. "

"Against you?" repeated Lady Anstruthers. 

"I don't say I am fair, " said Betty. "People who are proud are often notfair. But we should both of us have seen and known too much. "

"You have seen me now, " said Lady Anstruthers in her listless voice, andat the same moment dinner was announced and she got up from the sofa, sothat, luckily, there was no time for the impersonal answer it would havebeen difficult to invent at a moment's notice. As they went into thedining-room Betty was thinking restlessly. She remembered all thematerial she had collected during her education in France and Germany, and there was added to it the fact that she HAD seen Rosy, and havingher before her eyes she felt that there was small prospect ofher contemplating the rebuilding of any great house requiringreconstruction. 

There was fine panelling in the dining-room and a great fireplace anda few family portraits. The service upon the table was shabby and thedinner was not a bounteous meal. Lady Anstruthers in her girlish, gauzydress and looking too small for her big, high-backed chair tried to talkrapidly, and every few minutes forgot herself and sank into silence, with her eyes unconsciously fixed upon her sister's face. Ughtredwatched Betty also, and with a hungry questioning. The man-servant inthe worn livery was not a sufficiently well-trained and experienceddomestic to make any effort to keep his eyes from her. He was youngenough to be excited by an innovation so unusual as the presence of ayoung and beautiful person surrounded by an unmistakable atmosphere ofease and fearlessness. He had been talking of her below stairs andfelt that he had failed in describing her. He had found himself barelysupported by the suggestion of a housemaid that sometimes these dressesthat looked plain had been made in Paris at expensive places and hadcost "a lot. " He furtively examined the dress which looked plain, andwhile he admitted that for some mysterious reason it might representexpensiveness, it was not the dress which was the secret of the effect, but a something, not altogether mere good looks, expressed by thewearer. It was, in fact, the thing which the second-class passenger, Salter, had been at once attracted and stirred to rebellion by when MissVanderpoel came on board the Meridiana. 

Betty did not look too small for her high-backed chair, and she didnot forget herself when she talked. In spite of all she had found, her imagination was stirred by the surroundings. Her sense of the finespaces and possibilities of dignity in the barren house, her knowledgethat outside the windows there lay stretched broad views of the park andits heavy-branched trees, and that outside the gates stood theneglected picturesqueness of the village and all the rural and--toher--interesting life it slowly lived--this pleased and attracted her. 

If she had been as helpless and discouraged as Rosalie she could seethat it would all have meant a totally different and depressing thing, but, strong and spirited, and with the power of full hands, she wasremotely rejoicing in what might be done with it all. As she talkedshe was gradually learning detail. Sir Nigel was on the Continent. Apparently he often went there; also it revealed itself that no one knewat what moment he might return, for what reason he would return, or ifhe would return at all during the summer. It was evident that no one hadbeen at any time encouraged to ask questions as to his intentions, or tofeel that they had a right to do so. 

This she knew, and a number of other things, before they left the table. When they did so they went out to stroll upon the moss-grown stoneterrace and listened to the nightingales throwing 'm into the air silverfountains of trilling song. When Bettina paused, leaning against thebalustrade of the terrace that she might hear all the beauty of it, andfeel all the beauty of the warm spring night, Rosy went on making hereffort to talk. 

"It is not much of a neighbourhood, Betty, " she said. "You are tooaccustomed to livelier places to like it. "

"That is my reason for feeling that I shall like it. I don't think Icould be called a lively person, and I rather hate lively places. "

"But you are accustomed--accustomed----" Rosy harked back uncertainly. 

"I have been accustomed to wishing that I could come to you, " saidBetty. "And now I am here. "

Lady Anstruthers laid a hand on her dress. 

"I can't believe it! I can't believe it!" she breathed. 

"You will believe it, " said Betty, drawing the hand around her waistand enclosing in her own arm the narrow shoulders. "Tell me about theneighbourhood. "

"There isn't any, really, " said Lady Anstruthers. "The houses are so faraway from each other. The nearest is six miles from here, and it is onethat doesn't count. 

"Why?"

"There is no family, and the man who owns it is so poor. It is a bigplace, but it is falling to pieces as this is. 

"What is it called?"

"Mount Dunstan. The present earl only succeeded about three years ago. Nigel doesn't know him. He is queer and not liked. He has been away. "

"Where?"

"No one knows. To Australia or somewhere. He has odd ideas. The MountDunstans have been awful people for two generations. This man's fatherwas almost mad with wickedness. So was the elder son. This is a secondson, and he came into nothing but debt. Perhaps he feels the disgraceand it makes him rude and ill-tempered. His father and elder brother hadbeen in such scandals that people did not invite them. 

"Do they invite this man?"

"No. He probably would not go to their houses if they did. And he wentaway soon after he came into the title. "

"Is the place beautiful?"

"There is a fine deer park, and the gardens were wonderful a long timeago. The house is worth looking at--outside. "

"I will go and look at it, " said Betty. 

"The carriage is out of order. There is only Ughtred's cart. "

"I am a good walker, " said Betty. 

"Are you? It would be twelve miles--there and back. When I was in NewYork people didn't walk much, particularly girls. "

"They do now, " Betty answered. "They have learned to do it in England. They live out of doors and play games. They have grown athletic andtall. "

As they talked the nightingales sang, sometimes near, sometimes in thedistance, and scents of dewy grass and leaves and earth were waftedtowards them. Sometimes they strolled up and down the terrace, sometimesthey paused and leaned against the stone balustrade. Betty allowed Rosyto talk as she chose. She herself asked no obviously leading questionsand passed over trying moments with lightness. Her desire was to placeherself in a position where she might hear the things which would aidher to draw conclusions. Lady Anstruthers gradually grew less nervousand afraid of her subjects. In the wonder of the luxury of talking tosomeone who listened with sympathy, she once or twice almost forgotherself and made revelations she had not intended to make. She had oftenthe manner of a person who was afraid of being overheard; sometimes, even when she was making speeches quite simple in themselves, her voicedropped and she glanced furtively aside as if there were chances thatsomething she dreaded might step out of the shadow. 

When they went upstairs together and parted for the night, the clingingof Rosy's embrace was for a moment almost convulsive. But she tried tolaugh off its suggestion of intensity. 

"I held you tight so that I could feel sure that you were real and wouldnot melt away, " she said. "I hope you will be here in the morning. "

"I shall never really go quite away again, now I have come, " Bettyanswered. "It is not only your house I have come into. I have come backinto your life. "

After she had entered her room and locked the door she sat down andwrote a letter to her father. It was a long letter, but a clear one. She painted a definite and detailed picture and made distinct her chiefpoint. 

"She is afraid of me, " she wrote. "That is the first and worst obstacle. She is actually afraid that I will do something which will only add toher trouble. She has lived under dominion so long that she has forgottenthat there are people who have no reason for fear. Her old life seemsnothing but a dream. The first thing I must teach her is that I am to betrusted not to do futile things, and that she need neither be afraid ofnor for me. "

After writing these sentences she found herself leaving her desk andwalking up and down the room to relieve herself. She could not sitstill, because suddenly the blood ran fast and hot through her veins. She put her hands against her cheeks and laughed a little, low laugh. 

"I feel violent, " she said. "I feel violent and I must get over it. Thisis rage. Rage is worth nothing. "

It was rage--the rage of splendid hot blood which surged in answer toleaping hot thoughts. There would have been a sort of luxury in givingway to the sway of it. But the self-indulgence would have been no aid tofuture action. Rage was worth nothing. She said it as the first ReubenVanderpoel might have said of a useless but glittering weapon. "This gunis worth nothing, " and cast it aside. 

CHAPTER XIV

IN THE GARDENS

She came out upon the stone terrace again rather early in the morning. She wanted to wander about in the first freshness of the day, which wasalways an uplifting thing to her. She wanted to see the dew on the grassand on the ragged flower borders and to hear the tender, broken flutingof birds in the trees. One cuckoo was calling to another in the park, and she stopped and listened intently. Until yesterday she had neverheard a cuckoo call, and its hollow mellowness gave her delight. Itmeant the spring in England, and nowhere else. 

There was space enough to ramble about in the gardens. Paths and bedswere alike overgrown with weeds, but some strong, early-blooming thingswere fighting for life, refusing to be strangled. Against the beautifulold red walls, over which age had stolen with a wonderful grey bloom, venerable fruit trees were spread and nailed, and here and there showedbloom, clumps of low-growing things sturdily advanced their yellownessor whiteness, as if defying neglect. In one place a wall slanted andthreatened to fall, bearing its nectarine trees with it; in anotherthere was a gap so evidently not of to-day that the heap of its masonryupon the border bed was already covered with greenery, and the roots ofthe fruit tree it had supported had sent up strong, insistent shoots. 

She passed down broad paths and narrow ones, sometimes walking undertrees, sometimes pushing her way between encroaching shrubs; shedescended delightful mossy and broken steps and came upon dilapidatedurns, in which weeds grew instead of flowers, and over which rampant butlovely, savage little creepers clambered and clung. 

In one of the walled kitchen gardens she came upon an elderly gardenerat work. At the sound of her approaching steps he glanced round and thenstood up, touching his forelock in respectful but startled salute. Hewas so plainly amazed at the sight of her that she explained herself. 

"Good-morning, " she said. "I am her ladyship's sister, Miss Vanderpoel. I came yesterday evening. I am looking over your gardens. "

He touched his forehead again and looked round him. His manner was notcheerful. He cast a troubled eye about him. 

"They're not much to see, miss, " he said. "They'd ought to be, butthey're not. Growing things has to be fed and took care of. A man and aboy can't do it--nor yet four or five of 'em. "

"How many ought there to be?" Betty inquired, with business-likedirectness. It was not only the dew on the grass she had come out tosee. 

"If there was eight or ten of us we might put it in order and keep itthat way. It's a big place, miss. "

Betty looked about her as he had done, but with a less discouraged eye. 

"It is a beautiful place, as well as a large one, " she said. "I can seethat there ought to be more workers. "

"There's no one, " said the gardener, "as has as many enemies as agardener, an' as many things to fight. There's grubs an' there'sgreenfly, an' there's drout', an' wet an' cold, an' mildew, an' there'swhat the soil wants and starves without, an' if you haven't got it noryet hands an' feet an' tools enough, how's things to feed, an' fight an'live--let alone bloom an' bear?"

"I don't know much about gardens, " said Miss Vanderpoel, "but I canunderstand that. "

The scent of fresh bedewed things was in the air. It was true that shehad not known much about gardens, but here standing in the midst ofone she began to awaken to a new, practical interest. A creature ofinitiative could not let such a place as this alone. It was beauty beingslowly slain. One could not pass it by and do nothing. 

"What is your name?" she asked

"Kedgers, miss. I've only been here about a twelve-month. I was took onbecause I'm getting on in years an' can't ask much wage. "

"Can you spare time to take me through the gardens and show me things?"

Yes, he could do it. In truth, he privately welcomed an opportunityoffering a prospect of excitement so novel. He had shown moreflourishing gardens to other young ladies in his past years of service, but young ladies did not come to Stornham, and that one having, withsuch extraordinary unexpectedness arrived, should want to look over thedesolation of these, was curious enough to rouse anyone to a sense ofa break in accustomed monotony. The young lady herself mystified himby her difference from such others as he had seen. What the man in theshabby livery had felt, he felt also, and added to this was a sense ofthe practicalness of the questions she asked and the interest she showedand a way she had of seeming singularly to suggest by the look in hereyes and the tone of her voice that nothing was necessarily withoutremedy. When her ladyship walked through the place and looked at things, a pale resignation expressed itself in the very droop of herfigure. When this one walked through the tumbled-down grape-houses, potting-sheds and conservatories, she saw where glass was broken, wherebenches had fallen and where roofs sagged and leaked. She inquired aboutthe heating apparatus and asked that she might see it. She asked aboutthe village and its resources, about labourers and their wages. 

"As if, " commented Kedgers mentally, "she was what Sir Nigelis--leastways what he'd ought to be an' ain't. "

She led the way back to the fallen wall and stood and looked at it. 

"It's a beautiful old wall, " she said. "It should be rebuilt with theold brick. New would spoil it. "

"Some of this is broken and crumbled away, " said Kedgers, picking up apiece to show it to her. 

"Perhaps old brick could be bought somewhere, " replied the young ladyspeculatively. "One ought to be able to buy old brick in England, if oneis willing to pay for it. "

Kedgers scratched his head and gazed at her in respectful wonder whichwas almost trouble. Who was going to pay for things, and who was goingto look for things which were not on the spot? Enterprise like this wasnot to be explained. 

When she left him he stood and watched her upright figure disappearthrough the ivy-grown door of the kitchen gardens with a disturbedbut elated expression on his countenance. He did not know why he feltelated, but he was conscious of elation. Something new had walkedinto the place. He stopped his work and grinned and scratched his headseveral times after he went back to his pottering among the cabbageplants. 

"My word, " he muttered. "She's a fine, straight young woman. If shewas her ladyship things 'ud be different. Sir Nigel 'ud be different, too--or there'd be some fine upsets. "

There was a huge stable yard, and Betty passed through that on her wayback. The door of the carriage house was open and she saw two or threetumbled-down vehicles. One was a landau with a wheel off, one was ashabby, old-fashioned, low phaeton. She caught sight of a patentlyvenerable cob in one of the stables. The stalls near him were empty. 

"I suppose that is all they have to depend upon, " she thought. "And thestables are like the gardens. "

She found Lady Anstruthers and Ughtred waiting for her upon the terrace, each of them regarding her with an expression suggestive of repressedcuriosity as she approached. Lady Anstruthers flushed a little and wentto meet her with an eager kiss. 

"You look like--I don't know quite what you look like, Betty!" sheexclaimed. 

The girl's dimple deepened and her eyes said smiling things. 

"It is the morning--and your gardens, " she answered. "I have been roundyour gardens. "

"They were beautiful once, I suppose, " said Rosy deprecatingly. 

"They are beautiful now. There is nothing like them in America atleast. "

"I don't remember any gardens in America, " Lady Anstruthers ownedreluctantly, "but everything seemed so cheerful and well cared forand--and new. Don't laugh, Betty. I have begun to like new things. Youwould if you had watched old ones tumbling to pieces for twelve years. "

"They ought not to be allowed to tumble to pieces, " said Betty. Sheadded her next words with simple directness. She could only discoverhow any advancing steps would be taken by taking them. "Why do you allowthem to do it?"

Lady Anstruthers looked away, but as she looked her eyes passedUghtred's. 

"I!" she said. "There are so many other things to do. It would cost somuch--such an enormity to keep it all in order. "

"But it ought to be done--for Ughtred's sake. "

"I know that, " faltered Rosy, "but I can't help it. "

"You can, " answered Betty, and she put her arm round her as they turnedto enter the house. "When you have become more used to me and my drivingAmerican ways I will show you how. "

The lightness with which she said it had an odd effect on LadyAnstruthers. Such casual readiness was so full of the suggestion ofunheard of possibilities that it was a kind of shock. 

"I have been twelve years in getting un-used to you--I feel as if itwould take twelve years more to get used again, " she said. 

"It won't take twelve weeks, " said Betty. 

CHAPTER XV

THE FIRST MAN

The mystery of the apparently occult methods of communication amongthe natives of India, between whom, it is said, news flies by means toostrange and subtle to be humanly explainable, is no more difficulta problem to solve than that of the lightning rapidity with which aknowledge of the transpiring of any new local event darts throughthe slowest, and, as far as outward signs go, the least communicativeEnglish village slumbering drowsily among its pastures and trees. 

That which the Hall or Manor House believed last night, known onlyto the four walls of its drawing-room, is discussed over the cottagebreakfast tables as though presented in detail through the columns ofthe Morning Post. The vicarage, the smithy, the post office, thelittle provision shop, are instantaneously informed as by magic of suchincidents of interest as occur, and are prepared to assist vicariouslyat any future developments. Through what agency information is givenno one can tell, and, indeed, the agency is of small moment. Facts ofinterest are perhaps like flights of swallows and dart chattering fromone red roof to another, proclaiming themselves aloud. Nothing isso true as that in such villages they are the property and innocentplaythings of man, woman, and child, providing conversation and dramaotherwise likely to be lacked. 

When Miss Vanderpoel walked through Stornham village street she becameaware that she was an exciting object of interest. Faces appeared atcottage windows, women sauntered to doors, men in the taproom of theClock Inn left beer mugs to cast an eye on her; children pushed opengates and stared as they bobbed their curtsies; the young woman who keptthe shop left her counter and came out upon her door step to pick upher straying baby and glance over its shoulder at the face with the redmouth, and the mass of black hair rolled upward under a rough bluestraw hat. Everyone knew who this exotic-looking young lady was. She hadarrived yesterday from London, and a week ago by means of a ship fromfar-away America, from the country in connection with which the ruralmind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes and Indians. "Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavilyfor sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned thereeight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked overfact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust andimportance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. Aplace where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest aswell as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years agoas the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" hadbeen verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereignsin cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would havebestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months aperiod of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone rememberedthe hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place hadburned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means, that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been aquarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby hadbeen born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had beenseen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost herlooks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham villagesaw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had thedispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in Londonand foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Herladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and theirwealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that itwas their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys andkitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faithbeing that even American money belonged properly to England. 

As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the onevillage street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new waspassing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with afriendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyesmet those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded tothe bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain onits feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the pathbefore her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it wasshocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up, and cheerfully dusting its pinafore. 

"Don't cry, " she said; "you are not hurt, you know. "

The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyeswas so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was lessproductive of effect than her mere self. She walked on, leaving thegroup staring after her breathless, because of a sense of having metwith a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hairand the blue hat and tall, straight body was the adventure. She left thesame sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all dayover their garden palings, on their doorsteps, in the street; of herlooks, of her height, of the black rim of lashes round her eyes, ofthe chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-crowns andsovereigns, of the "Meriker" she had come from, and above all of thereason for her coming. 

Betty swung with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to thehighway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasurein itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes andby-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Herwalk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. Inwalking, an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard ofthe estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. Itwas another place like Stornham, once dignified and nobly representativeof fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values andmeanings, other than mere signs of wealth and power, there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasonsas strength has for its planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpoel'simagination the First Man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whomshe always saw. In history, as a child at school, she had understood anddrawn close to him. There was always a First Man behind all that onesaw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatchedweapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carryingout of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was theGod made human; others waited, without knowledge of their waiting, for the signal he gave. A man like others--with man's body, hands, andlimbs, and eyes--the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by hisbirth. One could not always trace him, but with stone axe and spearpoint he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that, leaving them to other hands, their march towards less savage life couldnot stay itself, but must sweep on; others of his kind, striking rudeharps, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rungthrough the ages, and echo still in strains which are theirs, thoughvoices of to-day repeat the note of them. The First Man, a Britonstained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greennessof the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The squarechurch towers rose, holding their slender corner spires above the trees, as a result of the First Man, Norman William. The thought which held itsplace, the work which did not pass away, had paid its First Man wages;but beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste, were bitter things. TheFirst Man, who, having won his splendid acres, had built his home uponthem and reared his young and passed his possession on with a proudheart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enricheditself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spreadhuge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of themassive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty itseemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had notbeen trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had notwaved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. 

She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen onher way from the station to the Court, and felt them grow in beauty asshe saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger thanStornham and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending carewhich Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened onto an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, butcould see nothing but its curves and, under the branches, glimpses of aspacious sweep of park with other trees standing in groups or alonein the sward. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and thereboughs broken off by wind. 

Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evidentbeauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled intowoods and deeps filled with bracken; she saw stretches of hillocky, fine-grassed rabbit warren, and hollows holding shadowy pools; shecaught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curvednecks; there were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and broodingstillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. 

Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away fromher. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge frondsand caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rosefrom his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberationgot upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of poseso splendid, and a liquid darkness and lustre of eye so stilly andfearlessly beautiful, that she caught her breath. He simply gazed as heras a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. 

As she had passed on her way, Betty had seen that the enclosing parkpalings were decaying, covered with lichen and falling at intervals. Ithad even passed through her mind that here was one of the demandsfor expenditure on a large estate, which limited resources could notconfront with composure. The deer fence itself, a thing of wire tenfeet high, to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in suchcondition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until thismoment she had seen no deer, but looking beyond the stag and acrossthe sward she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or lookingtowards her with lifted heads, does at a respectful but affectionatedistance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risennear her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stoodfree to go where he would. 

"He will get away, " said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah! what ashame!

Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. Shelooked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her browscontinued to knit themselves and her eyes ranged over the park itself inthe hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. 

"It is no affair of mine, " she said, "but it would be too bad to let himget away, though what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know. "

As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabbyclothes and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under keeper. Hewas a big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out intothe open from a wood Betty saw that she could reach him if she passedthrough a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. 

He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shouldersexpressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied hisback as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhapsnot a good-humoured man to approach at any time, and that this was byill luck one of his less fortunate hours. 

"Wait a moment, if you please, " her clear, mellow voice flung out afterhim when she was within hearing distance. "I want to speak to you, keeper. "

He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoonsun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not seedistinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognised acertain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had rousedhim from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, andwhen he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer he madea movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself, touched it, keeper fashion. 

"Oh!" he said shortly. "Miss Vanderpoel! Beg pardon. "

Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was theunexpected again. The under keeper was the red-haired second-classpassenger of the Meridiana. 

He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearanceexcluded the possibility of her realising that upon the whole she was atleast not displeased to see him. 

"How do you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantasticallyconventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tellyou that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence. "

"Damn!" she heard him say under his breath. Aloud he said, "Thank you. "

"He is a splendid creature, " she said. "I did not know what to do. I wasglad to see a keeper coming. "

"Thank you, " he said again, and strode towards the place where thestag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether itallured him or not. 

Betty walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wonderedwhat he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had withoutdoubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. Itwent towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he puthis hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of the coatpocket. 

"He is not afraid of making himself useful, " thought Betty. "And theanimals know him. He is not as bad as he looks. "

She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gatethrough which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. 

"I don't see your carriage, " he said. "Your man is probably round thetrees. "

"I walked, " answered Betty. "I had heard of this place and wanted to seeit. "

He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. 

"There is not much to be seen from the road, " he said. "Would you liketo see more of it?"

His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say "miss" or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Bettyhesitated a moment. 

"Is the family at home?" she inquired. 

"There is no family but--his lordship. He is off the place. "

"Does he object to trespassers?"

"Not if they are respectable and take no liberties. "

"I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties, " said MissVanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur. The truth was that she had spent asufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar withconventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhapshe had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and tolack something which centuries of custom had decided should belongto his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man ratherattracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from therealisation that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superiorsas was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way. Inhis place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished. 

"If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walkingabout, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house, " shesaid. "If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?"

"No, " he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, "miss. "

"I am interested, " she said, as they crossed the grass together, "because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been inEngland before. "

"There are not many places like this, " he answered, "not many as old andfine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite asfar gone. "

"It is far gone, " said Miss Vanderpoel. "I am staying there--with mysister, Lady Anstruthers. "

"Beg pardon--miss, " he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. 

Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he hadoffered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad tosee her again. Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even toask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of thehandsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while heryouth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every lineof face and pose something intensely more interesting and compellingthan girlhood. Also, since the night they had come together on theship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better andrebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led herfirst to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. 

"I will show you this first, " he explained. "Keep your eyes on theground until I tell you to raise them. "

Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that shewas being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellowgolden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a fewminutes he stopped. 

"Now look up, " he said. 

She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dellthick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other incrediblysplendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. Theglow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, theirgreat boles and moss-covered roots, and the stately, mellow distancesrevealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness, whichmeant, after all, centuries of cultivation, made a picture inthis exact, perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almostunbelievable beauty. 

"There is nothing lovelier, " he said in a low voice, "in all England. "

Bettina turned to look at him, because his tone was a curious one for aman like himself. He was standing resting on his gun and taking in theloveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. 

"You--you love it!" she said. 

"Yes, " but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission. 

She was rather moved. 

"Have you been keeper here long?" she asked. 

"No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life. "

"Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?"

"In his way--yes. "

He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps noton particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered nofurther information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did notonce refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It wasplain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, asa second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accidentacross the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He wasstubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina feltthat to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. 

But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon oneshe knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks andalleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenuesof blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets ofbudding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons;through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with brokenbalustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grownfountains splashing in lovely corners. Arches, overgrown with yetunblooming roses, crumbled in their time stained beauty. Stillnessbrooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke thesilence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, andBettina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillnessseemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say, to a stranger, of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay. 

"But, oh!" she murmured once, standing still, with indrawn breath, "ifit were mine!--if it were mine!" And she said the thing forgetting thather guide was a living creature and stood near. 

Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of adream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her, hisoften averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beauteousspot she passed through, the mossy paths which gave back no sound offootfalls as they walked, suggested, one and all, unreality. Whenat last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, andcrossing a grassed bowling green, mounted a short flight of broken stepswhich led them to a point through which they saw the house through abreak in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a greatplace, stately in its masses of grey stone to which thick ivy clung. To Bettina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Notone showed signs of life. The silent stone thing stood sightless amongall of which it was dead master--rolling acres, great trees, lostgardens and deserted groves. 

"Oh!" she sighed, "Oh!"

Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as hehad looked before. 

"Some of it, " he said, "was here before the Conquest. It belonged toMount Dunstans then. "

"And only one of them is left, " she cried, "and it is like this!"

"They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years, " was the surlyliberty of speech he took, "a bad lot. "

It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master'shouse, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him byresponse. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightlyerect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. 

Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettinaroused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. 

"I am very much obliged to you, " she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinarycircumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. Shehad occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the workingclass, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a manwho has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for themere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should shehesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. Shefelt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she puther hand into the small, latched bag at her belt. 

"I am very much obliged, keeper, " she said. "You have given me agreat deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has beena pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything sobeautiful--and so sad. Thank you--thank you. " And she put a goldpiecein his palm. 

His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief shedid not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, evenwhile she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. Thenext moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expecteda larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grimsteadiness. 

"Thank you, miss, " he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. 

He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a smallpocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly hestopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without anychange of his glum look. 

"Hang it all, " he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I oughtto have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am thatunfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself. "

A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty tookback her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased acertain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. 

"Yes, " she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan. "

He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. 

"Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic witha fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of woodand iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabbycorduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on hisugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the beltedEarl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment. "

"I am not embarrassed, " said Bettina. 

"That is what I like, " gruffly. 

"I am pleased, " in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it. "

Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a sparkpassed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neitherof them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightlyfrowned. 

"I beg pardon, " he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedlypatronising sound. "

As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as shehad not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. Hisred-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his featureswere strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weightof bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would havewielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed theirway with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in acoat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters. 

"I am a self-absorbed beggar, " he went on. "I had been slouching aboutthe place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took mefor a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been arich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign. "

"I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth, " said MissVanderpoel. 

"No, I suppose you wouldn't. But I should not have cared. "

He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summedhim up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin orcheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair. He had already, evenin his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at timesher eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour ofbluebells under water. They had been of this last hue when she had stoodin the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low:

"Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!"

He did not like American women with millions, but while he would nothave said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. Andshe, too, did not wish, just yet, to move away. There was somethingdramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softlystirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and theshadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. 

"Did you not like America?" was what she said. 

"Hated it! Hated it! I went there lured by a belief that a man likemyself, with muscle and will, even without experience, could make afortune out of small capital on a sheep ranch. Wind and weather anddisease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came backto begin over again--on nothing--here!" And he waved his hand over thepark with its sward and coppice and bracken and the deer cropping in thelate afternoon gold. 

"To begin what again?" said Betty. It was an extraordinary enough thing, seen in the light of conventions, that they should stand and talk likethis. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of itthey suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. 

"You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would toothers. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has takencenturies to grow--and fall into this. "

"It would be a splendid thing to do, " she said slowly, and as she saidit her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seenhad moved her. She had not looked at him, but at the cropping deer asshe spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. 

"Where should you begin?" she asked, and in saying it thought ofStornham. 

He laughed shortly. 

"That is American enough, " he said. "Your people have not finished theirbeginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wildfancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, 'Whereshould you begin?'"

"That is one way of beginning, " said Bettina. "In fact, it is the onlyway. "

He did not tell her that he liked that, but he knew that he did like itand that her mere words touched him like a spur. It was, of course, herlifelong breathing of the atmosphere of millions which made for thisfashion of moving at once in the direction of obstacles presenting tothe rest of the world barriers seemingly insurmountable. And yet therewas something else in it, some quality of nature which did not alonesuggest the omnipotence of wealth, but another thing which might be evenstronger and therefore carried conviction. He who had raged and clenchedhis hands in the face of his knowledge of the aspect his dream wouldhave presented if he had revealed it to the ordinary practical mind, felt that a point of view like this was good for him. There was in itstimulus for a fleeting moment at least. 

"That is a good idea, " he answered. "Where should you begin?"

She replied quite seriously, though he could have imagined some girlsrather simpering over the question as a casual joke. 

"One would begin at the fences, " she said. "Don't you think so?"

"That is practical. "

"That is where I shall begin at Stornham, " reflectively. 

"You are going to begin at Stornham?"

"How could one help it? It is not as large or as splendid as this hasbeen, but it is like it in a way. And it will belong to my sister's son. No, I could not help it. "

"I suppose you could not. " There was a hint of wholly unconsciousresentment in his tone. He was thinking that the effect produced bytheir boundless wealth was to make these people feel as a race of giantsmight--even their women unknowingly revealed it. 

"No, I could not, " was her reply. "I suppose I am on the whole a sortof commercial working person. I have no doubt it is commercial, thatinstinct which makes one resent seeing things lose their value. "

"Shall you begin it for that reason?"

"Partly for that one--partly for another. " She held out her hand to him. "Look at the length of the shadows. I must go. Thank you, Lord MountDunstan, for showing me the place, and thank you for undeceiving me. "

He held the side gate open for her and lifted his cap as she passedthrough. He admitted to himself, with some reluctance, that he was notcontent that she should go even yet, but, of course, she must go. Therepassed through his mind a remote wonder why he had suddenly unbosomedhimself to her in a way so extraordinarily unlike himself. It was, he thought next, because as he had taken her about from one place toanother he had known that she had seen in things what he had seen inthem so long--the melancholy loneliness, the significance of it, thelost hopes that lay behind it, the touching pain of the statelinesswrecked. She had shown it in the way in which she tenderly looked fromside to side, in the very lightness of her footfall, in the bluebellsoftening of her eyes. Oh, yes, she had understood and cared, Americanas she was! She had felt it all, even with her hideous background ofFifth Avenue behind her. 

When he had spoken it had been in involuntary response to an emotion inherself. 

So he stood, thinking, as he for some time watched her walking up thesunset-glowing road. 

CHAPTER XVI

THE PARTICULAR INCIDENT

Betty Vanderpoel's walk back to Stornham did not, long though it was, give her time to follow to its end the thread of her thoughts. Mentallyshe walked again with her uncommunicative guide, through woodpaths andgardens, and stood gazing at the great blind-faced house. She had notgiven the man more than an occasional glance until he had told her hisname. She had been too much absorbed, too much moved, by what she hadbeen seeing. She wondered, if she had been more aware of him, whetherhis face would have revealed a great deal. She believed it would not. Hehad made himself outwardly stolid. But the thing must have been bitter. To him the whole story of the splendid past was familiar even if throughhis own life he had looked on only at gradual decay. There must bestories enough of men and women who had lived in the place, of what theyhad done, of how they had loved, of what they had counted for in theircountry's wars and peacemakings, great functions and law-building. Tobe able to look back through centuries and know of one's blood thatsometimes it had been shed in the doing of great deeds, must be a thingto remember. To realise that the courage and honour had been lost inignoble modern vices, which no sense of dignity and reverence for raceand name had restrained--must be bitter--bitter! And in the role of aservant to lead a stranger about among the ruins of what had been--thatmust have been bitter, too. For a moment Betty felt the bitterness of itherself and her red mouth took upon itself a grim line. The worst of itfor him was that he was not of that strain of his race who had beenthe "bad lot. " The "bad lot" had been the weak lot, the vicious, theself-degrading. Scandals which had shut men out from their classand kind were usually of an ugly type. This man had a strong jaw, apowerful, healthy body, and clean, though perhaps hard, eyes. The FirstMan of them, who hewed his way to the front, who stood fierce in theface of things, who won the first lands and laid the first stones, mighthave been like him in build and look. 

"It's a disgusting thing, " she said to herself, "to think of the corruptweaklings the strong ones dwindled down to. I hate them. So does he. "

There had been many such of late years, she knew. She had seen them inParis, in Rome, even in New York. Things with thin or over-thick bodiesand receding chins and foreheads; things haunting places of amusementand finding inordinate entertainment in strange jokes and horseplay. Sheherself had hot blood and a fierce strength of rebellion, and she waswondering how, if the father and elder brother had been the "bad lot, "he had managed to stand still, looking on, and keeping his hands offthem. 

The last gold of the sun was mellowing the grey stone of the terrace andenriching the green of the weeds thrusting themselves into life betweenthe uneven flags when she reached Stornham, and passing through thehouse found Lady Anstruthers sitting there. In sustenance of her effortto keep up appearances, she had put on a weird little muslin dress andhad elaborated the dressing of her thin hair. It was no longer draggedback straight from her face, and she looked a trifle less abject, even ashade prettier. Bettina sat upon the edge of the balustrade and touchedthe hair with light fingers, ruffling it a little becomingly. 

"If you had worn it like this yesterday, " she said, "I should have knownyou. "

"Should you, Betty? I never look into a mirror if I can help it, butwhen I do I never know myself. The thing that stares back at me with itspale eyes is not Rosy. But, of course, everyone grows old. "

"Not now! People are just discovering how to grow young instead. "

Lady Anstruthers looked into the clear courage of her laughing eyes. 

"Somehow, " she said, "you say strange things in such a way that onefeels as if they must be true, however--however unlike anything elsethey are. "

"They are not as new as they seem, " said Betty. "Ancient philosopherssaid things like them centuries ago, but people did not believe them. Weare just beginning to drag them out of the dust and furbish them up andpretend they are ours, just as people rub up and adorn themselves withjewels dug out of excavations. "

"In America people think so many new things, " said poor little LadyAnstruthers with yearning humbleness. 

"The whole civilised world is thinking what you call new things, " saidBetty. "The old ones won't do. They have been tried, and though theyhave helped us to the place we have reached, they cannot help us anyfarther. We must begin again. "

"It is such a long time since I began, " said Rosy, "such a long time. "

"Then there must be another beginning for you, too. The hour hasstruck. "

Lady Anstruthers rose with as involuntary a movement as if a strong handhad drawn her to her feet. She stood facing Betty, a pathetic littlefigure in her washed-out muslin frock and with her washed-out face andeyes and being, though on her faded cheeks a flush was rising. 

"Oh, Betty!" she said, "I don't know what there is about you, but thereis something which makes one feel as if you believed everything andcould do everything, and as if one believes YOU. Whatever you were tosay, you would make it seem TRUE. If you said the wildest thing in theworld I should BELIEVE you. "

Betty got up, too, and there was an extraordinary steadiness in hereyes. 

"You may, " she answered. "I shall never say one thing to you which isnot a truth, not one single thing. "

"I believe that, " said Rosy Anstruthers, with a quivering mouth. "I dobelieve it so. "

"I walked to Mount Dunstan, " Betty said later. 

"Really?" said Rosy. "There and back?"

"Yes, and all round the park and the gardens. "

Rosy looked rather uncertain. 

"Weren't you a little afraid of meeting someone?"

"I did meet someone. At first I took him for a gamekeeper. But he turnedout to be Lord Mount Dunstan. "

Lady Anstruthers gasped. 

"What did he do?" she exclaimed. "Did he look angry at seeing astranger? They say he is so ill-tempered and rude. "

"I should feel ill-tempered if I were in his place, " said Betty. "He hasenough to rouse his evil passions and make him savage. What a fate for aman with any sense and decency of feeling! What fools and criminalsthe last generation of his house must have produced! I wonder how suchthings evolve themselves. But he is different--different. One can seeit. If he had a chance--just half a chance--he would build it all upagain. And I don't mean merely the place, but all that one means whenone says 'his house. '"

"He would need a great deal of money, " sighed Lady Anstruthers. 

Betty nodded slowly as she looked out, reflecting, into the park. 

"Yes, it would require money, " was her admission. 

"And he has none, " Lady Anstruthers added. "None whatever. "

"He will get some, " said Betty, still reflecting. "He will make it, ordig it up, or someone will leave it to him. There is a great deal ofmoney in the world, and when a strong creature ought to have some of ithe gets it. "

"Oh, Betty!" said Rosy. "Oh, Betty!"

"Watch that man, " said Betty; "you will see. It will come. "

Lady Anstruthers' mind, working at no time on complex lines, presentedher with a simple modern solution. 

"Perhaps he will marry an American, " she said, and saying it, sighedagain. 

"He will not do it on purpose. " Bettina answered slowly and with such anair of absence of mind that Rosy laughed a little. 

"Will he do it accidentally, or against his will?" she said. 

Betty herself smiled. 

"Perhaps he will, " she said. "There are Englishmen who rather dislikeAmericans. I think he is one of them. "

It apparently became necessary for Lady Anstruthers, a moment later, tolean upon the stone balustrade and pick off a young leaf or so, for noreason whatever, unless that in doing so she averted her look from hersister as she made her next remark. 

"Are you--when are you going to write to father and mother?"

"I have written, " with unembarrassed evenness of tone. "Mother will becounting the days. "

"Mother!" Rosy breathed, with a soft little gasp. "Mother!" and turnedher face farther away. "What did you tell her?"

Betty moved over to her and stood close at her side. The power of herpersonality enveloped the tremulous creature as if it had been a senseof warmth. 

"I told her how beautiful the place was, and how Ughtred adored you--andhow you loved us all, and longed to see New York again. "

The relief in the poor little face was so immense that Betty's heartshook before it. Lady Anstruthers looked up at her with adoring eyes. 

"I might have known, " she said; "I might have known that--that you wouldonly say the right thing. You couldn't say the wrong thing, Betty. "

Betty bent over her and spoke almost yearningly. 

"Whatever happens, " she said, "we will take care that mother is nothurt. She's too kind--she's too good--she's too tender. "

"That is what I have remembered, " said Lady Anstruthers brokenly. "Sheused to hold me on her lap when I was quite grown up. Oh! her soft, warmarms--her warm shoulder! I have so wanted her. "

"She has wanted you, " Betty answered. "She thinks of you just as she didwhen she held you on her lap. "

"But if she saw me now--looking like this! If she saw me! Sometimes Ihave even been glad to think she never would. "

"She will. " Betty's tone was cool and clear. "But before she does Ishall have made you look like yourself. "

Lady Anstruthers' thin hand closed on her plucked leaves convulsively, and then opening let them drop upon the stone of the terrace. 

"We shall never see each other. It wouldn't be possible, " she said. "Andthere is no magic in the world now, Betty. You can't bring back----"

"Yes, you can, " said Bettina. "And what used to be called magic is onlythe controlled working of the law and order of things in these days. Wemust talk it all over. "

Lady Anstruthers became a little pale. 

"What?" she asked, low and nervously, and Betty saw her glance sidewaysat the windows of the room which opened on to the terrace. 

Betty took her hand and drew her down into a chair. She sat near her andlooked her straight in the face. 

"Don't be frightened, " she said. "I tell you there is no need to befrightened. We are not living in the Middle Ages. There is a policemaneven in Stornham village, and we are within four hours of London, wherethere are thousands. "

Lady Anstruthers tried to laugh, but did not succeed very well, and herforehead flushed. 

"I don't quite know why I seem so nervous, " she said. "It's very sillyof me. "

She was still timid enough to cling to some rag of pretence, but Bettyknew that it would fall away. She did the wisest possible thing, whichwas to make an apparently impersonal remark. 

"I want you to go over the place with me and show me everything. Wallsand fences and greenhouses and outbuildings must not be allowed tocrumble away. "

"What?" cried Rosy. "Have you seen all that already?" She actuallystared at her. "How practical and--and American!"

"To see that a wall has fallen when you find yourself obliged to walkround a pile of grass-grown brickwork?" said Betty. 

Lady Anstruthers still softly stared. 

"What--what are you thinking of?" she asked. 

"Thinking that it is all too beautiful----" Betty's look swept theloveliness spread about her, "too beautiful and too valuable to beallowed to lose its value and its beauty. " She turned her eyes back toRosy and the deep dimple near her mouth showed itself delightfully. "Itis a throwing away of capital, " she added. 

"Oh!" cried Lady Anstruthers, "how clever you are! And you look sodifferent, Betty. "

"Do I look stupid?" the dimple deepening. "I must try to alter that. "

"Don't try to alter your looks, " said Rosy. "It is your looks that makeyou so--so wonderful. But usually women--girls----" Rosy paused. 

"Oh, I have been trained, " laughed Betty. "I am the spoiled daughter ofa business man of genius. His business is an art and a science. I havehad advantages. He has let me hear him talk. I even know some triflingthings about stocks. Not enough to do me vital injury--but something. What I know best of all, "--her laugh ended and her eyes changedtheir look, --"is that it is a blunder to think that beauty is notcapital--that happiness is not--and that both are not the greatestassets in the scheme. This, " with a wave of her hand, taking in all theysaw, "is beauty, and it ought to be happiness, and it must be taken careof. It is your home and Ughtred's----"

"It is Nigel's, " put in Rosy. 

"It is entailed, isn't it?" turning quickly. "He cannot sell it?"

"If he could we should not be sitting here, " ruefully. 

"Then he cannot object to its being rescued from ruin. "

"He will object to--to money being spent on things he does not carefor. " Lady Anstruthers' voice lowered itself, as it always did when shespoke of her husband, and she indulged in the involuntary hasty glanceabout her. 

"I am going to my room to take off my hat, " Betty said. "Will you comewith me?"

She went into the house, talking quietly of ordinary things, and inthis way they mounted the stairway together and passed along the gallerywhich led to her room. When they entered it she closed the door, lockedit, and, taking off her hat, laid it aside. After doing which she sat. 

"No one can hear and no one can come in, " she said. "And if they could, you are afraid of things you need not be afraid of now. Tell me whathappened when you were so ill after Ughtred was born. "

"You guessed that it happened then, " gasped Lady Anstruthers. 

"It was a good time to make anything happen, " replied Bettina. "You wereprostrated, you were a child, and felt yourself cast off hopelessly fromthe people who loved you. "

"Forever! Forever!" Lady Anstruthers' voice was a sharp little moan. "That was what I felt--that nothing could ever help me. I dared notwrite things. He told me he would not have it--that he would stop anyhysterical complaints--that his mother could testify that hebehaved perfectly to me. She was the only person in the room with uswhen--when----"

"When?" said Betty. 

Lady Anstruthers shuddered. She leaned forward and caught Betty's handbetween her own shaking ones. 

"He struck me! He struck me! He said it never happened--but it did--itdid! Betty, it did! That was the one thing that came back to meclearest. He said that I was in delirious hysterics, and that I hadstruggled with his mother and himself, because they tried to keep mequiet, and prevent the servants hearing. One awful day he brought LadyAnstruthers into the room, and they stood over me, as I lay in bed, andshe fixed her eyes on me and said that she--being an Englishwoman, anda person whose word would be believed, could tell people the truth--myfather and mother, if necessary, that my spoiled, hysterical Americantempers had created unhappiness for me--merely because I was bored bylife in the country and wanted excitement. I tried to answer, but theywould not let me, and when I began to shake all over, they said that Iwas throwing myself into hysterics again. And they told the doctor so, and he believed it. "

The possibilities of the situation were plainly to be seen. Fate, in theform of temperament itself, had been against her. It was clear enough toBetty as she patted and stroked the thin hands. "I understand. Tell methe rest, " she said. 

Lady Anstruthers' head dropped. 

"When I was loneliest, and dying of homesickness, and so weak that Icould not speak without sobbing, he came to me--it was one morning afterI had been lying awake all night--and he began to seem kinder. He hadnot been near me for two days, and I had thought I was going to beleft to die alone--and mother would never know. He said he had beenreflecting and that he was afraid that we had misunderstood eachother--because we belonged to different countries, and had been broughtup in different ways----" she paused. 

"And that if you understood his position and considered it, you mightboth be quite happy, " Betty gave in quiet termination. 

Lady Anstruthers started. 

"Oh, you know it all!" she exclaimed

"Only because I have heard it before. It is an old trick. And becausehe seemed kind and relenting, you tried to understand--and signedsomething. "

"I WANTED to understand. I WANTED to believe. What did it matter whichof us had the money, if we liked each other and were happy? He told methings about the estate, and about the enormous cost of it, and his badluck, and debts he could not help. And I said that I would do anythingif--if we could only be like mother and father. And he kissed me and Isigned the paper. "

"And then?"

"He went to London the next day, and then to Paris. He said he wasobliged to go on business. He was away a month. And after a week hadpassed, Lady Anstruthers began to be restless and angry, and once sheflew into a rage, and told me I was a fool, and that if I had been anEnglishwoman, I should have had some decent control over my husband, because he would have respected me. In time I found out what I had done. It did not take long. "

"The paper you signed, " said Betty, "gave him control over your money?"

A forlorn nod was the answer. 

"And since then he has done as he chose, and he has not chosen to carefor Stornham. And once he made you write to father, to ask for moremoney?"

"I did it once. I never would do it again. He has tried to make me. Healways says it is to save Stornham for Ughtred. "

"Nothing can take Stornham from Ughtred. It may come to him a ruin, butit will come to him. "

"He says there are legal points I cannot understand. And he says he isspending money on it. "

"Where?"

"He--doesn't go into that. If I were to ask questions, he would make meknow that I had better stop. He says I know nothing about things. Andhe is right. He has never allowed me to know and--and I am not like you, Betty. "

"When you signed the paper, you did not realise that you were doingsomething you could never undo and that you would be forced to submit tothe consequences?"

"I--I didn't realise anything but that it would kill me to live as I hadbeen living--feeling as if they hated me. And I was so glad and thankfulthat he seemed kinder. It was as if I had been on the rack, and heturned the screws back, and I was ready to do anything--anything--ifI might be taken off. Oh, Betty! you know, don't you, that--that if hewould only have been a little kind--just a little--I would have obeyedhim always, and given him everything. "

Betty sat and looked at her, with deeply pondering eyes. She wasconfronting the fact that it seemed possible that one must build a newsoul for her as well as a new body. In these days of science and growingsanity of thought, one did not stand helpless before the problem ofphysical rebuilding, and--and perhaps, if one could pour life into acreature, the soul of it would respond, and wake again, and grow. 

"You do not know where he is?" she said aloud. "You absolutely do notknow?"

"I never know exactly, " Lady Anstruthers answered. "He was here for afew days the week before you came. He said he was going abroad. He mightappear to-morrow, I might not hear of him for six months. I can't helphoping now that it will be the six months. "

"Why particularly now?" inquired Betty. 

Lady Anstruthers flushed and looked shy and awkward. 

"Because of--you. I don't know what he would say. I don't know what hewould do. "

"To me?" said Betty. 

"It would be sure to be something unreasonable and wicked, " said LadyAnstruthers. "It would, Betty. "

"I wonder what it would be?" Betty said musingly. 

"He has told lies for years to keep you all from me. If he came now, hewould know that he had been found out. He would say that I had told youthings. He would be furious because you have seen what there is to see. He would know that you could not help but realise that the money he mademe ask for had not been spent on the estate. He, --Betty, he would try toforce you to go away. "

"I wonder what he would do?" Betty said again musingly. She feltinterested, not afraid. 

"It would be something cunning, " Rosy protested. "It would be somethingno one could expect. He might be so rude that you could not remainin the room with him, or he might be quite polite, and pretend he wasrather glad to see you. If he was only frightfully rude we should besafer, because that would not be an unexpected thing, but if he waspolite, it would be because he was arranging something hideous, whichyou could not defend yourself against. "

"Can you tell me, " said Betty quite slowly, because, as she looked downat the carpet, she was thinking very hard, "the kind of unexpected thinghe has done to you?" Lifting her eyes, she saw that a troubled flush wascreeping over Lady Anstruthers' face. 

"There--have been--so many queer things, " she faltered. Then Betty knewthere was some special thing she was afraid to talk about, and that ifshe desired to obtain illuminating information it would be well to gointo the matter. 

"Try, " she said, "to remember some particular incident. "

Lady Anstruthers looked nervous. 

"Rosy, " in the level voice, "there has been a particular incident--and Iwould rather hear of it from you than from him. "

Rosy's lap held little shaking hands. 

"He has held it over me for years, " she said breathlessly. "He saidhe would write about it to father and mother. He says he could use itagainst me as evidence in--in the divorce court. He says that divorcecourts in America are for women, but in England they are for men, and--he could defend himself against me. "

The incongruity of the picture of the small, faded creature arraigned ina divorce court on charges of misbehaviour would have made Betty smileif she had been in smiling mood. 

"What did he accuse you of?"

"That was the--the unexpected thing, " miserably. 

Betty took the unsteady hands firmly in her own. 

"Don't be afraid to tell me, " she said. "He knew you so well that heunderstood what would terrify you the most. I know you so well that Iunderstand how he does it. Did he do this unexpected thing just beforeyou wrote to father for the money?" As she quite suddenly presented thequestion, Rosy exclaimed aloud. 

"How did you know?" she said. "You--you are like a lawyer. How could youknow?"

How simple she was! How obviously an easy prey! She had beenunconsciously giving evidence with every word. 

"I have been thinking him over, " Betty said. "He interests me. I havebegun to guess that he always wants something when he professes that hehas a grievance. "

Then with drooping head, Rosy told the story. 

"Yes, it happened before he made me write to father for so much money. The vicar was ill and was obliged to go away for six months. Theclergyman who came to take his place was a young man. He was kind andgentle, and wanted to help people. His mother was with him and she waslike him. They loved each other, and they were quite poor. His name wasFfolliott. I liked to hear him preach. He said things that comforted me. Nigel found out that he comforted me, and--when he called here, he wasmore polite to him than he had ever been to Mr. Brent. He seemed almostas if he liked him. He actually asked him to dinner two or three times. After dinner, he would go out of the room and leave us together. Oh, Betty!" clinging to her hands, "I was so wretched then, that sometimesI thought I was going out of my mind. I think I looked wild. I used tokneel down and try to pray, and I could not. "

"Yes, yes, " said Betty. 

"I used to feel that if I could only have one friend, just one, Icould bear it better. Once I said something like that to Nigel. He onlyshrugged his shoulders and sneered when I said it. But afterwards Iknew he had remembered. One evening, when he had asked Mr. Ffolliott todinner, he led him to talk about religion. Oh, Betty! It made my bloodturn cold when he began. I knew he was doing it for some wicked reason. I knew the look in his eyes and the awful, agreeable smile on his mouth. When he said at last, 'If you could help my poor wife to find comfort insuch things, ' I began to see. I could not explain to anyone how he didit, but with just a sentence, dropped here and there, he seemed to tellthe whole story of a silly, selfish, American girl, thwarted in hervulgar little ambitions, and posing as a martyr, because she couldnot have her own way in everything. He said once, quite casually, 'I'mafraid American women are rather spoiled. ' And then he said, in thesame tolerant way--'A poor man is a disappointment to an American girl. America does not believe in rank combined with lack of fortune. ' I darednot defend myself. I am not clever enough to think of the right thingsto say. He meant Mr. Ffolliott to understand that I had married himbecause I thought he was grand and rich, and that I was a disappointedlittle spiteful shrew. I tried to act as if he was not hurting me, butmy hands trembled, and a lump kept rising in my throat. When we returnedto the drawing-room, and at last he left us together, I was praying andpraying that I might be able to keep from breaking down. "

She stopped and swallowed hard. Betty held her hands firmly until shewent on. 

"For a few minutes, I sat still, and tried to think of some newsubject--something about the church or the village. But I could notbegin to speak because of the lump in my throat. And then, suddenly, butquietly, Mr. Ffolliott got up. And though I dared not lift my eyes, Iknew he was standing before the fire, quite near me. And, oh! what doyou think he said, as low and gently as if his voice was a woman's. I did not know that people ever said such things now, or even thoughtthem. But never, never shall I forget that strange minute. He said justthis:

"'God will help you. He will. He will. '

"As if it was true, Betty! As if there was a God--and--He had notforgotten me. I did not know what I was doing, but I put out my hand andcaught at his sleeve, and when I looked up into his face, I saw inhis kind, good eyes, that he knew--that somehow--God knows how--heunderstood and that I need not utter a word to explain to him that hehad been listening to lies. "

"Did you talk to him?" Betty asked quietly. 

"He talked to me. We did not even speak of Nigel. He talked to me asI had never heard anyone talk before. Somehow he filled the room withsomething real, which was hope and comfort and like warmth, which keptmy soul from shivering. The tears poured from my eyes at first, but thelump in my throat went away, and when Nigel came back I actually did notfeel frightened, though he looked at me and sneered quietly. "

"Did he say anything afterwards?"

"He laughed a little cold laugh and said, 'I see you have been seekingthe consolation of religion. Neurotic women like confessors. I do notobject to your confessing, if you confess your own backslidings and notmine. '"

"That was the beginning, " said Betty speculatively. "The unexpectedthing was the end. Tell me the rest?"

"No one could have dreamed of it, " Rosy broke forth. "For weeks he wasalmost like other people. He stayed at Stornham and spent his days inshooting. He professed that he was rather enjoying himself in a dullway. He encouraged me to go to the vicarage, he invited the Ffolliottshere. He said Mrs. Ffolliott was a gentlewoman and good for me. He saidit was proper that I should interest myself in parish work. Once ortwice he even brought some little message to me from Mr. Ffolliott. "

It was a pitiably simple story. Betty saw, through its relation, theunconsciousness of the easily allured victim, the adroit leading onfrom step to step, the ordinary, natural, seeming method which arrangedopportunities. The two had been thrown together at the Court, at thevicarage, the church and in the village, and the hawk had looked on andbided his time. For the first time in her years of exile, Rosy had begunto feel that she might be allowed a friend--though she lived in secrettremor lest the normal liberty permitted her should suddenly be snatchedaway. 

"We never talked of Nigel, " she said, twisting her hands. "But he mademe begin to live again. He talked to me of Something that watched andwould not leave me--would never leave me. I was learning to believe it. Sometimes when I walked through the wood to the village, I used to stopamong the trees and look up at the bits of sky between the branches, andlisten to the sound in the leaves--the sound that never stops--and itseemed as if it was saying something to me. And I would clasp my handsand whisper, 'Yes, yes, ' 'I will, ' 'I will. ' I used to see Nigel lookingat me at table with a queer smile in his eyes and once he saidto me--'You are growing young and lovely, my dear. Your colour isimproving. The counsels of our friend are of a salutary nature. ' Itwould have made me nervous, but he said it almost good-naturedly, and Iwas silly enough even to wonder if it could be possible that he waspleased to see me looking less ill. It was true, Betty, that I wasgrowing stronger. But it did not last long. "

"I was afraid not, " said Betty. 

"An old woman in the lane near Bartyon Wood was ill. Mr. Ffolliott hadasked me to go to see her, and I used to go. She suffered a great dealand clung to us both. He comforted her, as he comforted me. Sometimeswhen he was called away he would send a note to me, asking me to go toher. One day he wrote hastily, saying that she was dying, and asked if Iwould go with him to her cottage at once. I knew it would save time ifI met him in the path which was a short cut. So I wrote a few words andgave them to the messenger. I said, 'Do not come to the house. I willmeet you in Bartyon Wood. '"

Betty made a slight movement, and in her face there was a dawning ofmingled amazement and incredulity. The thought which had come to herseemed--as Ughtred's locking of the door had seemed--too wild for moderndays. 

Lady Anstruthers saw her expression and understood it. She made ahopeless gesture with her small, bony hand. 

"Yes, " she said, "it is just like that. No one would believe it. Theworst cleverness of the things he does, is that when one tells of them, they sound like lies. I have a bewildered feeling that I should notbelieve them myself if I had not seen them. He met the boy in the parkand took the note from him. He came back to the house and up to my room, where I was dressing quickly to go to Mr. Ffolliott. "

She stopped for quite a minute, rather as if to recover breath. 

"He closed the door behind him and came towards me with the note in hishand. And I saw in a second the look that always terrifies me, in hisface. He had opened the note and he smoothed out the paper quietly andsaid, 'What is this. I could not help it--I turned cold and began toshiver. I could not imagine what was coming. "

"'Is it my note to Mr. Ffolliott?' I asked. 

"'Yes, it is your note to Mr. Ffolliott, ' and he read it aloud. "Donot come to the house. I will meet you in Bartyon Wood. " That is a nicenote for a man's wife to have written, to be picked up and read by astranger, if your confessor is not cautious in the matter of lettersfrom women----'

"When he begins a thing in that way, you may always know that he hasplanned everything--that you can do nothing--I always know. I knew then, and I knew I was quite white when I answered him:

"'I wrote it in a great hurry, Mrs. Farne is worse. We are goingtogether to her. I said I would meet him--to save time. '

"He laughed, his awful little laugh, and touched the paper. 

"'I have no doubt. And I have no doubt that if other persons saw this, they would believe it. It is very likely. 

"'But you believe it, ' I said. 'You know it is true. No one would be sosilly--so silly and wicked as to----' Then I broke down and cried out. 'What do you mean? What could anyone think it meant?' I was so wild thatI felt as if I was going crazy. He clenched my wrist and shook me. 

"'Don't think you can play the fool with me, ' he said. 'I have beenwatching this thing from the first. The first time I leave you alonewith the fellow, I come back to find you have been giving him anemotional scene. Do you suppose your simpering good spirits and yourimbecile pink cheeks told me nothing? They told me exactly this. I havewaited to come upon it, and here it is. "Do not come to the house--Iwill meet you in the wood. "'

"That was the unexpected thing. It was no use to argue and try toexplain. I knew he did not believe what he was saying, but he workedhimself into a rage, he accused me of awful things, and called me awfulnames in a loud voice, so that he could be heard, until I was dumb andstaggering. All the time, I knew there was a reason, but I couldnot tell then what it was. He said at last, that he was going to Mr. Ffolliott. He said, 'I will meet him in the wood and I will take yournote with me. '

"Betty, it was so shameful that I fell down on my knees. 'Oh, don't--don't--do that, ' I said. 'I beg of you, Nigel. He is a gentlemanand a clergyman. I beg and beg of you. If you will not, I will doanything--anything. ' And at that minute I remembered how he had triedto make me write to father for money. And I cried out--catching at hiscoat, and holding him back. 'I will write to father as you asked me. Iwill do anything. I can't bear it. '"

"That was the whole meaning of the whole thing, " said Betty with eyesablaze. "That was the beginning, the middle and the end. What did hesay?"

"He pretended to be made more angry. He said, 'Don't insult me by tryingto bribe me with your vulgar money. Don't insult me. ' But he graduallygrew sulky instead of raging, and though he put the note in his pocket, he did not go to Mr. Ffolliott. And--I wrote to father. "

"I remember that, " Betty answered. "Did you ever speak to Mr. Ffolliottagain?"

"He guessed--he knew--I saw it in his kind, brown eyes when he passedme without speaking, in the village. I daresay the villagers weretold about the awful thing by some servant, who heard Nigel's voice. Villagers always know what is happening. He went away a few weeks later. The day before he went, I had walked through the wood, and just outsideit, I met him. He stopped for one minute--just one--he lifted his hatand said, just as he had spoken them that first night--just the samewords, 'God will help you. He will. He will. '"

A strange, almost unearthly joy suddenly flashed across her face. 

"It must be true, " she said. "It must be true. He has sent you, Betty. It has been a long time--it has been so long that sometimes I haveforgotten his words. But you have come!"

"Yes, I have come, " Betty answered. And she bent forward and kissed hergently, as if she had been soothing a child. 

There were other questions to ask. She was obliged to ask them. "Theunexpected thing" had been used as an instrument for years. It wasalways efficacious. Over the yearningly homesick creature had hung thethreat that her father and mother, those she ached and longed for, couldbe told the story in such a manner as would brand her as a woman witha shameful secret. How could she explain herself? There were the awful, written words. He was her husband. He was remorseless, plausible. Shedared not write freely. She had no witnesses to call upon. She haddiscovered that he had planned with composed steadiness that misleadingimpressions should be given to servants and village people. When theBrents returned to the vicarage, she had observed, with terror, that forsome reason they stiffened, and looked askance when the Ffolliotts werementioned. 

"I am afraid, Lady Anstruthers, that Mr. Ffolliott was a great mistake, "Mrs. Brent said once. 

Lady Anstruthers had not dared to ask any questions. She had felt theawkward colour rising in her face and had known that she looked guilty. But if she had protested against the injustice of the remark, SirNigel would have heard of her words before the day had passed, and sheshuddered to think of the result. He had by that time reached the pointof referring to Ffolliott with sneering lightness, as "Your lover. "

"Do you defend your lover to me, " he had said on one occasion, when shehad entered a timid protest. And her white face and wild helpless eyeshad been such evidence as to the effect the word had produced, that hehad seen the expediency of making a point of using it. 

The blood beat in Betty Vanderpoel's veins. 

"Rosy, " she said, looking steadily in the faded face, "tell me this. Didyou never think of getting away from him, of going somewhere, and tryingto reach father, by cable, or letter, by some means?"

Lady Anstruthers' weary and wrinkled little smile was a pitiablyilluminating thing. 

"My dear" she said, "if you are strong and beautiful and rich and welldressed, so that people care to look at you, and listen to what you say, you can do things. But who, in England, will listen to a shabby, dowdy, frightened woman, when she runs away from her husband, if he followsher and tells people she is hysterical or mad or bad? It is the shabby, dowdy woman who is in the wrong. At first, I thought of nothing else buttrying to get away. And once I went to Stornham station. I walked allthe way, on a hot day. And just as I was getting into a third-classcarriage, Nigel marched in and caught my arm, and held me back. Ifainted and when I came to myself I was in the carriage, being drivenback to the Court, and he was sitting opposite to me. He said, 'Youfool! It would take a cleverer woman than you to carry that out. ' And Iknew it was the awful truth. "

"It is not the awful truth now, " said Betty, and she rose to her feetand stood looking before her, but with a look which did not rest onchairs and tables. She remained so, standing for a few moments of deadsilence. 

"What a fool he was!" she said at last. "And what a villain! But avillain is always a fool. "

She bent, and taking Rosy's face between her hands, kissed it with akiss which seemed like a seal. "That will do, " she said. "Now I know. One must know what is in one's hands and what is not. Then one need notwaste time in talking of miserable things. One can save one's strengthfor doing what can be done. "

"I believe you would always think about DOING things, " said LadyAnstruthers. "That is American, too. "

"It is a quality Americans inherited from England, " lightly; "one of theresults of it is that England covers a rather large share of the mapof the world. It is a practical quality. You and I might spend hours intalking to each other of what Nigel has done and what you have done, ofwhat he has said, and of what you have said. We might give some hours, Idaresay, to what the Dowager did and said. But wiser people than we arehave found out that thinking of black things past is living them again, and it is like poisoning one's blood. It is deterioration of property. "

She said the last words as if she had ended with a jest. But she knewwhat she was doing. 

"You were tricked into giving up what was yours, to a person who couldnot be trusted. What has been done with it, scarcely matters. It is notyours, but Sir Nigel's. But we are not helpless, because we have in ourhands the most powerful material agent in the world. 

"Come, Rosy, and let us walk over the house. We will begin with that. "

CHAPTER XVII

TOWNLINSON & SHEPPARD

During the whole course of her interesting life--and she had alwaysfound life interesting--Betty Vanderpoel decided that she had knownno experience more absorbing than this morning spent in going over thelong-closed and deserted portions of the neglected house. She had neverseen anything like the place, or as full of suggestion. The greaterpart of it had simply been shut up and left to time and weather, both ofwhich had had their effects. The fine old red roof, having lost tiles, had fallen into leaks that let in rain, which had stained and rottedwalls, plaster, and woodwork; wind and storm had beaten through brokenwindow panes and done their worst with such furniture and hangings asthey found to whip and toss and leave damp and spotted with mould. Theypassed through corridors, and up and down short or long stairways, withstained or faded walls, and sometimes with cracked or fallen plasteringand wainscotting. Here and there the oak flooring itself was uncertain. The rooms, whether large or small, all presented a like aspect ofpotential beauty and comfort, utterly uncared for and forlorn. Therewere many rooms, but none more than scantily furnished, and a number ofthem were stripped bare. Betty found herself wondering how long a timeit had taken the belongings of the big place to dwindle and melt awayinto such bareness. 

"There was a time, I suppose, when it was all furnished, " she said. 

"All these rooms were shut up when I came here, " Rosy answered. "Isuppose things worth selling have been sold. When pieces of furniturewere broken in one part of the house, they were replaced by thingsbrought from another. No one cared. Nigel hates it all. He calls it arathole. He detests the country everywhere, but particularly this partof it. After the first year I had learned better than to speak to him ofspending money on repairs. "

"A good deal of money should be spent on repairs, " reflected Betty, looking about her. 

She was standing in the middle of a room whose walls were hung withthe remains of what had been chintz, covered with a pattern of looseclusters of moss rosebuds. The dampness had rotted it until, in someplaces, it had fallen away in strips from its fastenings. A quaint, embroidered couch stood in one corner, and as Betty looked at it, amouse crept from under the tattered valance, stared at her in alarmand suddenly darted back again, in terror of intrusion so unusual. Acasement window swung open, on a broken hinge, and a strong branch ofivy, having forced its way inside, had thrown a covering of leaves overthe deep ledge, and was beginning to climb the inner woodwork. Throughthe casement was to be seen a heavenly spread of country, whose rollinglands were clad softly in green pastures and thick-branched trees. 

"This is the Rosebud Boudoir, " said Lady Anstruthers, smiling faintly. "All the rooms have names. I thought them so delightful, when I firstheard them. The Damask Room--the Tapestry Room--the White WainscotRoom--My Lady's Chamber. It almost broke my heart when I saw what theylooked like. "

"It would be very interesting, " Betty commented slowly, "to make themlook as they ought to look. "

A remote fear rose to the surface of the expression in Lady Anstruthers'eyes. She could not detach herself from certain recollections ofNigel--of his opinions of her family--of his determination not to allowit to enter as a factor in either his life or hers. And Betty had cometo Stornham--Betty whom he had detested as a child--and in the course oftwo days, she had seemed to become a new part of the atmosphere, and tomake the dead despair of the place begin to stir with life. What otherthing than this was happening as she spoke of making such rooms as theRosebud Boudoir "look as they ought to look, " and said the words notas if they were part of a fantastic vision, but as if they expressed aperfectly possible thing?

Betty saw the doubt in her eyes, and in a measure, guessed at itsmeaning. The time to pause for argument had, however not arrived. Therewas too much to be investigated, too much to be seen. She swept her onher way. They wandered on through some forty rooms, more or less; theyopened doors and closed them; they unbarred shutters and let the sunstream in on dust and dampness and cobwebs. The comprehension of thesituation which Betty gained was as valuable as it was enlightening. 

The descent into the lower part of the house was a new experience. Bettyhad not before seen huge, flagged kitchens, vaulted servants' halls, stone passages, butteries and dairies. The substantial masonry of thewalls and arched ceilings, the stone stairway, and the seeminglyendless offices, were interestingly remote in idea from such domesticmodernities as chance views of up-to-date American household workingshad provided her. 

In the huge kitchen itself, an elderly woman, rolling pastry, paused tocurtsy to them, with stolid curiosity in her heavy-featured face. In hercharacter as "single-handed" cook, Mrs. Noakes had sent up uninvitingmeals to Lady Anstruthers for several years, but she had not seen herladyship below stairs before. And this was the unexpected arrival--theyoung lady there had been "talk of" from the moment of her appearance. Mrs. Noakes admitted with the grudgingness of a person of uncheerfultemperament, that looks like that always would make talk. A certaindegree of vague mental illumination led her to agree with Robert, thefootman, that the stranger's effectiveness was, perhaps, also, notaltogether a matter of good looks, and certainly it was not an affairof clothes. Her brightish blue dress, of rough cloth, was nothingparticular, notwithstanding the fit of it. There was "something elseabout her. " She looked round the place, not with the casual indifferenceof a fine young lady, carelessly curious to see what she had not seenbefore, but with an alert, questioning interest. 

"What a big place, " she said to her ladyship. "What substantial walls!What huge joints must have been roasted before such a fireplace. "

She drew near to the enormous, antiquated cooking place. 

"People were not very practical when this was built, " she said. "Itlooks as if it must waste a great deal of coal. Is it----?" she lookedat Mrs. Noakes. "Do you like it?"

There was a practical directness in the question for which Mrs. Noakeswas not prepared. Until this moment, it had apparently mattered littlewhether she liked things or not. The condition of her implements oftrade was one of her grievances--the ancient fireplace and ovens thebitterest. 

"It's out of order, miss, " she answered. "And they don't use 'em likethis in these days. "

"I thought not, " said Miss Vanderpoel. 

She made other inquiries as direct and significant of the observing eye, and her passage through the lower part of the establishment left Mrs. Noakes and her companions in a strange but not unpleasurable state offerment. 

"Think of a young lady that's never had nothing to do with kitchens, going straight to that shameful old fireplace, and seeing what it meantto the woman that's got to use it. 'Do you like it?' she says. If she'dbeen a cook herself, she couldn't have put it straighter. She's goteyes. "

"She's been using them all over the place, " said Robert. "Her and herladyship's been into rooms that's not been opened for years. "

"More shame to them that should have opened 'em, " remarked Mrs. Noakes. "Her ladyship's a poor, listless thing--but her spirit was broken longago. 

"This one will mend it for her, perhaps, " said the man servant. "Iwonder what's going to happen. "

"Well, she's got a look with her--the new one--as if where she wasthings would be likely to happen. You look out. The place won't seem sodead and alive if we've got something to think of and expect. "

"Who are the solicitors Sir Nigel employs?" Betty had asked her sister, when their pilgrimage through the house had been completed. 

Messrs. Townlinson & Sheppard, a firm which for several generationshad transacted the legal business of much more important estates thanStornham, held its affairs in hand. Lady Anstruthers knew nothing ofthem, but that they evidently did not approve of the conduct of theirclient. Nigel was frequently angry when he spoke of them. It could begathered that they had refused to allow him to do things he wished todo--sell things, or borrow money on them. 

"I think we must go to London and see them, " Betty suggested. 

Rosy was agitated. Why should one see them? What was there to bespoken of? Their going, Betty explained would be a sort of visit ofceremony--in a measure a precaution. Since Sir Nigel was apparently notto be reached, having given no clue as to where he intended to go, itmight be discreet to consult Messrs. Townlinson & Sheppard with regardto the things it might be well to do--the repairs it appeared necessaryto make at once. If Messrs. Townlinson & Sheppard approved of the doingof such work, Sir Nigel could not resent their action, and say that inhis absence liberties had been taken. Such a course seemed businesslikeand dignified. 

It was what Betty felt that her father would do. Nothing could becomplained of, which was done with the knowledge and under the sanctionof the family solicitors. 

"Then there are other things we must do. We must go to shops andtheatres. It will be good for you to go to shops and theatres, Rosy. "

"I have nothing but rags to wear, " answered Lady Anstruthers, reddening. 

"Then before we go we will have things sent down. People can be sentfrom the shops to arrange what we want. "

The magic of the name, standing for great wealth, could, it was true, bring to them, not only the contents of shops, but the people who showedthem, and were ready to carry out any orders. The name of Vanderpoelalready stood, in London, for inexhaustible resource. Yes, it was simpleenough to send for politely subservient saleswomen to bring what onewanted. 

The being reminded in every-day matters of the still real existence ofthe power of this magic was the first step in the rebuilding of LadyAnstruthers. To realise that the wonderful and yet simple necromancywas gradually encircling her again, had its parallel in the taking ofa tonic, whose effect was cumulative. She herself did not realise theworking of it. But Betty regarded it with interest. She saw it was goodfor her, merely to look on at the unpacking of the New York boxes, whichthe maid, sent for from London, brought down with her. 

As the woman removed, from tray after tray, the tissue-paper-enfoldedlayers of garments, Lady Anstruthers sat and watched her with normal, simply feminine interest growing in her eyes. The things were madewith the absence of any limit in expenditure, the freedom with delicatestuffs and priceless laces which belonged only to her faint memories ofa lost past. 

Nothing had limited the time spent in the embroidering of thisapparently simple linen frock and coat; nothing had restrained thehand holding the scissors which had cut into the lace which adorned inappliques and filmy frills this exquisitely charming ball dress. 

"It is looking back so far, " she said, waving her hand towards them withan odd gesture. "To think that it was once all like--like that. "

She got up and went to the things, turning them over, and touching themwith a softness, almost expressing a caress. The names of the makersstamped on bands and collars, the names of the streets in which theirshops stood, moved her. She heard again the once familiar rattle ofwheels, and the rush and roar of New York traffic. 

Betty carried on the whole matter with lightness. She talked easilyand casually, giving local colour to what she said. She described theabnormally rapid growth of the places her sister had known in her teens, the new buildings, new theatres, new shops, new people, the latermode of living, much of it learned from England, through the unceasingweaving of the Shuttle. 

"Changing--changing--changing. That is what it is always doing--America. We have not reached repose yet. One wonders how long it will be beforewe shall. Now we are always hurrying breathlessly after the nextthing--the new one--which we always think will be the better one. Othercountries built themselves slowly. In the days of their building, thepace of life was a march. When America was born, the march had alreadybegun to hasten, and as a nation we began, in our first hour, at thequickening speed. Now the pace is a race. New York is a kaleidoscope. I myself can remember it a wholly different thing. One passes down astreet one day, and the next there is a great gap where some buildingis being torn down--a few days later, a tall structure of some sortis touching the sky. It is wonderful, but it does not tend to calm themind. That is why we cross the Atlantic so much. The sober, quiet-lovingblood our forbears brought from older countries goes in search of rest. Mixed with other things, I feel in my own being a resentmentagainst newness and disorder, and an insistence on the atmosphere oflong-established things. "

But for years Lady Anstruthers had been living in the atmosphere oflong-established things, and felt no insistence upon it. She yearned tohear of the great, changing Western world--of the great, changing city. Betty must tell her what the changes were. What were the differencesin the streets--where had the new buildings been placed? How had FifthAvenue and Madison Avenue and Broadway altered? Were not GramercyPark and Madison Square still green with grass and trees? Was it alldifferent? Would she not know the old places herself? Though it seemed alifetime since she had seen them, the years which had passed were reallynot so many. 

It was good for her to talk and be talked to in this manner Betty saw. Still handling her subject lightly, she presented picture after picture. Some of them were of the wonderful, feverish city itself--the placequite passionately loved by some, as passionately disliked by others. She herself had fallen into the habit, as she left childhood behind her, of looking at it with interested wonder--at its riot of life and power, of huge schemes, and almost superhuman labours, of fortunes so colossalthat they seemed monstrosities in their relation to the world. Peoplewho in Rosalie's girlhood had lived in big ugly brownstone fronts, hadbuilt for themselves or for their children, houses such as, in othercountries, would have belonged to nobles and princes, spending fortunesupon their building, filling them with treasures brought from foreignlands, from palaces, from art galleries, from collectors. Sometimesstrange people built such houses and lived strange lavish, ostentatiouslives in them, forming an overstrained, abnormal, pleasure-chasing worldof their own. The passing of even ten years in New York counted itselfalmost as a generation; the fashions, customs, belongings of twentyyears ago wore an air of almost picturesque antiquity. 

"It does not take long to make an 'old New Yorker, '" she said. "Eachday brings so many new ones. "

There were, indeed, many new ones, Lady Anstruthers found. People whohad been poor had become hugely rich, a few who had been rich hadbecome poor, possessions which had been large had swelled to unnaturalproportions. Out of the West had risen fortunes more monstrous than allothers. As she told one story after another, Bettina realised, as shehad done often before, that it was impossible to enter into descriptionof the life and movements of the place, without its curiously involvingsome connection with the huge wealth of it--with its influence, itsrise, its swelling, or waning. 

"Somehow one cannot free one's self from it. This is the age ofwealth and invention--but of wealth before all else. Sometimes one istired--tired of it. "

"You would not be tired of it if--well, if you were I, said LadyAnstruthers rather pathetically. 

"Perhaps not, " Betty answered. "Perhaps not. "

She herself had seen people who were not tired of it in the sense inwhich she was--the men and women, with worn or intently anxious faces, hastening with the crowds upon the pavements, all hastening somewhere, in chase of that small portion of the wealth which they earned by theirlabour as their daily share; the same men and women surging towardselevated railroad stations, to seize on places in the homeward-boundtrains; or standing in tired-looking groups, waiting for the approach ofan already overfull street car, in which they must be packed together, and swing to the hanging straps, to keep upon their feet. Their way ofbeing weary of it would be different from hers, they would be wearyonly of hearing of the mountains of it which rolled themselves up, as itseemed, in obedience to some irresistible, occult force. 

On the day after Stornham village had learned that her ladyship and MissVanderpoel had actually gone to London, the dignified firm of Townlinson& Sheppard received a visit which created some slight sensation intheir establishment, though it had not been entirely unexpected. It had, indeed, been heralded by a note from Miss Vanderpoel herself, whohad asked that the appointment be made. Men of Messrs. Townlinson &Sheppard's indubitable rank in their profession could not fail to knowthe significance of the Vanderpoel name. They knew and understood itsweight perfectly well. When their client had married one of ReubenVanderpoel's daughters, they had felt that extraordinary good fortunehad befallen him and his estate. Their private opinion had been that Mr. Vanderpoel's knowledge of his son-in-law must have been limited, orthat he had curiously lax American views of paternal duty. The firm washighly reputable, long established strictly conservative, and somewhatinsular in its point of view. It did not understand, or seekto understand, America. It had excellent reasons for thoroughlyunderstanding Sir Nigel Anstruthers. Its opinions of him it reservedto itself. If Messrs. Townlinson & Sheppard had been asked to give adaughter into their client's keeping, they would have flatly refused toaccept the honour proposed. Mr. Townlinson had, indeed, at the time ofthe marriage, admitted in strict confidence to his partner that for hispart he would have somewhat preferred to follow a daughter of his own toher tomb. After the marriage the firm had found the situation confusingand un-English. There had been trouble with Sir Nigel, who had plainlybeen disappointed. At first it had appeared that the American magnatehad shown astuteness in refraining from leaving his son-in-law a freehand. Lady Anstruthers' fortune was her own and not her husband's. Mr. Townlinson, paying a visit to Stornham and finding the bride a gentle, childish-looking girl, whose most marked expression was one of growingtimorousness, had returned with a grave face. He foresaw the result, ifher family did not stand by her with firmness, which he also foresaw herhusband would prevent if possible. It became apparent that the familydid not stand by her--or were cleverly kept at a distance. There wasa long illness, which seemed to end in the seclusion from the world, brought about by broken health. Then it was certain that what Mr. Townlinson had foreseen had occurred. The inexperienced girl had beenbullied into submission. Sir Nigel had gained the free hand, whateverthe means he had chosen to employ. Most improper--most improper, thewhole affair. He had a great deal of money, but none of it was used forthe benefit of the estate--his deformed boy's estate. Advice, dignifiedremonstrance, resulted only in most disagreeable scenes. Messrs. Townlinson & Sheppard could not exceed certain limits. The mannerin which the money was spent was discreditable. There were avenuesa respectable firm knew only by rumour, there were insane gamblingspeculations, which could only end in disaster, there were things onecould not decently concern one's self with. Lady Anstruthers' familyhad doubtless become indignant and disgusted, and had dropped the wholeaffair. Sad for the poor woman, but not unnatural. 

And now appears a Miss Vanderpoel, who wishes to appoint an interviewwith Messrs. Townlinson & Sheppard. What does she wish to say? Thefamily is apparently taking the matter up. Is this lady an elder or ayounger sister of Lady Anstruthers? Is she an older woman of that strongand rather trying American type one hears of, or is she younger than herladyship, a pretty, indignant, totally unpractical girl, outraged bythe state of affairs she has discovered, foolishly coming to demandof Messrs. Townlinson & Sheppard an explanation of things they are notresponsible for? Will she, perhaps, lose her temper, and accuse andreproach, or even--most unpleasant to contemplate--shed hystericaltears?

It fell to Mr. Townlinson to receive her in the absence of Mr. Sheppard, who had been called to Northamptonshire to attend to great affairs. Hewas a stout, grave man with a heavy, well-cut face, and, when Bettinaentered his room, his courteous reception of her reserved his view ofthe situation entirely. 

She was not of the mature and rather alarming American type he hadimagined possible, he felt some relief in marking at once. She was alsonot the pretty, fashionable young lady who might have come to scold him, and ask silly, irrational questions. 

His ordinarily rather unillumined countenance changed somewhat inexpression when she sat down and began to speak. Mr. Townlinson wasimpressed by the fact that it was at once unmistakably evident thatwhatsoever her reason for coming, she had not presented herself to askirrelevant or unreasonable questions. Lady Anstruthers, she explainedwithout superfluous phrase, had no definite knowledge of her husband'swhereabouts, and it had seemed possible that Messrs. Townlinson &Sheppard might have received some information more recent that her own. The impersonal framing of this inquiry struck Mr. Townlinson as being inremarkably good taste, since it conveyed no condemnation of Sir Nigel, and no desire to involve Mr. Townlinson in expressing any. It refrainedeven from implying that the situation was an unusual one, which mightbe open to criticism. Excellent reserve and great cleverness, Mr. Townlinson commented inwardly. There were certainly few young ladies whowould have clearly realised that a solicitor cannot be called upon tocommit himself, until he has had time to weigh matters and decide uponthem. His long and varied experience had included interviews in whichcharming, emotional women had expected him at once to "take sides. " MissVanderpoel exhibited no signs of expecting anything of this kind, evenwhen she went on with what she had come to say. Stornham Court andits surroundings were depreciating seriously in value through need ofradical repairs etc. Her sister's comfort was naturally involved, and, as Mr. Townlinson would fully understand, her nephew's future. Thesooner the process of dilapidation was arrested, the better and withthe less difficulty. The present time was without doubt better than anindefinite future. Miss Vanderpoel, having fortunately been able to cometo Stornham, was greatly interested, and naturally desirous of seeingthe work begun. Her father also would be interested. Since it was notpossible to consult Sir Nigel, it had seemed proper to consult hissolicitors in whose hands the estate had been for so long a time. Shewas aware, it seemed, that not only Mr. Townlinson, but Mr. Townlinson'sfather, and also his grandfather, had legally represented theAnstruthers, as well as many other families. As there seemed nonecessity for any structural changes, and the work done was such ascould only rescue and increase the value of the estate, could there beany objection to its being begun without delay?

Certainly an unusual young lady. It would be interesting to discoverhow well she knew Sir Nigel, since it seemed that only a knowledge ofhim--his temper, his bitter, irritable vanity, could have revealedto her the necessity of the precaution she was taking without evenintimating that it was a precaution. Extraordinarily clever girl. 

Mr. Townlinson wore an air of quiet, business-like reflection. 

"You are aware, Miss Vanderpoel, that the present income from theestate is not such as would justify anything approaching the requiredexpenditure?"

"Yes, I am aware of that. The expense would be provided for by myfather. "

"Most generous on Mr. Vanderpoel's part, " Mr. Townlinson commented. "Theestate would, of course, increase greatly in value. "

Circumstances had prevented her father from visiting Stornham, MissVanderpoel explained, and this had led to his being ignorant of acondition of things which he might have remedied. She did not explainwhat the particular circumstances which had separated the families hadbeen, but Mr. Townlinson thought he understood. The condition existingcould be remedied now, if Messrs. Townlinson & Sheppard saw no obstaclesother than scarcity of money. 

Mr. Townlinson's summing up of the matter expressed in effect that hesaw none. The estate had been a fine one in its day. During the lastsixty years it had become much impoverished. With conservative decorumof manner, he admitted that there had not been, since Sir Nigel'smarriage, sufficient reason for the neglect of dilapidations. The firmhad strongly represented to Sir Nigel that certain resources should notbe diverted from the proper object of restoring the property, whichwas entailed upon his son. The son's future should beyond all have beenconsidered in the dispensing of his mother's fortune. 

He, by this time, comprehended fully that he need restrain no dignifiedexpression of opinion in his speech with this young lady. She hadcome to consult with him with as clear a view of the proprieties anddiscretions demanded by his position as he had himself. And yet each, before the close of the interview, understood the point of view of theother. What he recognised was that, though she had not seen Sir Nigelsince her childhood, she had in some astonishing way obtained anextraordinary insight into his character, and it was this which had ledher to take her present step. She might not realise all she might haveto contend with, but her conservative and formal action had surroundedher and her sister with a certain barrier of conventional protection, atonce self-controlled, dignified, and astutely intelligent. 

"Since, as you say, no structural changes are proposed, such as an ownermight resent, and as Lady Anstruthers is the mother of the heir, and asLady Anstruthers' father undertakes to defray all expenditure, no saneman could object to the restoration of the property. To do so would beto cause public opinion to express itself strongly against him. Suchaction would place him grossly in the wrong. " Then he added withdeliberation, realising that he was committing himself, and feelingfirmly willing to do so for reasons of his own, "Sir Nigel is a man whoobjects strongly to putting himself--publicly--in the wrong. "

"Thank you, " said Miss Vanderpoel. 

He had said this of intention for her enlightenment, and she was awarethat he had done so. 

"This will not be the first time that American fortunes have restoredEnglish estates, " Mr. Townlinson continued amiably. "There have beenmany notable cases of late years. We shall be happy to place ourselvesat your disposal at all times, Miss Vanderpoel. We are obliged to youfor your consideration in the matter. "

"Thank you, " said Miss Vanderpoel again. "I wished to be sure that Ishould not be infringing any English rule I had no knowledge of. "

"You will be infringing none. You have been most correct and courteous. "

Before she went away Mr. Townlinson felt that he had been greatlyenlightened as to what a young lady might know and be. She gave himsingularly clear details as to what was proposed. There was so much tobe done that he found himself opening his eyes slightly once or twice. But, of course, if Mr. Vanderpoel was prepared to spend money ina lavish manner, it was all to the good so far as the estate wasconcerned. They were stupendous, these people, and after all the heirwas his grandson. And how striking it was that with all this power andreadiness to use it, was evidently combined, even in this beautifulyoung person, the clearest business sense of the situation. What wasdone would be for the comfort of Lady Anstruthers and the future of herson. Sir Nigel, being unable to sell either house or lands, could notundo it. 

When Mr. Townlinson accompanied his visitor to her carriage withdignified politeness he felt somewhat like an elderly solicitor who hadfound himself drawn into the atmosphere of a sort of intensely modernfairy tale. He saw two of his under clerks, with the impropriety ofmiddle-class youth, looking out of an office window at the dark bluebrougham and the tall young lady, whose beauty bloomed in the sunshine. He did not, on the whole, wonder at, though he deplored, the conductof the young men. But they, of course, saw only what they colloquiallydescribed to each other as a "rippin' handsome girl. " They knew nothingof the interesting interview. 

He himself returned to his private room in a musing mood and thoughtit all over, his mind dwelling on various features of the internationalsituation, and more than once he said aloud:

"Most remarkable. Very remarkable, indeed. "

CHAPTER XVIII

THE FIFTEENTH EARL OF MOUNT DUNSTAN

James Hubert John Fergus Saltyre--fifteenth Earl of Mount Dunstan, "JemSalter, " as his neighbours on the Western ranches had called him, thered-haired, second-class passenger of the Meridiana, sat in the greatlibrary of his desolate great house, and stared fixedly through the openwindow at the lovely land spread out before him. From this particularwindow was to be seen one of the greatest views in England. From theupper nurseries he had lived in as a child he had seen it every day frommorning until night, and it had seemed to his young fancy to cover allthe plains of the earth. Surely the rest of the world, he had thought, could be but small--though somewhere he knew there was London where theQueen lived, and in London were Buckingham Palace and St. James Palaceand Kensington and the Tower, where heads had been chopped off; and theHorse Guards, where splendid, plumed soldiers rode forth glittering, with thrilling trumpets sounding as they moved. These last he alwaysremembered, because he had seen them, and once when he had walked inthe park with his nurse there had been an excited stir in the Row, and people had crowded about a certain gate, through which an escortedcarriage had been driven, and he had been made at once to take off hishat and stand bareheaded until it passed, because it was the Queen. Somehow from that afternoon he dated the first presentation of certainvaguely miserable ideas. Inquiries made of his attendant, when thecortege had swept by, had elicited the fact that the Royal Lady herselfhad children--little boys who were princes and little girls who wereprincesses. What curious and persistent child cross-examination on hispart had drawn forth the fact that almost all the people who drove aboutand looked so happy and brilliant, were the fathers or mothers of littleboys like, yet--in some mysterious way--unlike himself? And in whatmanner had he gathered that he was different from them? His nurse, itis true, was not a pleasant person, and had an injured and resentfulbearing. In later years he realised that it had been the bearing of anirregularly paid menial, who rebelled against the fact that her placewas not among people who were of distinction and high repute, and whosehouseholds bestowed a certain social status upon their servitors. Shewas a tall woman with a sour face and a bearing which conveyed a glumendurance of a position beneath her. Yes, it had been from her--Broughher name was--that he had mysteriously gathered that he was not adesirable charge, as regarded from the point of the servants' hall--or, in fact, from any other point. His people were not the people whosepatronage was sought with anxious eagerness. For some reason their townhouse was objectionable, and Mount Dunstan was without attractions. Other big houses were, in some marked way, different. The town house heobjected to himself as being gloomy and ugly, and possessing only a bareand battered nursery, from whose windows one could not even obtain asatisfactory view of the Mews, where at least, there were horses andgrooms who hissed cheerfully while they curried and brushed them. Hehated the town house and was, in fact, very glad that he was scarcelyever taken to it. People, it seemed, did not care to come either tothe town house or to Mount Dunstan. That was why he did not know otherlittle boys. Again--for the mysterious reason--people did not care thattheir children should associate with him. How did he discover this?He never knew exactly. He realised, however, that without distinctstatements, he seemed to have gathered it through various disconnectedtalks with Brough. She had not remained with him long, having "betteredherself" greatly and gone away in glum satisfaction, but she had stayedlong enough to convey to him things which became part of his existence, and smouldered in his little soul until they became part of himself. Theancestors who had hewn their way through their enemies with battle-axes, who had been fierce and cruel and unconquerable in their savage pride, had handed down to him a burning and unsubmissive soul. At six yearsold, walking with Brough in Kensington Gardens, and seeing otherchildren playing under the care of nurses, who, he learned, were notinclined to make advances to his attendant, he dragged Brough away witha fierce little hand and stood apart with her, scowling haughtily, hishead in the air, pretending that he disdained all childish gambols, andwould have declined to join in them, even if he had been besought to sofar unbend. Bitterness had been planted in him then, though he hadnot understood, and the sourness of Brough had been connected with nointelligence which might have caused her to suspect his feelings, and noone had noticed, and if anyone had noticed, no one would have cared inthe very least. 

When Brough had gone away to her far superior place, and she had beensucceeded by one variety of objectionable or incompetent person afteranother, he had still continued to learn. In different ways he silentlycollected information, and all of it was unpleasant, and, as he grewolder, it took for some years one form. Lack of resources, which shouldof right belong to persons of rank, was the radical objection to hispeople. At the town house there was no money, at Mount Dunstan there wasno money. There had been so little money even in his grandfather's timethat his father had inherited comparative beggary. The fourteenth Earlof Mount Dunstan did not call it "comparative" beggary, he calledit beggary pure and simple, and cursed his progenitors with engagingfrankness. He never referred to the fact that in his personable youth hehad married a wife whose fortune, if it had not been squandered, mighthave restored his own. The fortune had been squandered in the course ofa few years of riotous living, the wife had died when her third son wasborn, which event took place ten years after the birth of her second, whom she had lost through scarlet fever. James Hubert John FergusSaltyre never heard much of her, and barely knew of her past existencebecause in the picture gallery he had seen a portrait of a tall, thin, fretful-looking young lady, with light ringlets, and pearls roundher neck. She had not attracted him as a child, and the fact that hegathered that she had been his mother left him entirely unmoved. Shewas not a loveable-looking person, and, indeed, had been at onceempty-headed, irritable, and worldly. He would probably have been noless lonely if she had lived. Lonely he was. His father was engaged ina career much too lively and interesting to himself to admit of hisallowing himself to be bored by an unwanted and entirely superfluouschild. The elder son, who was Lord Tenham, had reached a prematureand degenerate maturity by the time the younger one made his belatedappearance, and regarded him with unconcealed dislike. The worst thingwhich could have befallen the younger boy would have been intimateassociation with this degenerate youth. 

As Saltyre left nursery days behind, he learned by degrees that theobjection to himself and his people, which had at first endeavouredto explain itself as being the result of an unseemly lack of money, combined with that unpleasant feature, an uglier one--namely, lack ofdecent reputation. Angry duns, beggarliness of income, scarcity ofthe necessaries and luxuries which dignity of rank demanded, theindifference and slights of one's equals, and the ignoring of one'sexistence by exalted persons, were all hideous enough to Lord MountDunstan and his elder son--but they were not so hideous as was, to hisyounger son, the childish, shamed frenzy of awakening to the truththat he was one of a bad lot--a disgraceful lot, from whom nothing wasexpected but shifty ways, low vices, and scandals, which in the endcould not even be kept out of the newspapers. The day came, in fact, when the worst of these was seized upon by them and filled their sheetswith matter which for a whole season decent London avoided reading, andthe fast and indecent element laughed, derided, or gloated over. 

The memory of the fever of the monstrous weeks which had passed at thistime was not one it was wise for a man to recall. But it was not to beforgotten--the hasty midnight arrival at Mount Dunstan of father andson, their haggard, nervous faces, their terrified discussions, andargumentative raging when they were shut up together behind lockeddoors, the appearance of legal advisers who looked as anxious asthemselves, but failed to conceal the disgust with which they werebattling, the knowledge that tongues were clacking almost hystericallyin the village, and that curious faces hurried to the windows when evena menial from the great house passed, the atmosphere of below-stairswhispers, and jogged elbows, and winks, and giggles; the finaldesperate, excited preparations for flight, which might be ignominiouslystopped at any moment by the intervention of the law, the huddling awayat night time, the hot-throated fear that the shameful, self-brandingmove might be too late--the burning humiliation of knowing theinevitable result of public contempt or laughter when the world next dayheard that the fugitives had put the English Channel between themselvesand their country's laws. 

Lord Tenham had died a few years later at Port Said, after descendinginto all the hells of degenerate debauch. His father had livedlonger--long enough to make of himself something horribly near animbecile, before he died suddenly in Paris. The Mount Dunstan whosucceeded him, having spent his childhood and boyhood under the shadowof the "bad lot, " had the character of being a big, surly, unattractiveyoung fellow, whose eccentricity presented itself to those who knewhis stock, as being of a kind which might develop at any time into anyobjectionable tendency. His bearing was not such as allured, and hisfortune was not of the order which placed a man in the view of theworld. He had no money to expend, no hospitalities to offer andapparently no disposition to connect himself with society. Hiswild-goose chase to America had, when it had been considered worth whilediscussing at all, been regarded as being very much the kind of thing aMount Dunstan might do with some secret and disreputable end in view. No one had heard the exact truth, and no one would have been inclined tobelieve if they had heard it. That he had lived as plain Jem Salter, andlaboured as any hind might have done, in desperate effort and mad hope, would not have been regarded as a fact to be credited. He had gone away, he had squandered money, he had returned, he was at Mount Dunstan again, living the life of an objectionable recluse--objectionable, because theowner of a place like Mount Dunstan should be a power and an influencein the county, should be counted upon as a dispenser of hospitalities, as a supporter of charities, as a dignitary of weight. He was none ofthese--living no one knew how, slouching about with his gun, riding orwalking sullenly over the roads and marshland. 

Just one man knew him intimately, and this one had been from hisfifteenth year the sole friend of his life. He had come, then--theReverend Lewis Penzance--a poor and unhealthy scholar, to be vicar ofthe parish of Dunstan. Only a poor and book-absorbed man would haveaccepted the position. What this man wanted was no more than quiet, purecountry air to fill frail lungs, a roof over his head, and a place topore over books and manuscripts. He was a born monk and celibate--inby-gone centuries he would have lived peacefully in some monastery, spending his years in the reading and writing of black letter and theilluminating of missals. At the vicarage he could lead an existencewhich was almost the same thing. 

At Mount Dunstan there remained still the large remnant of a greatlibrary. A huge room whose neglected and half emptied shelves containedsome strange things and wonderful ones, though all were in disorder, andgiven up to dust and natural dilapidation. Inevitably the Reverend LewisPenzance had found his way there, inevitably he had gained indifferentlybestowed permission to entertain himself by endeavouring to reduce toorder and to make an attempt at cataloguing. Inevitably, also, the hourshe spent in the place became the chief sustenance of his being. 

There, one day, he had come upon an uncouth-looking boy with deep eyesand a shaggy crop of red hair. The boy was poring over an old volume, and was plainly not disposed to leave it. He rose, not too graciously, and replied to the elder man's greeting, and the friendly questionswhich followed. Yes, he was the youngest son of the house. He hadnothing to do, and he liked the library. He often came there and sat andread things. There were some queer old books and a lot of stupid ones. The book he was reading now? Oh, that (with a slight reddening of hisskin and a little awkwardness at the admission) was one of those heliked best. It was one of the queer ones, but interesting for all that. It was about their own people--the generations of Mount Dunstans who hadlived in the centuries past. He supposed he liked it because there werea lot of odd stories and exciting things in it. Plenty of fighting andadventure. There had been some splendid fellows among them. (He wasbeginning to forget himself a little by this time. ) They were afraid ofnothing. They were rather like savages in the earliest days, but at thattime all the rest of the world was savage. But they were brave, andit was odd how decent they were very often. What he meant was--whathe liked was, that they were men--even when they were barbarians. Youcouldn't be ashamed of them. Things they did then could not be done now, because the world was different, but if--well, the kind of men they weremight do England a lot of good if they were alive to-day. They would bedifferent themselves, of course, in one way--but they must be the samemen in others. Perhaps Mr. Penzance (reddening again) understood what hemeant. He knew himself very well, because he had thought it all out, hewas always thinking about it, but he was no good at explaining. 

Mr. Penzance was interested. His outlook on the past and the present hadalways been that of a bookworm, but he understood enough to see thathe had come upon a temperament novel enough to awaken curiosity. Theapparently entirely neglected boy, of a type singularly unlike that ofhis father and elder brother, living his life virtually alone in the bigplace, and finding food to his taste in stories of those of his bloodwhose dust had mingled with the earth centuries ago, provided him with anew subject for reflection. 

That had been the beginning of an unusual friendship. Gradually Penzancehad reached a clear understanding of all the building of the young life, of its rankling humiliation, and the qualities of mind and body whichmade for rebellion. It sometimes thrilled him to see in the big frameand powerful muscles, in the strong nature and unconquerable spirit, a revival of what had burned and stirred through lives lived in a dim, almost mythical, past. There were legends of men with big bodies, fiercefaces, and red hair, who had done big deeds, and conquered in dark andbarbarous days, even Fate's self, as it had seemed. None could overthrowthem, none could stand before their determination to attain that whichthey chose to claim. Students of heredity knew that there were curiousinstances of revival of type. There had been a certain Red Godwyn whohad ruled his piece of England before the Conqueror came, and who haddefied the interloper with such splendid arrogance and superhuman lackof fear that he had won in the end, strangely enough, the admirationand friendship of the royal savage himself, who saw, in his, a kindredsavagery, a power to be well ranged, through love, if not through fear, upon his own side. This Godwyn had a deep attraction for his descendant, who knew the whole story of his fierce life--as told in one yellowmanuscript and another--by heart. Why might not one fancy--Penzance wasdrawn by the imagining--this strong thing reborn, even as the offspringof a poorer effete type. Red Godwyn springing into being again, had beenstronger than all else, and had swept weakness before him as he had donein other and far-off days. 

In the old library it fell out in time that Penzance and the boy spentthe greater part of their days. The man was a bookworm and a scholar, young Saltyre had a passion for knowledge. Among the old books andmanuscripts he gained a singular education. Without a guide he could nothave gathered and assimilated all he did gather and assimilate. Togetherthe two rummaged forgotten shelves and chests, and found forgottenthings. That which had drawn the boy from the first always drew andabsorbed him--the annals of his own people. Many a long winter eveningthe pair turned over the pages of volumes and of parchment, and followedwith eager interest and curiosity the records of wild lives--stories ofwarriors and abbots and bards, of feudal lords at ruthless war witheach other, of besiegings and battles and captives and torments. Legendsthere were of small kingdoms torn asunder, of the slaughter of theirkings, the mad fightings of their barons, and the faith or unfaith oftheir serfs. Here and there the eternal power revealed itself in somestory of lawful or unlawful love--for dame or damsel, royal lady, abbess, or high-born nun--ending in the welding of two lives or inrapine, violence, and death. There were annals of early England, and ofmarauders, monks, and Danes. And, through all these, some thing, someman or woman, place, or strife linked by some tie with Mount Dunstanblood. In past generations, it seemed plain, there had been certainof the line who had had pride in these records, and had sought andcollected them; then had been born others who had not cared. Sometimesthe relations were inadequate, sometimes they wore an unauthentic air, but most of them seemed, even after the passing of centuries, humandocuments, and together built a marvellous great drama of life andpower, wickedness and passion and daring deeds. 

When the shameful scandal burst forth young Saltyre was seen by neitherhis father nor his brother. Neither of them had any desire to see him;in fact, each detested the idea of confronting by any chance his hot, intolerant eyes. "The Brat, " his father had called him in his childhood, "The Lout, " when he had grown big-limbed and clumsy. Both he and Tenhamwere sick enough, without being called upon to contemplate "The Lout, "whose opinion, in any case, they preferred not to hear. 

Saltyre, during the hideous days, shut himself up in the library. He didnot leave the house, even for exercise, until after the pair had fled. His exercise he took in walking up and down from one end of the longroom to another. Devils were let loose in him. When Penzance came tohim, he saw their fury in his eyes, and heard it in the savagery of hislaugh. 

He kicked an ancient volume out of his way as he strode to and fro. 

"There has been plenty of the blood of the beast in us in bygone times, "he said, "but it was not like this. Savagery in savage days had itsexcuse. This is the beast sunk into the gibbering, degenerate ape. "

Penzance came and spent hours of each day with him. Part of his ragewas the rage of a man, but he was a boy still, and the boyishness of hisbitterly hurt youth was a thing to move to pity. With young blood, andyoung pride, and young expectancy rising within him, he was at an hourwhen he should have felt himself standing upon the threshold of theworld, gazing out at the splendid joys and promises and powerful deedsof it--waiting only the fit moment to step forth and win his place. 

"But we are done for, " he shouted once. "We are done for. And I am asmuch done for as they are. Decent people won't touch us. That is wherethe last Mount Dunstan stands. " And Penzance heard in his voice anabsolute break. He stopped and marched to the window at the end of thelong room, and stood in dead stillness, staring out at the down-sweepinglines of heavy rain. 

The older man thought many things, as he looked at his big back andbody. He stood with his legs astride, and Penzance noted that his righthand was clenched on his hip, as a man's might be as he clenchedthe hilt of his sword--his one mate who might avenge him even when, standing at bay, he knew that the end had come, and he must fall. Primeval Force--the thin-faced, narrow-chested, slightly bald clergymanof the Church of England was thinking--never loses its way, or fails tosweep a path before it. The sun rises and sets, the seasons come and go, Primeval Force is of them, and as unchangeable. Much of it stood beforehim embodied in this strongly sentient thing. In this way the ReverendLewis found his thoughts leading him, and he--being moved to the depthsof a fine soul--felt them profoundly interesting, and even sustaining. 

He sat in a high-backed chair, holding its arms with long thin hands, and looking for some time at James Hubert John Fergus Saltyre. He said, at last, in a sane level voice:

"Lord Tenham is not the last Mount Dunstan. "

After which the stillness remained unbroken again for some minutes. Saltyre did not move or make any response, and, when he left his placeat the window, he took up a book, and they spoke of other things. 

When the fourteenth Earl died in Paris, and his younger son succeeded, there came a time when the two companions sat together in the libraryagain. It was the evening of a long day spent in discouraging hard work. In the morning they had ridden side by side over the estate, in theafternoon they had sat and pored over accounts, leases, maps, plans. Bynightfall both were fagged and neither in sanguine mood. 

Mount Dunstan had sat silent for some time. The pair often sat silent. This pause was ended by the young man's rising and standing up, stretching his limbs. 

"It was a queer thing you said to me in this room a few years ago, " hesaid. "It has just come back to me. "

Singularly enough--or perhaps naturally enough--it had also just arisenagain from the depths of Penzance's subconsciousness. 

"Yes, " he answered, "I remember. To-night it suggests premonition. Yourbrother was not the last Mount Dunstan. "

"In one sense he never was Mount Dunstan at all, " answered the otherman. Then he suddenly threw out his arms in a gesture whose wholesignificance it would have been difficult to describe. There was a kindof passion in it. "I am the last Mount Dunstan, " he harshly laughed. "Moi qui vous parle! The last. "

Penzance's eyes resting on him took upon themselves the far-seeinglook of a man who watches the world of life without living in it. Hepresently shook his head. 

"No, " he said. "I don't see that. No--not the last. Believe me. "

And singularly, in truth, Mount Dunstan stood still and gazed at himwithout speaking. The eyes of each rested in the eyes of the other. And, as had happened before, they followed the subject no further. From thatmoment it dropped. 

Only Penzance had known of his reasons for going to America. Even thefamily solicitors, gravely holding interviews with him and restrainingexpression of their absolute disapproval of such employment of hisinadequate resources, knew no more than that this Mount Dunstan, insteadof wasting his beggarly income at Cairo, or Monte Carlo, or in Paris asthe last one had done, prefers to waste it in newer places. The headof the firm, when he bids him good-morning and leaves him alone, merelyshrugs his shoulders and returns to his letter writing with the cornersof his elderly mouth hard set. 

Penzance saw him off--and met him upon his return. In the library theysat and talked it over, and, having done so, closed the book of theepisode. 

*****

He sat at the table, his eyes upon the wide-spread loveliness of thelandscape, but his thought elsewhere. It wandered over the years alreadylived through, wandering backwards even to the days when existence, opening before the child eyes, was a baffling and vaguely unhappy thing. 

When the door opened and Penzance was ushered in by a servant, his facewore the look his friend would have been rejoiced to see swept away toreturn no more. 

Then let us take our old accustomed seat and begin some casual talk, which will draw him out of the shadows, and make him forget such thingsas it is not good to remember. That is what we have done many times inthe past, and may find it well to do many a time again. 

He begins with talk of the village and the country-side. Village storiesare often quaint, and stories of the countryside are sometimes--notalways--interesting. Tom Benson's wife has presented him with triplets, and there is great excitement in the village, as to the steps to betaken to secure the three guineas given by the Queen as a reward forthis feat. Old Benny Bates has announced his intention of taking a fifthwife at the age of ninety, and is indignant that it has been suggestedthat the parochial authorities in charge of the "Union, " in which hemust inevitably shortly take refuge, may interfere with his rights asa citizen. The Reverend Lewis has been to talk seriously with him, andfinds him at once irate and obdurate. 

"Vicar, " says old Benny, "he can't refuse to marry no man. Law won't lethim. " Such refusal, he intimates, might drive him to wild and riotousliving. Remembering his last view of old Benny tottering down thevillage street in his white smock, his nut-cracker face like a witheredrosy apple, his gnarled hand grasping the knotted staff his bentbody leaned on, Mount Dunstan grinned a little. He did not smile whenPenzance passed to the restoration of the ancient church at Mellowdene. "Restoration" usually meant the tearing away of ancient oaken, high-backed pews, and the instalment of smug new benches, suggestingsuburban Dissenting chapels, such as the feudal soul revolts at. Neitherdid he smile at a reference to the gathering at Dunholm Castle, whichwas twelve miles away. Dunholm was the possession of a man who stood forall that was first and highest in the land, dignity, learning, exaltedcharacter, generosity, honour. He and the late Lord Mount Dunstan hadbeen born in the same year, and had succeeded to their titles almost atthe same time. There had arrived a period when they had ceased to knoweach other. All that the one man intrinsically was, the other man wasnot. All that the one estate, its castle, its village, its tenantry, represented, was the antipodes of that which the other stood for. The one possession held its place a silent, and perhaps, unconsciousreproach to the other. Among the guests, forming the large house partywhich London social news had already recorded in its columns, were greatand honourable persons, and interesting ones, men and women who countedas factors in all good and dignified things accomplished. Even in thepresent Mount Dunstan's childhood, people of their world had ceased tocross his father's threshold. As one or two of the most noticeable nameswere mentioned, mentally he recalled this, and Penzance, quick to seethe thought in his eyes, changed the subject. 

"At Stornham village an unexpected thing has happened, " he said. "One ofthe relatives of Lady Anstruthers has suddenly appeared--a sister. Youmay remember that the poor woman was said to be the daughter of somerich American, and it seemed unexplainable that none of her family everappeared, and things were allowed to go from bad to worse. As it wasunderstood that there was so much money people were mystified by thecondition of things. "

"Anstruthers has had money to squander, " said Mount Dunstan. "Tenham andhe were intimates. The money he spends is no doubt his wife's. As herfamily deserted her she has no one to defend her. "

"Certainly her family has seemed to neglect her for years. Perhapsthey were disappointed in his position. Many Americans are extremelyambitious. These international marriages are often singular things. Now--apparently without having been expected--the sister appears. Vanderpoel is the name--Miss Vanderpoel. "

"I crossed the Atlantic with her in the Meridiana, " said Mount Dunstan. 

"Indeed! That is interesting. You did not, of course, know that she wascoming here. "

"I knew nothing of her but that she was a saloon passenger with a suiteof staterooms, and I was in the second cabin. Nothing? That is not quitetrue, perhaps. Stewards and passengers gossip, and one cannot closeone's ears. Of course one heard constant reiteration of the number ofmillions her father possessed, and the number of cabins she managed tooccupy. During the confusion and alarm of the collision, we spoke toeach other. "

He did not mention the other occasion on which he had seen her. Thereseemed, on the whole, no special reason why he should. 

"Then you would recognise her, if you saw her. I heard to-day that sheseems an unusual young woman, and has beauty. "

"Her eyes and lashes are remarkable. She is tall. The Americans aresetting up a new type. "

"Yes, they used to send over slender, fragile little women. LadyAnstruthers was the type. I confess to an interest in the sister. "

"Why?"

"She has made a curious impression. She has begun to do things. Stornhamvillage has lost its breath. " He laughed a little. "She has been goingover the place and discussing repairs. "

Mount Dunstan laughed also. He remembered what she had said. And she hadactually begun. 

"That is practical, " he commented. 

"It is really interesting. Why should a young woman turn herattention to repairs? If it had been her father--the omnipotent Mr. Vanderpoel--who had appeared, one would not have wondered at suchpractical activity. But a young lady--with remarkable eyelashes!"

His elbows were on the arm of his chair, and he had placed the tipsof his fingers together, wearing an expression of such absorbedcontemplation that Mount Dunstan laughed again. 

"You look quite dreamy over it, " he said. 

"It allures me. Unknown quantities in character always allure me. I should like to know her. A community like this is made up of theabsolutely known quantity--of types repeating themselves throughcenturies. A new one is almost a startling thing. Gossip over teacups isnot usually entertaining to me, but I found myself listening to littleMiss Laura Brunel this afternoon with rather marked attention. I confessto having gone so far as to make an inquiry or so. Sir Nigel Anstruthersis not often at Stornham. He is away now. It is plainly not he who isinterested in repairs. "

"He is on the Riviera, in retreat, in a place he is fond of, " MountDunstan said drily. "He took a companion with him. A new infatuation. Hewill not return soon. "

CHAPTER XIX

SPRING IN BOND STREET

The visit to London was part of an evolution of both body and mind toRosalie Anstruthers. In one of the wonderful modern hotels a suite ofrooms was engaged for them. The luxury which surrounded them was not ofthe order Rosalie had vaguely connected with hotels. Hotel-keepers hadapparently learned many things during the years of her seclusion. 

Vanderpoels, at least, could so establish themselves as not to greatlyfeel the hotel atmosphere. Carefully chosen colours textures, andappointments formed the background of their days, the food they atewas a thing produced by art, the servants who attended them werecompletely-trained mechanisms. To sit by a window and watch thekaleidoscopic human tide passing by on its way to its pleasure, to reachits work, to spend its money in unending shops, to show itself and itsequipage in the park, was a wonderful thing to Lady Anstruthers. It allseemed to be a part of the life and quality of Betty, little Betty, whom she had remembered only as a child, and who had come to her a tall, strong young beauty, who had--it was resplendently clear--never knowna fear in her life, and whose mere personality had the effect of makingfears seem unreal. 

She was taken out in a luxurious little brougham to shops whose variedallurements were placed eagerly at her disposal. Respectful persons, obedient to her most faintly-expressed desire, displayed garments aswonderful as those the New York trunks had revealed. She was besoughtto consider the fitness of articles whose exquisiteness she was almostafraid to look at. Her thin little body was wonderfully fitted, managed, encouraged to make the most of its long-ignored outlines. 

"Her ladyship's slenderness is a great advantage, " said the wiselyinciting ones. "There is no such advantage as delicacy of line. "

Summing up the character of their customer with the saleswoman'seye, they realised the discretion of turning to Miss Vanderpoel forencouragement, though she was the younger of the two, and bore no title. They were aware of the existence of persons of rank who were not lavishpatrons, but the name of Vanderpoel held most promising suggestions. Toan English shopkeeper the American has, of late years, representedthe spender--the type which, whatsoever its rank and resources, has, mysteriously, always money to hand over counters in exchange for thingsit chances to desire to possess. Each year surges across the Atlantic ahorde of these fortunate persons, who, to the sober, commercial Britishmind, appear to be free to devote their existences to travel andexpenditure. This contingent appears shopping in the various shoppingthoroughfares; it buys clothes, jewels, miscellaneous attractive things, making its purchases of articles useful or decorative with a freedomfrom anxiety in its enjoyment which does not mark the mood of theordinary shopper. In the everyday purchaser one is accustomed to takefor granted, as a factor in his expenditure, a certain deliberation anduncertainty; to the travelling American in Europe, shopping appears tobe part of the holiday which is being made the most of. Surely, all theneat, smart young persons who buy frocks and blouses, hats and coats, hosiery and chains, cannot be the possessors of large incomes; theremust be, even in America, a middle class of middle-class resources, yetthese young persons, male and female, and most frequently unaccompaniedby older persons--seeing what they want, greet it with expressions ofpleasure, waste no time in appropriating and paying for it, and go awayas in relief and triumph--not as in that sober joy which is clouded byafterthought. The sales people are sometimes even vaguely cheered by theirgay lack of any doubt as to the wisdom of their getting what they admire, and rejoicing in it. If America always buys in this holiday mood, itmust be an enviable thing to be a shopkeeper in their New York or Bostonor San Francisco. Who would not make a fortune among them? They wantwhat they want, and not something which seems to them less desirable, but they open their purses and--frequently with some amused uncertaintyas to the differences between sovereigns and half-sovereigns, florinsand half-crowns--they pay their bills with something almost like glee. They are remarkably prompt about bills--which is an excellent thing, asthey are nearly always just going somewhere else, to France or Germanyor Italy or Scotland or Siberia. Those of us who are shopkeepers, ortheir salesmen, do not dream that some of them have incomes no largerthan our own, that they work for their livings, that they are teachersjournalists, small writers or illustrators of papers or magazines thatthey are unimportant soldiers of fortune, but, with their queer Americaninsistence on exploration, and the ignoring of limitations, they have, somehow, managed to make this exultant dash for a few daring weeks ormonths of freedom and new experience. If we knew this, we shouldregard them from our conservative standpoint of provident decorum asimprovident lunatics, being ourselves unable to calculate with their oddcourage and their cheerful belief in themselves. What we do know is thatthey spend, and we are far from disdaining their patronage, though mostof them have an odd little familiarity of address and are not stampedwith that distinction which causes us to realise the enormous differencebetween the patron and the tradesman, and makes us feel the wormwe remotely like to feel ourselves, though we would not for worldsacknowledge the fact. Mentally, and in our speech, both among our equalsand our superiors, we condescend to and patronise them a little, thoughthat, of course, is the fine old insular attitude it would be un-Britishto discourage. But, if we are not in the least definite concerning theposition and resources of these spenders as a mass, we are quite sure ofa select number. There is mention of them in the newspapers, of thetown houses, the castles, moors, and salmon fishings they rent, oftheir yachts, their presentations actually at our own courts, of theirpresence at great balls, at Ascot and Goodwood, at the opera on galanights. One staggers sometimes before the public summing-up of theamount of their fortunes. These people who have neither blood nor rank, these men who labour in their business offices, are richer than ourgreat dukes, at the realising of whose wealth and possessions we have attimes almost turned pale. 

"Them!" chaffed a costermonger over his barrow. "Blimme, if some o' themblokes won't buy Buckin'am Pallis an' the 'ole R'yal Fambly some mornin'when they're out shoppin'. "

The subservient attendants in more than one fashionable shop Betty andher sister visit, know that Miss Vanderpoel is of the circle, though herfather has not as yet bought or hired any great estate, and his daughterhas not been seen in London. 

"Its queer we've never heard of her being presented, " one shopgirl saysto another. "Just you look at her. "

She evidently knows what her ladyship ought to buy--what can be trustednot to overpower her faded fragility. The saleswomen, even if they hadnot been devoured by alert curiosity, could not have avoided seeing thather ladyship did not seem to know what should be bought, and that MissVanderpoel did, though she did not direct her sister's selection, but merely seemed to suggest with delicate restraint. Her taste waswonderfully perceptive. The things bought were exquisite, but a littlecolourless woman could wear them all with advantage to her restrictionsof type. 

As the brougham drove down Bond Street, Betty called Lady Anstruthers'attention to more than one passer-by. 

"Look, Rosy, " she said. "There is Mrs. Treat Hilyar in the secondcarriage to the right. You remember Josie Treat Hilyar married LordVarick's son. "

In the landau designated an elderly woman with wonderfully-dressedwhite hair sat smiling and bowing to friends who were walking. LadyAnstruthers, despite her eagerness, shrank back a little, hoping toescape being seen. 

"Oh, it is the Lows she is speaking to--Tom and Alice--I did not knowthey had sailed yet. "

The tall, well-groomed young man, with the nice, ugly face, was showingwhite teeth in a gay smile of recognition, and his pretty wife waslightly waving a slim hand in a grey suede glove. 

"How cheerful and nice-tempered they look, " said Rosy. "Tom was onlytwenty when I saw him last. Whom did he marry?"

"An English girl. Such a love. A Devonshire gentleman's daughter. In NewYork his friends called her Devonshire Cream and Roses. She is one ofthe pretty, flushy, pink ones. "

"How nice Bond Street is on a spring morning like this, " said LadyAnstruthers. "You may laugh at me for saying it, Betty, but somehow itseems to me more spring-like than the country. "

"How clever of you!" laughed Betty. "There is so much truth in it. "The people walking in the sunshine were all full of spring thoughts andplans. The colours they wore, the flowers in the women's hats and themen's buttonholes belonged to the season. The cheerful crowds of peopleand carriages had a sort of rushing stir of movement which suggestedfreshness. Later in the year everything looks more tired. Now thingswere beginning and everyone was rather inclined to believe that thisyear would be better than last. "Look at the shop windows, " said Betty, "full of whites and pinks and yellows and blues--the colours of hyacinthand daffodil beds. It seems as if they insist that there never has beena winter and never will be one. They insist that there never was andnever will be anything but spring. "

"It's in the air. " Lady Anstruthers' sigh was actually a happy one. "Itis just what I used to feel in April when we drove down Fifth Avenue. "

Among the crowds of freshly-dressed passers-by, women with flowery hatsand light frocks and parasols, men with touches of flower-colour on thelapels of their coats, and the holiday look in their faces, she noted somany of a familiar type that she began to look for and try to pick themout with quite excited interest. 

"I believe that woman is an American, " she would say. "That girl looksas if she were a New Yorker, " again. "That man's face looks as if itbelonged to Broadway. Oh, Betty! do you think I am right? I should saythose girls getting out of the hansom to go into Burnham & Staples' camefrom out West and are going to buy thousands of things. Don't they looklike it?"

She began to lean forward and look on at things with an interest sounlike her Stornham listlessness that Betty's heart was moved. 

Her face looked alive, and little waves of colour rose under her skin. Several times she laughed the natural little laugh of her girlhood whichit had seemed almost too much to expect to hear again. The first ofthese laughs came when she counted her tenth American, a tall Westernerof the cartoon type, sauntering along with an expression of speculativeenjoyment on his odd face, and evidently, though furtively, chewingtobacco. 

"I absolutely love him, Betty, " she cried. "You couldn't mistake him foranything else. "

"No, " answered Betty, feeling that she loved him herself, "not if youfound him embalmed in the Pyramids. "

They pleased themselves immensely, trying to guess what he would buyand take home to his wife and girls in his Western town--though Westerntowns were very grand and amazing in these days, Betty explained, andknew they could give points to New York. He would not buy the thingshe would have bought fifteen years ago. Perhaps, in fact, his wife anddaughters had come with him to London and stayed at the Metropole orthe Savoy, and were at this moment being fitted by tailors and modistespatronised by Royalty. 

"Rosy, look! Do you see who that is? Do you recognise her? It isMrs. Bellingham. She was little Mina Thalberg. She married CaptainBellingham. He was quite poor, but very well born--a nephew of LordDunholm's. He could not have married a poor girl--but they have been sohappy together that Mina is growing fat, and spends her days in takingreducing treatments. She says she wouldn't care in the least, but Dickyfell in love with her waist and shoulder line. "

The plump, pretty young woman getting out of her victoria before afashionable hairdresser's looked radiant enough. She had not yet lostthe waist and shoulder line, though her pink frock fitted her withdiscreet tightness. She paused a moment to pat and fuss prettily overthe two blooming, curly children who were to remain under the care ofthe nurse, who sat on the back seat, holding the baby on her lap. 

"I should not have known her, " said Rosy. "She has grown pretty. Shewasn't a pretty child. "

"It's happiness--and the English climate--and Captain Dicky. They adoreeach other, and laugh at everything like a pair of children. They wereimmensely popular in New York last winter, when they visited Mina'speople. "

The effect of the morning upon Lady Anstruthers was what Betty had hopedit might be. The curious drawing near of the two nations began to dawnupon her as a truth. Immured in the country, not sufficiently interestedin life to read newspapers, she had heard rumours of some of the moreimportant marriages, but had known nothing of the thousand small detailswhich made for the weaving of the web. Mrs. Treat Hilyar driving in aleisurely, accustomed fashion down Bond Street, and smiling casually ather compatriots, whose "sailing" was as much part of the natural orderof their luxurious lives as their carriages, gave a definiteness to thesituation. Mina Thalberg, pulling down the embroidered frocks over theround legs of her English-looking children, seemed to narrow the widthof the Atlantic Ocean between Liverpool and the docks on the HudsonRiver. 

She returned to the hotel with an appetite for lunch and a newexpression in her eyes which made Ughtred stare at her. 

"Mother, " he said, "you look different. You look well. It isn't onlyyour new dress and your hair. "

The new style of her attire had certainly done much, and the maid whohad been engaged to attend her was a woman who knew her duties. She hadbeen called upon in her time to make the most of hair offering muchless assistance to her skill than was supplied by the fine, faircolourlessness she had found dragged back from her new mistress'sforehead. It was not dragged back now, but had really been done wonderswith. Rosalie had smiled a little when she had looked at herself in theglass after the first time it was so dressed. 

"You are trying to make me look as I did when mother saw me last, Betty, " she said. "I wonder if you possibly could. "

"Let us believe we can, " laughed Betty. "And wait and see. "

It seemed wise neither to make nor receive visits. The time for suchthings had evidently not yet come. Even the mention of the Worthingtonsled to the revelation that Rosalie shrank from immediate contact withpeople. When she felt stronger, when she became more accustomed to thethought, she might feel differently, but just now, to be luxuriously onewith the enviable part of London, to look on, to drink in, to drive hereand there, doing the things she liked to do, ordering what was requiredat Stornham, was like the creating for her of a new heaven and a newearth. 

When, one night, Betty took her with Ughtred to the theatre, it was tosee a play written by an American, played by American actors, producedby an American manager. They had even engaged in theatrical enterprise, it seemed, their actors played before London audiences, London actorsplayed in American theatres, vibrating almost yearly between the twocontinents and reaping rich harvests. Hearing rumours of this in thepast, Lady Anstruthers had scarcely believed it entirely true. Now thepractical reality was brought before her. The French, who were onlyseparated from the English metropolis by a mere few miles of Channel, did not exchange their actors year after year in increasing numbers, making a mere friendly barter of each other's territory, as though eachland was common ground and not divided by leagues of ocean travel. 

"It seems so wonderful, " Lady Anstruthers argued. "I have always felt asif they hated each other. "

"They did once--but how could it last between those of the sameblood--of the same tongue? If we were really aliens we might be amenace. But we are of their own. " Betty leaned forward on the edge ofthe box, looking out over the crowded house, filled with almost as manyAmericans as English faces. She smiled, reflecting. "We were childrenput out to nurse and breathe new air in the country, and now we arecoming home, vigorous, and full-grown. "

She studied the audience for some minutes, and, as her glance wanderedover the stalls, it took in more than one marked variety of type. Suddenly it fell on a face she delightedly recognised. It was that ofthe nice, speculative-eyed Westerner they had seen enjoying himself inBond Street. 

"Rosy, " she said, "there is the Western man we love. Near the end of thefourth row. "

Lady Anstruthers looked for him with eagerness. 

"Oh, I see him! Next to the big one with the reddish hair. "

Betty turned her attention to the man in question, whom she had notchanced to notice. She uttered an exclamation of surprise and interest. 

"The big man with the red hair. How lovely that they should chance tosit side by side--the big one is Lord Mount Dunstan!"

The necessity of seeing his solicitors, who happened to be Messrs. Townlinson & Sheppard, had brought Lord Mount Dunstan to town. After aday devoted to business affairs, he had been attracted by the idea ofgoing to the theatre to see again a play he had already seen in NewYork. It would interest him to observe its exact effect upon a Londonaudience. While he had been in New York, he had gone with something ofthe same feeling to see a great English actor play to a crowded house. The great actor had been one who had returned to the country for a thirdor fourth time, and, in the enthusiasm he had felt in the atmosphereabout him, Mount Dunstan had seen not only pleasure and appreciation ofthe man's perfect art, but--at certain tumultuous outbursts--an almostemotional welcome. The Americans, he had said to himself, were creaturesof warmer blood than the English. The audience on that occasion hadbeen, in mass, American. The audience he made one of now, was made up ofboth nationalities, and, in glancing over it, he realised how large wasthe number of Americans who came yearly to London. As Lady Anstruthershad done, he found himself selecting from the assemblage the types whichwere manifestly American, and those obviously English. In the seat nextto himself sat a man of a type he felt he had learned by heart inthe days of his life as Jem Salter. At a short distance flutteredbrilliantly an English professional beauty, with her male and femalecourt about her. In the stage box, made sumptuous with flowers, was aroyal party. 

As this party had entered, "God save the Queen" had been played, and, inrising with the audience during the entry, he had recalled that the tunewas identical with that of an American national air. How unconsciouslyinseparable--in spite of the lightness with which they regarded thecurious tie between them--the two countries were. The people upon thestage were acting as if they knew their public, their bearingsuggesting no sense of any barrier beyond the footlights. It was theunconsciousness and lightness of the mutual attitude which had struckhim of late. Punch had long jested about "Fair Americans, " who, intheir first introduction to its pages, used exotic and cryptic language, beginning every sentence either with "I guess, " or "Say, Stranger"; itsmale American had been of the Uncle Sam order and had invariably worna "goatee. " American witticisms had represented the Englishman inplaid trousers, opening his remarks with "Chawley, deah fellah, " andunfailingly missing the point of any joke. Each country had cherishedits type and good-naturedly derided it. In time this had modified itselfand the joke had changed in kind. Many other things had changed, but thelightness of treatment still remained. And yet their blood was minglingitself with that of England's noblest and oldest of name, their wealthwas making solid again towers and halls which had threatened to crumble. Ancient family jewels glittered on slender, young American necks, andabove--sometimes somewhat careless--young American brows. And yet, sofar, one was casual in one's thought of it all, still. On his own parthe was obstinate Briton enough to rebel against and resent it. Theywere intruders. He resented them as he had resented in his boyhood thehistorical fact that, after all, an Englishman was a German--a savagewho, five hundred years after the birth of Christ, had swooped uponEarly Briton from his Engleland and Jutland, and ravaging with fire andsword, had conquered and made the land his possession, ravishing itsvery name from it and giving it his own. These people did not come withfire and sword, but with cable and telephone, and bribes of gold andfair women, but they were encroaching like the sea, which, in certainparts of the coast, gained a few inches or so each year. He shook hisshoulders impatiently, and stiffened, feeling illogically antagonistictowards the good-natured, lantern-jawed man at his side. 

The lantern-jawed man looked good-natured because he was smiling, andhe was smiling because he saw something which pleased him in one of theboxes. 

His expression of unqualified approval naturally directed MountDunstan's eye to the point in question, where it remained for somemoments. This was because he found it resting upon Miss Vanderpoel, whosat before him in luminous white garments, and with a brilliant sparkof ornament in the dense shadow of her hair. His sensation at theunexpected sight of her would, if it had expressed itself physically, have taken the form of a slight start. The luminous quality did notconfine itself to the whiteness of her garments. He was aware of feelingthat she looked luminous herself--her eyes, her cheek, the smile shebent upon the little woman who was her companion. She was a beautifullyliving thing. 

Naturally, she was being looked at by others than himself. She was oneof those towards whom glasses in a theatre turn themselves inevitably. The sweep and lift of her black hair would have drawn them, even if shehad offered no other charm. Yes, he thought, here was another of them. To whom was she bringing her good looks and her millions? There were menenough who needed money, even if they must accept it under less alluringconditions. In the box next to the one occupied by the royal party was aman who was known to be waiting for the advent of some such opportunity. His was a case of dire, if outwardly stately, need. He was young, but afool, and not noted for personal charms, yet he had, in one sense, greatthings to offer. There were, of course, many chances that he might offerthem to her. If this happened, would she accept them? There was reallyno objection to him but his dulness, consequently there seemed manychances that she might. There was something akin to the pomp of royaltyin the power her father's wealth implied. She could scarcely make anordinary marriage. It would naturally be a sort of state affair. There were few men who had enough to offer in exchange for Vanderpoelmillions, and of the few none had special attractions. The one inthe box next to the royal party was a decent enough fellow. As youngprincesses were not infrequently called upon, by the mere exclusion ofroyal blood, to become united to young or mature princes without charm, so American young persons who were of royal possessions must findthemselves limited. If you felt free to pick and choose from amongyoung men in the Guards or young attaches in the Diplomatic Service withtwopence a year, you might get beauty or wit or temperament or all threeby good luck, but if you were of a royal house of New York or Chicago, you would probably feel you must draw lines and choose only suchsplendours as accorded with, even while differing from, your own. 

Any possible connection of himself with such a case did not presentitself to him. If it had done so, he would have counted himself, haughtily, as beyond the pale. It was for other men to do things of thesort; a remote antagonism of his whole being warred against the mereidea. It was bigoted prejudice, perhaps, but it was a strong thing. 

A lovely shoulder and a brilliant head set on a long and slender neckhave no nationality which can prevent a man's glance turning naturallytowards them. His turned again during the last act of the play, and at amoment when he saw something rather like the thing he had seen whenthe Meridiana moved away from the dock and the exalted Miss Vanderpoelleaning upon the rail had held out her arms towards the child who hadbrought his toy to her as a farewell offering. 

Sitting by her to-night was a boy with a crooked back--Mount Dunstanremembered hearing that the Anstruthers had a deformed son--and shewas leaning towards him, her hand resting on his shoulder, explainingsomething he had not quite grasped in the action of the play. Theabsolute adoration in the boy's uplifted eyes was an interesting thingto take in, and the radiant warmth of her bright look was as unconsciousof onlookers as it had been when he had seen it yearning towards thechild on the wharf. Hers was the temperament which gave--which gave. Hefound himself restraining a smile because her look brought back to himthe actual sound of the New York youngster's voice. 

"I wanted to kiss you, Betty, oh, I did so want to kiss you!"

Anstruthers' boy--poor little beggar--looked as if he, too, in the faceof actors and audience, and brilliance of light, wanted to kiss her. 

CHAPTER XX

THINGS OCCUR IN STORNHAM VILLAGE

It would not have been possible for Miss Vanderpoel to remain long insocial seclusion in London, and, before many days had passed, Stornhamvillage was enlivened by the knowledge that her ladyship and her sisterhad returned to the Court. It was also evident that their visit toLondon had not been made to no purpose. The stagnation of the waters ofvillage life threatened to become a whirlpool. A respectable person, whowas to be her ladyship's maid, had come with them, and her ladyship hadnot been served by a personal attendant for years. Her ladyship had alsoappeared at the dinner-table in new garments, and with her hair doneas other ladies wore theirs. She looked like a different woman, andactually had a bit of colour, and was beginning to lose her frightenedway. Now it dawned upon even the dullest and least active mind thatsomething had begun to stir. 

It had been felt vaguely when the new young lady from "Meriker" hadwalked through the village street, and had drawn people to doors andwindows by her mere passing. After the return from London the signs ofactivity were such as made the villagers catch their breaths in utteringuncertain exclamations, and caused the feminine element to catch upoffspring or, dragging it by its hand, run into neighbours' cottages andstand talking the incredible thing over in lowered and rather breathlessvoices. Yet the incredible thing in question was--had it been seen fromthe standpoint of more prosperous villagers--anything but extraordinary. In entirely rural places the Castle, the Hall or the Manor, the GreatHouse--in short--still retains somewhat of the old feudal power tobestow benefits or withhold them. Wealth and good will at the Manorsupply work and resultant comfort in the village and its surroundingholdings. Patronised by the Great House the two or three small villageshops bestir themselves and awaken to activity. The blacksmith swingshis hammer with renewed spirit over the numerous jobs the gentry'sstables, carriage houses, garden tools, and household repairs giveto him. The carpenter mends and makes, the vicarage feels at ease, realising that its church and its charities do not stand unsupported. Small farmers and larger ones, under a rich and interested landlord, thrive and are able to hold their own even against the tricks of windand weather. Farm labourers being, as a result, certain of steady anddecent wage, trudge to and fro, with stolid cheerfulness, knowing thatthe pot boils and the children's feet are shod. Superannuated old menand women are sure of their broth and Sunday dinner, and their dread ofthe impending "Union" fades away. The squire or my lord or my lady canbe depended upon to care for their old bones until they are laid underthe sod in the green churchyard. With wealth and good will at the GreatHouse, life warms and offers prospects. There are Christmas feasts andgifts and village treats, and the big carriage or the smaller ones stopat cottage doors and at once confer exciting distinction and carry goodcheer. 

But Stornham village had scarcely a remote memory of any period of suchprosperity. It had not existed even in the older Sir Nigel's time, andcertainly the present Sir Nigel's reign had been marked only by neglect, ill-temper, indifference, and a falling into disorder and decay. Farmswere poorly worked, labourers were unemployed, there was no trade fromthe manor household, no carriages, no horses, no company, no spendingof money. Cottages leaked, floors were damp, the church roof itself wasfalling to pieces, and the vicar had nothing to give. The helpless andold cottagers were carried to the "Union" and, dying there, were buriedby the stinted parish in parish coffins. 

Her ladyship had not visited the cottages since her child's birth. Andnow such inspiriting events as were everyday happenings in lucky placeslike Westerbridge and Wratcham and Yangford, showed signs of being aboutto occur in Stornham itself. 

To begin with, even before the journey to London, Kedgers had made twoor three visits to The Clock, and had been in a communicative mood. Hehad related the story of the morning when he had looked up from hiswork and had found the strange young lady standing before him, with theresult that he had been "struck all of a heap. " And then he had given adetailed account of their walk round the place, and of the way in whichshe had looked at things and asked questions, such as would have donecredit to a man "with a 'ead on 'im. "

"Nay! Nay!" commented Kedgers, shaking his own head doubtfully, evenwhile with admiration. "I've never seen the like before--in youngwomen--neither in lady young women nor in them that's otherwise. "

Afterwards had transpired the story of Mrs. Noakes, and the kitchengrate, Mrs. Noakes having a friend in Miss Lupin, the villagedressmaker. 

"I'd not put it past her, " was Mrs. Noakes' summing up, "to order a newone, I wouldn't. "

The footman in the shabby livery had been a little wild in hisstatements, being rendered so by the admiring and excited state of hismind. He dwelt upon the matter of her "looks, " and the way she lightedup the dingy dining-room, and so conversed that a man found himselflistening and glancing when it was his business to be an unhearing, unseeing piece of mechanism. 

Such simple records of servitors' impressions were quite enough forStornham village, and produced in it a sense of being roused a littlefrom sleep to listen to distant and uncomprehended, but not unagreeable, sounds. 

One morning Buttle, the carpenter, looked up as Kedgers had done, andsaw standing on the threshold of his shop the tall young woman, who wasa sensation and an event in herself. 

"You are the master of this shop?" she asked. 

Buttle came forward, touching his brow in hasty salute. 

"Yes, my lady, " he answered. "Joseph Buttle, your ladyship. "

"I am Miss Vanderpoel, " dismissing the suddenly bestowed title with easydirectness. "Are you busy? I want to talk to you. "

No one had any reason to be "busy" at any time in Stornham village, nosuch luck; but Buttle did not smile as he replied that he was at libertyand placed himself at his visitor's disposal. The tall young lady cameinto the little shop, and took the chair respectfully offered to her. Buttle saw her eyes sweep the place as if taking in its resources. 

"I want to talk to you about some work which must be done at the Court, "she explained at once. "I want to know how much can be done by workmenof the village. How many men have you?"

"How many men had he?" Buttle wavered between gratification at its beingsupposed that he had "men" under him and grumpy depression because theillusion must be dispelled. 

"There's me and Sim Soames, miss, " he answered. "No more, an' no less. "

"Where can you get more?" asked Miss Vanderpoel. 

It could not be denied that Buttle received a mental shock which vergedin its suddenness on being almost a physical one. The promptness anddecision of such a query swept him off his feet. That Sim Soames andhimself should be an insufficient force to combat with such repairs asthe Court could afford was an idea presenting an aspect of unheard-ofnovelty, but that methods as coolly radical as those this questioningimplied, should be resorted to, was staggering. 

"Me and Sim has always done what work was done, " he stammered. "Ithasn't been much. "

Miss Vanderpoel neither assented to nor dissented from this lastpalpable truth. She regarded Buttle with searching eyes. She waswondering if any practical ability concealed itself behind his dullness. If she gave him work, could he do it? If she gave the whole villagework, was it too far gone in its unspurred stodginess to be roused tocarrying it out?

"There is a great deal to be done now, " she said. "All that can be donein the village should be done here. It seems to me that the villagerswant work--new work. Do they?"

Work! New work! The spark of life in her steady eyes actuallylighted a spark in the being of Joe Buttle. Young ladies invillages--gentry--usually visited the cottagers a bit if they werewell-meaning young women--left good books and broth or jelly, potteredabout and were seen at church, and playing croquet, and finally marriedand removed to other places, or gradually faded year by year intorespectable spinsterhood. And this one comes in, and in two or threeminutes shows that she knows things about the place and understands. Aman might then take it for granted that she would understand the thinghe daringly gathered courage to say. 

"They want any work, miss--that they are sure of decent pay for--sure ofit. "

She did understand. And she did not treat his implication as animpertinence. She knew it was not intended as one, and, indeed, she sawin it a sort of earnest of a possible practical quality in Buttle. Such work as the Court had demanded had remained unpaid for with quietpersistence, until even bills had begun to lag and fall off. She couldsee exactly how it had been done, and comprehended quite clearly a lackof enthusiasm in the presence of orders from the Great House. 

"All work will be paid for, " she said. "Each week the workmen willreceive their wages. They may be sure. I will be responsible. "

"Thank you, miss, " said Buttle, and he half unconsciously touched hisforehead again. 

"In a place like this, " the young lady went on in her mellow voice, andwith a reflective thoughtfulness in her handsome eyes, "on an estatelike Stornham, no work that can be done by the villagers should be doneby anyone else. The people of the land should be trained to do such workas the manor house, or cottages, or farms require to have done. "

"How did she think that out?" was Buttle's reflection. In places suchas Stornham, through generation after generation, the thing she had justsaid was accepted as law, clung to as a possession, any divergence fromit being a grievance sullenly and bitterly grumbled over. And in placesenough there was divergence in these days--the gentry sending to Londonfor things, and having up workmen to do their best-paying jobs for them. The law had been so long a law that no village could see justicein outsiders being sent for, even to do work they could not do wellthemselves. It showed what she was, this handsome young woman--eventhough she did come from America--that she should know what was right. 

She took a note-book out and opened it on the rough table before her. 

"I have made some notes here, " she said, "and a sketch or two. We musttalk them over together. "

If she had given Joe Buttle cause for surprise at the outset, she gavehim further cause during the next half-hour. The work that was to bedone was such as made him open his eyes, and draw in his breath. Ifhe was to be allowed to do it--if he could do it--if it was to bepaid for--it struck him that he would be a man set up for life. If herladyship had come and ordered it to be done, he would have thought thepoor thing had gone mad. But this one had it all jotted down in a clearhand, without the least feminine confusion of detail, and with here andthere a little sharply-drawn sketch, such as a carpenter, if he coulddraw, which Buttle could not, might have made. 

"There's not workmen enough in the village to do it in a year, miss, " hesaid at last, with a gasp of disappointment. 

She thought it over a minute, her pencil poised in her hand and her eyeson his face. 

"Can you, " she said, "undertake to get men from other villages, andsuperintend what they do? If you can do that, the work is still passingthrough your hands, and Stornham will reap the benefit of it. Yourworkmen will lodge at the cottages and spend part of their wages at theshops, and you who are a Stornham workman will earn the money to be madeout of a rather large contract. "

Joe Buttle became quite hot. If you have brought up a family for yearson the proceeds of such jobs as driving a ten-penny nail in here orthere, tinkering a hole in a cottage roof, knocking up a shelf inthe vicarage kitchen, and mending a panel of fence, to be suddenlyconfronted with a proposal to engage workmen and undertake "contracts"is shortening to the breath and heating to the blood. 

"Miss, " he said, "we've never done big jobs, Sim Soames an' me. P'rapswe're not up to it--but it'd be a fortune to us. "

She was looking down at one of her papers and making pencil marks on it. 

"You did some work last year on a little house at Tidhurst, didn't you?"she said. 

To think of her knowing that! Yes, the unaccountable good luck hadactually come to him that two Tidhurst carpenters, falling ill of thesame typhoid at the same time, through living side by side in the sameorder of unsanitary cottage, he and Sim had been given their work tofinish, and had done their best. 

"Yes, miss, " he answered. 

"I heard that when I was inquiring about you. I drove over to Tidhurstto see the work, and it was very sound and well done. If you did that, Ican at least trust you to do something at the Court which will prove tome what you are equal to. I want a Stornham man to undertake this. "

"No Tidhurst man, " said Joe Buttle, with sudden courage, "nor yet noBarnhurst, nor yet no Yangford, nor Wratcham shall do it, if I can lookit in the face. It's Stornham work and Stornham had ought to have it. Itgives me a brace-up to hear of it. "

The tall young lady laughed beautifully and got up. 

"Come to the Court to-morrow morning at ten, and we will look it overtogether, " she said. "Good-morning, Buttle. " And she went away. 

In the taproom of The Clock, when Joe Buttle dropped in for his pot ofbeer, he found Fox, the saddler, and Tread, the blacksmith, and each ofthem fell upon the others with something of the same story to tell. Thenew young lady from the Court had been to see them, too, and had broughtto each her definite little note-book. Harness was to be repaired andfurbished up, the big carriage and the old phaeton were to be put inorder, and Master Ughtred's cart was to be given new paint and springs. 

"This is what she said, " Fox's story ran, "and she said it sostraightforward and business-like that the conceitedest man that livedcouldn't be upset by it. 'I want to see what you can do, ' she says. 'Iam new to the place and I must find out what everyone can do, then Ishall know what to do myself. ' The way she sets them eyes on a man is asight. It's the sense in them and the human nature that takes you. "

"Yes, it's the sense, " said Tread, "and her looking at you as if sheexpected you to have sense yourself, and understand that she's doingfair business. It's clear-headed like--her asking questions and findingout what Stornham men can do. She's having the old things done up sothat she can find out, and so that she can prove that the Court work isgoing to be paid for. That's my belief. "

"But what does it all mean?" said Joe Buttle, setting his pot of beerdown on the taproom table, round which they sat in conclave. "Where'sthe money coming from? There's money somewhere. "

Tread was the advanced thinker of the village. He had come--throughreverses--from a bigger place. He read the newspapers. 

"It'll come from where it's got a way of coming, " he gave forthportentously. "It'll come from America. How they manage to get holdof so much of it there is past me. But they've got it, dang 'em, andthey're ready to spend it for what they want, though they're a sharplot. Twelve years ago there was a good bit of talk about her ladyship'sfather being one of them with the fullest pockets. She came here withplenty, but Sir Nigel got hold of it for his games, and they're thegames that cost money. Her ladyship wasn't born with a backbone, poorthing, but this new one was, and her ladyship's father is her father, and you mark my words, there's money coming into Stornham, though it'snot going to be played the fool with. Lord, yes! this new one has abackbone and good strong wrists and a good strong head, though Imust say"--with a little masculine chuckle of admission--"it's a bitunnatural with them eyelashes and them eyes looking at you between 'em. Like blue water between rushes in the marsh. "

Before the next twenty-four hours had passed a still more unlooked-forevent had taken place. Long outstanding bills had been paid, and in asmatter-of-fact manner as if they had not been sent in and ignored, insome cases for years. The settlement of Joe Buttle's account sent himto bed at the day's end almost light-headed. To become suddenly thepossessor of thirty-seven pounds, fifteen and tenpence half-penny, ofwhich all hope had been lost three years ago, was almost too much forany man. Six pounds, eight pounds, ten pounds, came into places as ifsovereigns had been sixpences, and shillings farthings. More thanone cottage woman, at the sight of the hoarded wealth in her staringgoodman's hand, gulped and began to cry. If they had had it before, andin driblets, it would have been spent long since, now, in a lump, itmeant shoes and petticoats and tea and sugar in temporary abundance, and the sense of this abundance was felt to be entirely due to Americanmagic. America was, in fact, greatly lauded and discussed, the case of"Gaarge" Lumsden being much quoted. 

CHAPTER XXI

KEDGERS

The work at Stornham Court went on steadily, though with no greaterrapidity than is usually achieved by rural labourers. There was, however, without doubt, a certain stimulus in the occasional appearanceof Miss Vanderpoel, who almost daily sauntered round the place to lookon, and exchange a few words with the workmen. When they saw her coming, the men, hastily standing up to touch their foreheads, were consciousof a slight acceleration of being which was not quite the ordinaryquickening produced by the presence of employers. It was, in fact, asensation rather pleasing than anxious. Her interest in the work was, upon the whole, one which they found themselves beginning to share. Theunusualness of the situation--a young woman, who evidently stood formany things and powers desirable, employing labourers and seeming toknow what she intended them to do--was a thing not easy to get over, orbe come accustomed to. But there she was, as easy and well mannered asyou please--and with gentlefolks' ways, though, as an American, suchfinish could scarcely be expected from her. She knew each man's name, it was revealed gradually, and, what was more, knew what he stood forin the village, what cottage he lived in, how many children he had, andsomething about his wife. She remembered things and made inquiries whichshowed knowledge. Besides this, she represented, though perhaps theywere scarcely yet fully awake to the fact, the promise their discourageddulness had long lost sight of. 

It actually became apparent that her ladyship, who walked with her, wasaltering day by day. Was it true that the bit of colour they had heardspoken of when she returned from town was deepening and fixing itselfon her cheek? It sometimes looked like it. Was she a bit less stiff andshy-like and frightened in her way? Buttle mentioned to his friends atThe Clock that he was sure of it. She had begun to look a man in theface when she talked, and more than once he had heard her laugh atthings her sister said. 

To one man more than to any other had come an almost unspeakable pieceof luck through the new arrival--a thing which to himself, at least, was as the opening of the heavens. This man was the discouraged Kedgers. Miss Vanderpoel, coming with her ladyship to talk to him, found that theman was a person of more experience than might have been imagined. Inhis youth he had been an under gardener at a great place, and being fondof his work, had learned more than under gardeners often learn. He hadbeen one of a small army of workers under the orders of an imposing headgardener, whose knowledge was a science. He had seen and taken partin what was done in orchid houses, orangeries, vineries, peach houses, conservatories full of wondrous tropical plants. But it was not easy fora man like himself, uneducated and lacking confidence of character, to advance as a bolder young man might have done. The all-ruling headgardener had inspired him with awe. He had watched him reverently, accumulating knowledge, but being given, as an underling, no opportunityto do more than obey orders. He had spent his life in obeying, andcongratulated himself that obedience secured him his weekly wage. 

"He was a great man--Mr. Timson--he was, " he said, in talking to MissVanderpoel. "Ay, he was that. Knew everything that could happen to aflower or a s'rub or a vegetable. Knew it all. Had a lib'ery of booksan' read 'em night an' day. Head gardener's cottage was good enoughfor gentry. The old Markis used to walk round the hothouses an' gardenstalking to him by the hour. If you did what he told you EXACTLY like hetold it to you, then you were all right, but if you didn't--well, youwas off the place before you'd time to look round. Worked under him fromtwenty to forty. Then he died an' the new one that came in had new ways. He made a clean sweep of most of us. The men said he was jealous of Mr. Timson. "

"That was bad for you, if you had a wife and children, " Miss Vanderpoelsaid. 

"Eight of us to feed, " Kedgers answered. "A man with that on him can'twait, miss. I had to take the first place I could get. It wasn't a goodone--poor parsonage with a big family an' not room on the place for thevegetables they wanted. Cabbages, an' potatoes, an' beans, an' broccoli. No time nor ground for flowers. Used to seem as if flowers got to be akind of dream. " Kedgers gave vent to a deprecatory half laugh. "Me--Iwas fond of flowers. I wouldn't have asked no better than to live among'em. Mr. Timson gave me a book or two when his lordship sent him alot of new ones. I've bought a few myself--though I suppose I couldn'tafford it. "

From the poor parsonage he had gone to a market gardener, and hadevidently liked the work better, hard and unceasing as it had been, because he had been among flowers again. Sudden changes from forcinghouses to chill outside dampness had resulted in rheumatism. After thatthings had gone badly. He began to be regarded as past his prime ofstrength. Lower wages and labour still as hard as ever, though itprofessed to be lighter, and therefore cheaper. At last the bigneglected gardens of Stornham. 

"What I'm seeing, miss, all the time, is what could be done with 'em. Wonderful it'd be. They might be the show of the county-if we had Mr. Timson here. "

Miss Vanderpoel, standing in the sunshine on the broad weed-grownpathway, was conscious that he was remotely moving. His flowers--hisflowers. They had been the centre of his rudimentary rural being. Eachman or woman cared for some one thing, and the unfed longing for it leftthe life of the creature a thwarted passion. Kedgers, yearning to stirthe earth about the roots of blooming things, and doomed to broccoli andcabbage, had spent his years unfed. No thing is a small thing. Kedgers, with the earth under his broad finger nails, and his half apologeticlaugh, being the centre of his own world, was as large as Mount Dunstan, who stood thwarted in the centre of his. Chancing-for God knows whatmystery of reason-to be born one of those having power, one mightperhaps set in order a world like Kedgers'. 

"In the course of twenty years' work under Timson, " she said, "you musthave learned a great deal from him. "

"A good bit, miss-a good bit, " admitted Kedgers. "If I hadn't ha' caredfor the work, I might ha' gone on doing it with my eyes shut, but Ididn't. Mr. Timson's heart was set on it as well as his head. An' minegot to be. But I wasn't even second or third under him--I was only oneof a lot. He would have thought me fine an' impident if I'd told him I'dgot to know a good deal of what he knew--and had some bits of ideas ofmy own. "

"If you had men enough under you, and could order all you want, " MissVanderpoel said tentatively, "you know what the place should be, nodoubt. "

"That I do, miss, " answered Kedgers, turning red with feeling. "Why, ifthe soil was well treated, anything would grow here. There's situationsfor everything. There's shade for things that wants it, and southaspects for things that won't grow without the warmth of 'em. Well, I'vegone about many a day when I was low down in my mind and worked myselfup to being cheerful by just planning where I could put things and whatthey'd look like. Liliums, now, I could grow them in masses from June toOctober. " He was becoming excited, like a war horse scenting battle fromafar, and forgot himself. "The Lilium Giganteum--I don't know whetheryou've ever seen one, miss--but if you did, it'd almost take your breathaway. A Lilium that grows twelve feet high and more, and has a flowerlike a great snow-white trumpet, and the scent pouring out of it so thatit floats for yards. There's a place where I could grow them so thatyou'd come on them sudden, and you'd think they couldn't be true. "

"Grow them, Kedgers, begin to grow them, " said Miss Vanderpoel. "I havenever seen them--I must see them. "

Kedgers' low, deprecatory chuckle made itself heard again, "Perhaps I'm going too fast, " he said. "It would take a good bit ofexpense to do it, miss. A good bit. "

Then Miss Vanderpoel made--and she made it in the simplestmatter-of-fact manner, too--the startling remark which, three hourslater, all Stornham village had heard of. The most astounding part ofthe remark was that it was uttered as if there was nothing in it whichwas not the absolutely natural outcome of the circumstances of the case. 

"Expense which is proper and necessary need not be considered, " shesaid. "Regular accounts will be kept and supervised, but you can haveall that is required. "

Then it appeared that Kedgers almost became pale. Being a foreigner, perhaps she did not know how much she was implying when she said such athing to a man who had never held a place like Timson's. 

"Miss, " he hesitated, even shamefacedly, because to suggest to sucha fine-mannered, calm young lady that she might be ignorant, seemedperilously near impertinence. "Miss, did you mean you wanted only theLilium Giganteum, or--or other things, as well. "

"I should like to see, " she answered him, "all that you see. I shouldlike to hear more of it all, when we have time to talk it over. Iunderstand we should need time to discuss plans. "

The quiet way she went on! Seeming to believe in him, almost as if hewas Mr. Timson. The old feeling, born and fostered by the great headgardener's rule, reasserted itself. 

"It means more to work--and someone over them, miss, " he said. "If--ifyou had a man like Mr. Timson----"

"You have not forgotten what you learned. With men enough under you itcan be put into practice. "

"You mean you'd trust me, miss--same as if I was Mr. Timson?"

"Yes. If you ever feel the need of a man like Timson, no doubt we canfind one. But you will not. You love the work too much. "

Then still standing in the sunshine, on the weed-grown path, shecontinued to talk to him. It revealed itself that she understood a gooddeal. As he was to assume heavier responsibilities, he was to receivehigher wages. It was his experience which was to be considered, not hisyears. This was a new point of view. The mere propeller of wheel-barrowsand digger of the soil--particularly after having been attacked byrheumatism--depreciates in value after youth is past. Kedgers knew thata Mr. Timson, with a regiment of under gardeners, and daily increasingknowledge of his profession, could continue to direct, though yearsrolled by. But to such fortune he had not dared to aspire. 

One of the lodges might be put in order for him to live in. He mighthave the hothouses to put in order, too; he might have implements, plants, shrubs, even some of the newer books to consult. Kedgers' brainreeled. 

"You--think I am to be trusted, miss?" he said more than once. "Youthink it would be all right? I wasn't even second or third under Mr. Timson--but--if I say it as shouldn't--I never lost a chance of learningthings. I was just mad about it. T'aint only Liliums--Lord, I know 'emall, as if they were my own children born an' bred--shrubs, coniferas, herbaceous borders that bloom in succession. My word! what you can dowith just delphiniums an' campanula an' acquilegia an' poppies, everydaythings like them, that'll grow in any cottage garden, an' bulbsan' annuals! Roses, miss--why, Mr. Timson had them in thickets--an'carpets--an' clambering over trees and tumbling over walls in sheets an'torrents--just know their ways an' what they want, an' they'll grow ina riot. But they want feeding--feeding. A rose is a gross feeder. Feeda Glory deejon, and watch over him, an' he'll cover a housetop an' giveyou two bloomings. "

"I have never lived in an English garden. I should like to see this oneat its best. "

Leaving her with salutes of abject gratitude, Kedgers moved awaybewildered. What man could believe it true? At three or four yards'distance he stopped and, turning, came back to touch his cap again. 

"You understand, miss, " he said. "I wasn't even second or third underMr. Timson. I'm not deceiving you, am I, miss?"

"You are to be trusted, " said Miss Vanderpoel, "first because you lovethe things--and next because of Timson. "

CHAPTER XXII

ONE OF MR. VANDERPOEL'S LETTERS

Mr. Germen, the secretary of the great Mr. Vanderpoel, in arrangingthe neat stacks of letters preparatory to his chief's entrance tohis private room each morning, knowing where each should be placed, understood that such as were addressed in Miss Vanderpoel's hand wouldbe read before anything else. This had been the case even when she hadjust been placed in a French school, a tall, slim little girl, withimmense demanding eyes, and a thick black plait of hair swinging betweenher straight, rather thin, shoulders. Between other financial potentatesand their little girls, Mr. Germen knew that the oddly confidentialrelation which existed between these two was unusual. Her schoolgirlletters, it had been understood, should be given the first place onthe stacks of envelopes each incoming ocean steamer brought in its mailbags. Since the beginning of her visit to her sister, Lady Anstruthers, the exact dates of mail steamers seemed to be of increased importance. Miss Vanderpoel evidently found much to write about. Each steamerbrought a full-looking envelope to be placed in a prominent position. 

On a hot morning in the early summer Mr. Germen found two or three--twoof them of larger size and seeming to contain business papers. Thesehe placed where they would be seen at once. Mr. Vanderpoel was a littlelater than usual in his arrival. At this season he came from his placein the country, and before leaving it this morning he had been talkingto his wife, whom he found rather disturbed by a chance encounter witha young woman who had returned to visit her mother after a year spent inEngland with her English husband. This young woman, now Lady Bowen, onceMilly Jones, had been one of the amusing marvels of New York. A girlneither rich nor so endowed by nature as to be able to press upon theworld any special claim to consideration as a beauty, her enterprise, and the daring of her tactics, had been the delight of many a satiriconlooker. In her schooldays she had ingenuously mapped out her futurecareer. Other American girls married men with titles, and she intendedto do the same thing. The other little girls laughed, but they liked tohear her talk. All information regarding such unions as was to befound in the newspapers and magazines, she collected and studiouslyread--sometimes aloud to her companions. 

Social paragraphs about royalties, dukes and duchesses, lords andladies, court balls and glittering functions, she devoured and learnedby heart. An abominably vulgar little person, she was an interestinglypertinacious creature, and wrought night and day at acquiring an air offashionable elegance, at first naturally laying it on in such manneras suggested that it should be scraped off with a knife, but withexperience gaining a certain specious knowledge of forms. Howthe over-mature child at school had assimilated her uncanny youngworldliness, it would have been less difficult to decide, if possiblesources had been less numerous. The air was full of it, the literatureof the day, the chatter of afternoon teas, the gossip of the hour. Before she was fifteen she saw the indiscretion of her childishfrankness, and realised that it might easily be detrimental to herambitions. She said no more of her plans for her future, and even tookthe astute tone of carelessly treating as a joke her vulgar little past. But no titled foreigner appeared upon the horizon without setting hersmall, but business-like, brain at work. Her lack of wealth and assuredposition made her situation rather hopeless. She was not of the classof lucky young women whose parents' gorgeous establishments offeredattractions to wandering persons of rank. She and her mother lived ina flat, and gave rather pathetic afternoon teas in return for suchmore brilliant hospitalities as careful and pertinacious calling andrecalling obliged their acquaintances to feel they could not decently beleft wholly out of. Milly and her anxious mother had worked hard. Theylost no opportunity of writing a note, or sending a Christmas card, oran economical funeral wreath. By daily toil and the amicable ignoringof casualness of manner or slights, they managed to cling to the edge ofthe precipice of social oblivion, into whose depths a lesser degreeof assiduity, or a greater sensitiveness, would have plunged them. Once--early in Milly's career, when her ever-ready chatter and hersuperficial brightness were a novelty, it had seemed for a short timethat luck might be glancing towards her. A young man of foreign titleand of Bohemian tastes met her at a studio dance, and, misled by thesmartness of her dress and her always carefully carried air of carelessprosperity, began to pay a delusive court to her. For a few weeks allher freshest frocks were worn assiduously and credit was strained to buynew ones. The flat was adorned with fresh flowers and several new yellowand pale blue cushions appeared at the little teas, which began toassume a more festive air. Desirable people, who went ordinarily tothe teas at long intervals and through reluctant weakness, or sometimesrebellious amiability, were drummed up and brought firmly to the fore. Milly herself began to look pink and fluffy through mere hopefulgood spirits. Her thin little laugh was heard incessantly, and peopleamusedly if they were good-tempered, derisively if they were spiteful, wondered if it really would come to something. But it did not. Theyoung foreigner suddenly left New York, making his adieus with entirelightness. There was the end of it. He had heard something about lackof income and uncertainty of credit, which had suggested to him thatdiscretion was the better part of valour. He married later a young ladyin the West, whose father was a solid person. 

Less astute young women, under the circumstances, would have allowedthemselves a week or so of headache or influenza, but Milly did not. Shemade calls in the new frocks, and with such persistent spirit that shefished forth from the depths of indifferent hospitality two or threeexcellent invitations. She wore her freshest pink frock, and anamazingly clever little Parisian diamond crescent in her hair, at thehuge Monson ball at Delmonico's, and it was recorded that it was on thatglittering occasion that her "Uncle James" was first brought upon thescene. He was only mentioned lightly at first. It was to Milly's creditthat he was not made too much of. He was casually touched upon as a veryrich uncle, who lived in Dakota, and had actually lived there since hisyouth, letting his few relations know nothing of him. He had been rathera black sheep as a boy, but Milly's mother had liked him, and, when hehad run away from New York, he had told her what he was going to do, andhad kissed her when she cried, and had taken her daguerreotype with him. Now he had written, and it turned out that he was enormously rich, and was interested in Milly. From that time Uncle James formed anatmosphere. He did not appear in New York, but Milly spent the nextseason in London, and the Monsons, being at Hurlingham one day, hadher pointed out to them as a new American girl, who was the idol of amillionaire uncle. She was not living in an ultra fashionable quarter, or with ultra fashionable people, but she was, on all occasions, theyheard, beautifully dressed and beautifully--if a little heavily--hungwith gauds and gems, her rings being said to be quite amazing andsuggesting an impassioned lavishness on the part of Uncle James. London, having become inured to American marvels--Milly's bit of it--acceptedand enjoyed Uncle James and all the sumptuous attributes of his Dakota. 

English people would swallow anything sometimes, Mrs. Monson commentedsagely, and yet sometimes they stared and evidently thought you werelying about the simplest things. Milly's corner of South Kensington hadgulped down the Dakota uncle. Her managing in this way, if there was nouncle, was too clever and amusing. She had left her mother at home toscrimp and save, and by hook or by crook she had contrived to get anumber of quite good things to wear. She wore them with such an air ofaccustomed resource that the jewels might easily--mixed with somerelics of her mother's better days--be of the order of the clever littleParisian diamond crescent. It was Milly's never-laid-aside manner whichdid it. The announcement of her union with Sir Arthur Bowen was receivedin certain New York circles with little suppressed shrieks of glee. Ithad been so sharp of her to aim low and to realise so quickly that shecould not aim high. The baronetcy was a recent one, and not unconnectedwith trade. Sir Arthur was not a rich man, and, had it leaked out, believed in Uncle James. If he did not find him all his fancy painted, Milly was clever enough to keep him quiet. She was, when all was saidand done, one of the American women of title, her servants and thetradespeople addressed her as "my lady, " and with her capacityfor appropriating what was most useful, and her easy assumption ofpossessing all required, she was a very smart person indeed. Sheprovided herself with an English accent, an English vocabulary, and anEnglish manner, and in certain circles was felt to be most impressive. 

At an afternoon function in the country Mrs. Vanderpoel had met LadyBowen. She had been one of the few kindly ones, who in the past hadgiven an occasional treat to Milly Jones for her girlhood's sake. LadyBowen, having gathered a small group of hearers, was talking volubly toit, when the nice woman entered, and, catching sight of her, she sweptacross the room. It would not have been like Milly to fail to see andgreet at once the wife of Reuben Vanderpoel. She would count anywhere, even in London sets it was not easy to connect one's self with. She hadalready discovered that there were almost as many difficulties to besurmounted in London by the wife of an unimportant baronet as there hadbeen to be overcome in New York by a girl without money or place. It waswell to have something in the way of information to offer in one's smalltalk with the lucky ones and Milly knew what subject lay nearest to Mrs. Vanderpoel's heart. 

"Miss Vanderpoel has evidently been enjoying her visit to StornhamCourt, " she said, after her first few sentences. "I met Mrs. Worthingtonat the Embassy, and she said she had buried herself in the country. ButI think she must have run up to town quietly for shopping. I saw her oneday in Piccadilly, and I was almost sure Lady Anstruthers was with herin the carriage--almost sure. "

Mrs. Vanderpoel's heart quickened its beat. 

"You were so young when she married, " she said. "I daresay you haveforgotten her face. "

"Oh, no!" Milly protested effusively. "I remember her quite well. Shewas so pretty and pink and happy-looking, and her hair curled naturally. I used to pray every night that when I grew up I might have hair and acomplexion like hers. "

Mrs. Vanderpoel's kind, maternal face fell. 

"And you were not sure you recognised her? Well, I suppose twelve yearsdoes make a difference, " her voice dragging a little. 

Milly saw that she had made a blunder. The fact was she had not evenguessed at Rosy's identity until long after the carriage had passed her. 

"Oh, you see, " she hesitated, "their carriage was not near me, and I wasnot expecting to see them. And perhaps she looked a little delicate. Iheard she had been rather delicate. "

She felt she was floundering, and bravely floundered away from thesubject. She plunged into talk of Betty and people's anxiety to see her, and the fact that the society columns were already faintly heraldingher. She would surely come soon to town. It was too late for the firstDrawing-room this year. When did Mrs. Vanderpoel think she would bepresented? Would Lady Anstruthers present her? Mrs. Vanderpoel could notbring her back to Rosy, and the nature of the change which had made itdifficult to recognise her. 

The result of this chance encounter was that she did not sleep verywell, and the next morning talked anxiously to her husband. 

"What I could see, Reuben, was that Milly Bowen had not known her atall, even when she saw her in the carriage with Betty. She couldn't havechanged as much as that, if she had been taken care of, and happy. "

Her affection and admiration for her husband were such as made the taskof soothing her a comparatively simple thing. The instinct of tendernessfor the mate his youth had chosen was an unchangeable one in ReubenVanderpoel. He was not a primitive man, but in this he was asunquestioningly simple as if he had been a kindly New England farmer. Hehad outgrown his wife, but he had always loved and protected her gentlegoodness. He had never failed her in her smallest difficulty, he couldnot bear to see her hurt. Betty had been his compeer and his companionalmost since her childhood, but his wife was the tenderest care of hisdays. There was a strong sense of relief in his thought of Betty now. Itwas good to remember the fineness of her perceptions, her clearness ofjudgment, and recall that they were qualities he might rely upon. 

When he left his wife to take his train to town, he left her smilingagain. She scarcely knew how her fears had been dispelled. His talk hadall been kindly, practical, and reasonable. It was true Betty had saidin her letter that Rosy had been rather delicate, and had not beentaking very good care of herself, but that was to be remedied. Rosy hadmade a little joke or so about it herself. 

"Betty says I am not fat enough for an English matron. I am drinkingmilk and breakfasting in bed, and am going to be massaged to please her. I believe we all used to obey Betty when she was a child, and now she isso tall and splendid, one would never dare to cross her. Oh, mother! Iam so happy at having her with me!"

To reread just these simple things caused the suggestion of things notcomfortably normal to melt away. Mrs. Vanderpoel sat down at asunny window with her lap full of letters, and forgot Milly Bowen'sfloundering. 

When Mr. Vanderpoel reached his office and glanced at his carefullyarranged morning's mail, Mr. Germen saw him smile at the sight of theenvelopes addressed in his daughter's hand. He sat down to read them atonce, and, as he read, the smile of welcome became a shrewd and deeplyinterested one. 

"She has undertaken a good-sized contract, " he was saying to himself, "and she's to be trusted to see it through. It is rather fine, theway she manages to combine emotions and romance and sentiments withpractical good business, without letting one interfere with the other. It's none of it bad business this, as the estate is entailed, and theboy is Rosy's. It's good business. "

This was what Betty had written to her father in New York from StornhamCourt. 

"The things I am beginning to do, it would be impossible for me toresist doing, and it would certainly be impossible for you. The thing Iam seeing I have never seen, at close hand, before, though I have takenin something almost its parallel as part of certain picturesqueness ofscenes in other countries. But I am LIVING with this and also, throughrelationship to Rosy, I, in a measure, belong to it, and it belongsto me. You and I may have often seen in American villages crudeness, incompleteness, lack of comfort, and the composition of a picture, a rough ugliness the result of haste and unsettled life which staysnowhere long, but packs up its goods and chattels and wanders fartherafield in search of something better or worse, in any case in searchof change, but we have never seen ripe, gradual falling to ruin of whatgenerations ago was beautiful. To me it is wonderful and tragic andtouching. If you could see the Court, if you could see the village, if you could see the church, if you could see the people, all quietlydisintegrating, and so dearly perfect in their way that if one knewabsolutely that nothing could be done to save them, one could only standstill and catch one's breath and burst into tears. The church has stoodsince the Conquest, and, as it still stands, grey and fine, with itsmass of square tower, and despite the state of its roof, is not yetgiven wholly to the winds and weather, it will, no doubt, stand a fewcenturies longer. The Court, however, cannot long remain a possiblehabitation, if it is not given a new lease of life. I do not mean thatit will crumble to-morrow, or the day after, but we should not thinkit habitable now, even while we should admit that nothing could be moredelightful to look at. The cottages in the village are already, many ofthem, amazing, when regarded as the dwellings of human beings. How longago the cottagers gave up expecting that anything in particular would bedone for them, I do not know. I am impressed by the fact that they arean unexpecting people. Their calm non-expectancy fills me with interest. Only centuries of waiting for their superiors in rank to do thingsfor them, and the slow formation of the habit of realising that notto submit to disappointment was no use, could have produced the almostSERENITY of their attitude. It is all very well for newborn republicannations--meaning my native land--to sniff sternly and say that such astate of affairs is an insult to the spirit of the race. Perhaps itis now, but it was not apparently centuries ago, which was when it allbegan and when 'Man' and the 'Race' had not developed to the point ofasking questions, to which they demand replies, about themselves andthe things which happened to them. It began in the time of Egbertand Canute, and earlier, in the days of the Druids, when they usedpeacefully to allow themselves to be burned by the score, enclosedin wicker idols, as natural offerings to placate the gods. The modernacceptance of things is only a somewhat attenuated remnant of theancient idea. And this is what I have to deal with and understand. When I begin to do the things I am going to do, with the aid of yourpractical advice, if I have your approval, the people will be at firstrather afraid of me. They will privately suspect I am mad. Itwill, also, not seem at all unlikely that an American should be ofunreasoningly extravagant and flighty mind. Stornham, having longslumbered in remote peace through lack of railroad convenience, stillregards America as almost of the character of wild rumour. Rosy wastheir one American, and she disappeared from their view so soon thatshe had not time to make any lasting impression. I am asking myself howdifficult, or how simple, it will be to quite understand these people, and to make them understand me. I greatly doubt its being simple. Layersand layers and layers of centuries must be far from easy to burrowthrough. They look simple, they do not know that they are not simple, but really they are not. Their point of view has been the point of viewof the English peasant so many hundred years that an American point ofview, which has had no more than a trifling century and a half to formitself in, may find its thews and sinews the less powerful of thetwo. When I walk down the village street, faces appear at windows, andfigures, stolidly, at doors. What I see is that, vaguely and remotely, American though I am, the fact that I am of 'her ladyship's blood, 'and that her ladyship--American though she is--has the claim on them ofbeing the mother of the son of the owner of the land--stirs in them afeeling that I have a shadowy sort of relationship in the whole thing, and with regard to their bad roofs and bad chimneys, to their brokenpalings, and damp floors, to their comforts and discomforts, a sort ofresponsibility. That is the whole thing, and you--just you, father--willunderstand me when I say that I actually like it. I might not like itif I were poor Rosy, but, being myself, I love it. There is somethingpatriarchal in it which moves me. 

"Is it an abounding and arrogant delight in power which makes it appealto me, or is it something better? To feel that every man on theland, every woman, every child knew one, counted on one's honour andfriendship, turned to one believingly in time of stress, to know thatone could help and be a finely faithful thing, the very knowledge ofit would give one vigour and warm blood in the veins. I wish I had beenborn to it, I wish the first sounds falling on my newborn ears had beenthe clanging of the peal from an old Norman church tower, calling outto me, 'Welcome; newcomer of our house, long life among us! Welcome!'Still, though the first sounds that greeted me were probably therattling of a Fifth Avenue stage, I have brought them SOMETHING, andwho knows whether I could have brought it from without the range of thatprosaic, but cheerful, rattle. "

The rest of the letter was detail of a business-like order. A largeenvelope contained the detail-notes of things to be done, notesconcerning roofs, windows, flooring, park fences, gardens, greenhouses, tool houses, potting sheds, garden walls, gates, woodwork, masonry. Sharp little sketches, such as Buttle had seen, notes concerning Buttle, Fox, Tread, Kedgers, and less accomplished workmen; concerning wagesof day labourers, hours, capabilities. Buttle, if he had chanced to seethem, would have broken into a light perspiration at the idea of a youngwoman having compiled the documents. He had never heard of the firstReuben Vanderpoel. 

Her father's reply to Betty was as long as her own to him, and gave herkeen pleasure by its support, both of sympathetic interest and practicaladvice. He left none of her points unnoted, and dealt with each of themas she had most hoped and indeed had felt she knew he would. This washis final summing up:

"If you had been a boy, and I own I am glad you were not--a man wants adaughter--I should have been quite willing to allow you your flutter onWall Street, or your try at anything you felt you would like to handle. It would have interested me to look on and see what you were made of, what you wanted, and how you set about trying to get it. It's a new kindof deal you have undertaken. It's more romantic than Wall Street, but Ithink I do see what you see in it. Even apart from Rosy and the boy, it would interest me to see what you would do with it. This is your'flutter. ' I like the way you face it. If you were a son instead ofa daughter, I should see I might have confidence in you. I could notconfide to Wall Street what I will tell you--which is that in the midstof the drive and swirl and tumult of my life here, I like what you seein the thing, I like your idea of the lord of the land, who should lovethe land and the souls born on it, and be the friend and strength ofthem and give the best and get it back in fair exchange. There's asteadiness in the thought of such a life among one's kind which hasattractions for a man who has spent years in a maelstrom, snatching atwhat whirls among the eddies of it. Your notes and sketches and summingup of probable costs did us both credit--I say 'both' because yourbusiness education is the result of our long talks and journeyingstogether. You began to train for this when you began going to visitmines and railroads with me at twelve years old. I leave the whole thingin your hands, my girl, I leave Rosy in your hands, and in leaving Rosyto you, you know how I am trusting you with your mother. Your letters toher tell her only what is good for her. She is beginning to look happierand younger already, and is looking forward to the day when Rosy andthe boy will come home to visit us, and when we shall go in state toStornham Court. God bless her, she is made up of affection and simpletrust, and that makes it easy to keep things from her. She has neverbeen ill-treated, and she knows I love her, so when I tell her thatthings are coming right, she never doubts me. 

"While you are rebuilding the place you will rebuild Rosy so that thesight of her may not be a pain when her mother sees her again, which iswhat she is living for. "

CHAPTER XXIII

INTRODUCING G. SELDEN

A bird was perched upon a swaying branch of a slim young sapling nearthe fence-supported hedge which bounded the park, and Mount Dunstan hadstopped to look at it and listen. A soft shower had fallen, and afterits passing, the sun coming through the light clouds, there had brokenforth again in the trees brief trills and calls and fluting of birdnotes. The sward and ferns glittered fresh green under the raindrops;the young leaves on trees and hedge seemed visibly to uncurl, theuncovered earth looked richly dark and moist, and sent forth thefragrance from its deeps, which, rising to a man's nostrils, stirs andthrills him because it is the scent of life's self. The bird upon thesapling was a robin, the tiny round body perched upon his delicate legs, plump and bright plumaged for mating. He touched his warm red breastwith his beak, fluffed out and shook his feathers, and, swelling histhroat, poured forth his small, entranced song. It was a gay, brief, jaunty thing, but pure, joyous, gallant, liquid melody. There was daintybravado in it, saucy demand and allurement. It was addressed to someinvisible hearer of the tender sex, and wheresoever she might behidden--whether in great branch or low thicket or hedge--there washinted no doubt in her small wooer's note that she would hear it andin due time respond. Mount Dunstan, listening, even laughed at itsconfident music. The tiny thing uttering its Call of the World--jubilantin the surety of answer!

Having flung it forth, he paused a moment and waited, his smallhead turned sideways, his big, round, dew-bright black eye roguishlyattentive. Then with more swelling of the throat he trilled and rippledgayly anew, undisturbed and undoubting, but with a trifle of insistence. Then he listened, tried again two or three times, with brave chirpsand exultant little roulades. "Here am I, the bright-breasted, theliquid-eyed, the slender-legged, the joyous and conquering! Listen tome--listen to me. Listen and answer in the call of God's world. " It wasthe joy and triumphant faith in the tiny note of the tiny thing--Lifeas he himself was, though Life whose mystery his man's hand could havecrushed--which, while he laughed, set Mount Dunstan thinking. Springwarmth and spring scents and spring notes set a man's being in tune withinfinite things. 

The bright roulade began again, prolonged itself with renewed effort, rose to its height, and ended. From a bush in the thicket farther up theroad a liquid answer came. And Mount Dunstan's laugh at the sound of itwas echoed by another which came apparently from the bank rising fromthe road on the other side of the hedge, and accompanying the laugh wasa good-natured nasal voice. 

"She's caught on. There's no mistake about that. I guess it's time foryou to hustle, Mr. Rob. "

Mount Dunstan laughed again. Jem Salter had heard voices like it, andcheerful slang phrases of the same order in his ranch days. On the otherside of his park fence there was evidently sitting, through some oddchance, an American of the cheery, casual order, not sufficientlypolished by travel to have lost his picturesque nationalcharacteristics. 

Mount Dunstan put a hand on a broken panel of fence and leaped over intothe road. 

A bicycle was lying upon the roadside grass, and on the bank, looking asthough he had been sheltering himself under the hedge from the rain, sata young man in a cheap bicycling suit. His features were sharply cut andkeen, his cap was pushed back from his forehead, and he had a pair ofshrewdly careless boyish eyes. 

Mount Dunstan liked the look of him, and seeing his natural start at theunheralded leap over the gap, which was quite close to him, he spoke. 

"Good-morning, " he said. "I am afraid I startled you. "

"Good-morning, " was the response. "It was a bit of a jolt seeing youjump almost over my shoulder. Where did you come from? You must havebeen just behind me. "

"I was, " explained Mount Dunstan. "Standing in the park listening to therobin. "

The young fellow laughed outright. 

"Say, " he said, "that was pretty fine, wasn't it? Wasn't he getting itoff his chest! He was an English robin, I guess. American robins arethree or four times as big. I liked that little chap. He was a winner. "

"You are an American?"

"Sure, " nodding. "Good old Stars and Stripes for mine. First time I'vebeen here. Came part for business and part for pleasure. Having the timeof my life. "

Mount Dunstan sat down beside him. He wanted to hear him talk. He hadliked to hear the ranchmen talk. This one was of the city type, but hisgenial conversational wanderings would be full of quaint slang and goodspirits. He was quite ready to converse, as was made manifest by hisnext speech. 

"I'm biking through the country because I once had an old grandmotherthat was English, and she was always talking about English country, andhow green things was, and how there was hedges instead of rail fences. She thought there was nothing like little old England. Well, as far asroads and hedges go, I'm with her. They're all right. I wanted a fellowI met crossing, to come with me, but he took a Cook's trip to Paris. He's a gay sort of boy. Said he didn't want any green lanes in his. Hewanted Boolyvard. " He laughed again and pushed his cap farther back onhis forehead. "Said I wasn't much of a sport. I tell YOU, a chap that'sgot to earn his fifteen per, and live on it, can't be TOO much of asport. "

"Fifteen per?" Mount Dunstan repeated doubtfully. 

His companion chuckled. 

"I forgot I was talking to an Englishman. Fifteen dollars perweek--that's what 'fifteen per' means. That's what he told me he gets atLobenstien's brewery in New York. Fifteen per. Not much, is it?"

"How does he manage Continental travel on fifteen per?" Mount Dunstaninquired. 

"He's a typewriter and stenographer, and he dug up some extra jobs to doat night. He's been working and saving two years to do this. We didn'tcome over on one of the big liners with the Four Hundred, you can bet. Took a cheap one, inside cabin, second class. "

"By George!" said Mount Dunstan. "That was American. "

The American eagle slightly flapped his wings. The young man pushed hiscap a trifle sideways this time, and flushed a little. 

"Well, when an American wants anything he generally reaches out for it. "

"Wasn't it rather--rash, considering the fifteen per?" Mount Dunstansuggested. He was really beginning to enjoy himself. 

"What's the use of making a dollar and sitting on it. I've not gotfifteen per--steady--and here I am. "

Mount Dunstan knew his man, and looked at him with inquiring interest. He was quite sure he would go on. This was a thing he had seenbefore--an utter freedom from the insular grudging reserve, a sort ofoccult perception of the presence of friendly sympathy, and an ingenuousreadiness to meet it half way. The youngster, having missed hisfellow-traveler, and probably feeling the lack of companionship in hiscountry rides, was in the mood for self-revelation. 

"I'm selling for a big concern, " he said, "and I've got a first-classarticle to carry. Up to date, you know, and all that. It's the top notchof typewriting machines, the Delkoff. Ever seen it? Here's my card, "taking a card from an inside pocket and handing it to him. It wasinscribed:

J. BURRIDGE & SON, DELKOFF TYPEWRITER CO. 

BROADWAY, NEW YORK. G. SELDEN. 

"That's my name, " he said, pointing to the inscription in the corner. "I'm G. Selden, the junior assistant of Mr. Jones. "

At the sight of the insignia of his trade, his holiday air dropped fromhim, and he hastily drew from another pocket an illustrated catalogue. 

"If you use a typewriter, " he broke forth, "I can assure you it wouldbe to your interest to look at this. " And as Mount Dunstan took theproffered pamphlet, and with amiable gravity opened it, he rapidlypoured forth his salesman's patter, scarcely pausing to take his breath:"It's the most up-to-date machine on the market. It has all the latestimproved mechanical appliances. You will see from the cut in thecatalogue that the platen roller is easily removed without a longmechanical operation. All you do is to slip two pins back and off comesthe roller. There is also another point worth mentioning--the ribbonswitch. By using this ribbon switch you can write in either red or blueink while you are using only one ribbon. By throwing the switch on thisside, you can use thirteen yards on the upper edge of the ribbon, byreversing it, you use thirteen yards on the lower edge--thus gettingpractically twenty-six yards of good, serviceable ribbon out of one thatis only thirteen yards long--making a saving of fifty per cent. In yourribbon expenditure alone, which you will see is quite an item to anyenterprising firm. "

He was obliged to pause here for a second or so, but as Mount Dunstanexhibited no signs of intending to use violence, and, on the contrary, continued to inspect the catalogue, he broke forth with renewed cheeryvolubility:

"Another advantage is the new basket shift. Also, the carriage on thismachine is perfectly stationary and rigid. On all other machines itis fastened by a series of connecting bolts and links, which you willreadily understand makes perfect alignment uncertain. Then our tabulatoris a part and parcel of the instrument, costing you nothing more thanthe original price of the machine, which is one hundred dollars--withoutdiscount. "

"It seems a good thing, " said Mount Dunstan. "If I had much business totransact, I should buy one. "

"If you bought one you'd HAVE business, " responded Selden. "That'swhat's the matter. It's the up-to-date machines that set things humming. A slow, old-fashioned typewriter uses a firm's time, and time's money. "

"I don't find it so, " said Mount Dunstan. "I have more time than I canpossibly use--and no money. "

G. Selden looked at him with friendly interest. His experience, which was varied, had taught him to recognize symptoms. This nice, rough-looking chap, who, despite his rather shabby clothes, looked likea gentleman, wore an expression Jones's junior assistant had seen manya time before. He had seen it frequently on the countenances of otherjunior assistants who had tramped the streets and met more or lesssavage rebuffs through a day's length, without disposing of a singleDelkoff, and thereby adding five dollars to the ten per. It was the kindof thing which wiped the youth out of a man's face and gave him ahard, worn look about the eyes. He had looked like that himself many anunfeeling day before he had learned to "know the ropes and not mind abit of hot air. " His buoyant, slangy soul was a friendly thing. He was agregarious creature, and liked his fellow man. He felt, indeed, more atease with him when he needed "jollying along. " Reticence was not evenetiquette in a case as usual as this. 

"Say, " he broke out, "perhaps I oughtn't to have worried you. Are you upagainst it? Down on your luck, I mean, " in hasty translation. 

Mount Dunstan grinned a little. 

"That's a very good way of putting it, " he answered. "I never heard 'upagainst it' before. It's good. Yes, I'm up against it. 

"Out of a job?" with genial sympathy. 

"Well, the job I had was too big for me. It needed capital. " He grinnedslightly again, recalling a phrase of his Western past. "I'm afraid I'mdown and out. "

"No, you're not, " with cheerful scorn. "You're not dead, are you? S'longas a man's not been dead a month, there's always a chance that there'sluck round the corner. How did you happen here? Are you piking it?"

Momentarily Mount Dunstan was baffled. G. Selden, recognising the fact, enlightened him. "That's New York again, " he said, with a boyish touchof apology. "It means on the tramp. Travelling along the turnpike. Youdon't look as if you had come to that--though it's queer the sort offellows you do meet piking sometimes. Theatrical companies that havegone to pieces on the road, you know. Perhaps--" with a sudden thought, "you're an actor. Are you?"

Mount Dunstan admitted to himself that he liked the junior assistant ofJones immensely. A more ingenuously common young man, a more innocentoutsider, it had never been his blessed privilege to enter into closeconverse with, but his very commonness was a healthy, normal thing. It made no effort to wreathe itself with chaplets of elegance; itwas beautifully unaware that such adornment was necessary. It enjoyeditself, youthfully; attacked the earning of its bread with genial pluck, and its good-natured humanness had touched him. He had enjoyed his talk;he wanted to hear more of it. He was not in the mood to let him go hisway. To Penzance, who was to lunch with him to-day, he would present astudy of absorbing interest. 

"No, " he answered. "I'm not an actor. My name is Mount Dunstan, and thisplace, " with a nod over his shoulder, "is mine--but I'm up against it, nevertheless. "

Selden looked a trifle disgusted. He began to pick up his bicycle. Hehad given a degree of natural sympathy, and this was an English chap'sidea of a joke. 

"I'm the Prince of Wales, myself, " he remarked, "and my mother'sexpecting me to lunch at Windsor. So long, me lord, " and he set his footon the treadle. 

Mount Dunstan rose, feeling rather awkward. The point seemed somewhatdifficult to contend. 

"It is not a joke, " he said, conscious that he spoke rather stiffly. 

"Little Willie's not quite as easy as he looks, " was the cryptic remarkof Mr. Selden. 

Mount Dunstan lost his rather easily lost temper, which happened to bethe best thing he could have done under the circumstances. 

"Damn it, " he burst out. "I'm not such a fool as I evidently look. Anice ass I should be to play an idiot joke like that. I'm speaking thetruth. Go if you like--and be hanged. "

Selden's attention was arrested. The fellow was in earnest. The placewas his. He must be the earl chap he had heard spoken of at the waysidepublic house he had stopped at for a pot of beer. He dismounted from hisbicycle, and came back, pushing it before him, good-natured relentingand awkwardness combining in his look. 

"All right, " he said. "I apologise--if it's cold fact. I'm not callingyou a liar. "

"Thank you, " still a little stiffly, from Mount Dunstan. 

The unabashed good cheer of G. Selden carried him lightly over aslightly difficult moment. He laughed, pushing his cap back, of course, and looking over the hedge at the sweep of park, with a group of deercropping softly in the foreground. 

"I guess I should get a bit hot myself, " he volunteered handsomely, "ifI was an earl, and owned a place like this, and a fool fellow came alongand took me for a tramp. That was a pretty bad break, wasn't it? But Idid say you didn't look like it. Anyway you needn't mind me. I shouldn'tget onto Pierpont Morgan or W. K. Vanderbilt, if I met 'em in thestreet. "

He spoke the two names as an Englishman of his class would have spokenof the Dukes of Westminster or Marlborough. These were his nobles--theheads of the great American houses, and entirely parallel, in his mind, with the heads of any great house in England. They wielded the power ofthe world, and could wield it for evil or good, as any prince or dukemight. Mount Dunstan saw the parallel. 

"I apologise, all right, " G. Selden ended genially. 

"I am not offended, " Mount Dunstan answered. "There was no reason whyyou should know me from another man. I was taken for a gamekeeper afew weeks since. I was savage a moment, because you refused to believeme--and why should you believe me after all?"

G. Selden hesitated. He liked the fellow anyhow. 

"You said you were up against it--that was it. And--and I've seen chapsdown on their luck often enough. Good Lord, the hard-luck stories I hearevery day of my life. And they get a sort of look about the eyes andmouth. I hate to see it on any fellow. It makes me sort of sick to comeacross it even in a chap that's only got his fool self to blame. I maybe making another break, telling you--but you looked sort of that way. "

"Perhaps, " stolidly, "I did. " Then, his voice warming, "It was jolly good-natured of you to think about it at all. Thank you. "

"That's all right, " in polite acknowledgment. Then with another lookover the hedge, "Say--what ought I to call you? Earl, or my Lord?"

"It's not necessary for you to call me anything in particular--as arule. If you were speaking of me, you might say Lord Mount Dunstan. "

G. Selden looked relieved. 

"I don't want to be too much off, " he said. "And I'd like to ask youa favour. I've only three weeks here, and I don't want to miss anychances. "

"What chance would you like?"

"One of the things I'm biking over the country for, is to get a lookat just such a place as this. We haven't got 'em in America. My oldgrandmother was always talking about them. Before her mother broughther to New York she'd lived in a village near some park gates, and shechinned about it till she died. When I was a little chap I liked to hearher. She wasn't much of an American. Wore a black net cap with purpleribbons in it, and hadn't outlived her respect for aristocracy. Gee!"chuckling, "if she'd heard what I said to you just now, I reckon she'dhave thrown a fit. Anyhow she made me feel I'd like to see the kind ofplaces she talked about. And I shall think myself in luck if you'lllet me have a look at yours--just a bike around the park, if you don'tobject--or I'll leave the bike outside, if you'd rather. "

"I don't object at all, " said Mount Dunstan. "The fact is, I happened tobe on the point of asking you to come and have some lunch--when you goton your bicycle. "

Selden pushed his cap and cleared his throat. 

"I wasn't expecting that, " he said. "I'm pretty dusty, " with a glanceat his clothes. "I need a wash and brush up--particularly if there areladies. "

There were no ladies, and he could be made comfortable. This beingexplained to him, he was obviously rejoiced. With unembarrassedfrankness, he expressed exultation. Such luck had not, at any time, presented itself to him as a possibility in his holiday scheme. 

"By gee, " he ejaculated, as they walked under the broad oaks of theavenue leading to the house. "Speaking of luck, this is the limit! Ican't help thinking of what my grandmother would say if she saw me. "

He was a new order of companion, but before they had reached the house, Mount Dunstan had begun to find him inspiring to the spirits. His jovial, if crude youth, his unaffected acknowledgment ofunaccustomedness to grandeur, even when in dilapidation, his delight inthe novelty of the particular forms of everything about him--trees andsward, ferns and moss, his open self-congratulation, were without doubtcheerful things. 

His exclamation, when they came within sight of the house itself, wasfor a moment disturbing to Mount Dunstan's composure. 

"Hully gee!" he said. "The old lady was right. All I've thought about'em was 'way off. It's bigger than a museum. " His approval was immense. 

During the absence in which he was supplied with the "wash and brushup, " Mount Dunstan found Mr. Penzance in the library. He explained tohim what he had encountered, and how it had attracted him. 

"You have liked to hear me describe my Western neighbours, " he said. "This youngster is a New York development, and of a different type. But there is a likeness. I have invited to lunch with us, a young manwhom--Tenham, for instance, if he were here--would call 'a bounder. 'He is nothing of the sort. In his junior-assistant-salesman way, he israther a fine thing. I never saw anything more decently human than hisway of asking me--man to man, making friends by the roadside if I was'up against it. ' No other fellow I have known has ever exhibited thesame healthy sympathy. "

The Reverend Lewis was entranced. Already he was really quite flushedwith interest. As Assyrian character, engraved upon sarcophogi, wouldhave allured and thrilled him, so was he allured by the cryptic natureof the two or three American slang phrases Mount Dunstan had repeated tohim. His was the student's simple ardour. 

"Up against it, " he echoed. "Really! Dear! Dear! And that signifies, yousay----"

"Apparently it means that a man has come face to face with an obstacledifficult or impossible to overcome. "

"But, upon my word, that is not bad. It is strong figure of speech. It brings up a picture. A man hurrying to an end--much desired--comesunexpectedly upon a stone wall. One can almost hear the impact. He is upagainst it. Most vivid. Excellent! Excellent!"

The nature of Selden's calling was such that he was not accustomed tobeing received with a hint of enthusiastic welcome. There was somethingalmost akin to this in the vicar's courteously amiable, aquilinecountenance when he rose to shake hands with the young man on hisentrance. Mr. Penzance was indeed slightly disappointed that hisgreeting was not responded to by some characteristic phrasing. HisAmerican was that of Sam Slick and Artemus Ward, Punch and variousEnglish witticisms in anecdote. Life at the vicarage of Dunstan had notrevealed to him that the model had become archaic. 

The revelation dawned upon him during his intercourse with G. Selden. The young man in his cheap bicycling suit was a new development. He wasmarkedly unlike an English youth of his class, as he was neither shy, nor laboriously at his ease. That he was at his ease to quite an amazingdegree might perhaps have been remotely resented by the insular mind, accustomed to another order of bearing in its social inferiors, had itnot been so obviously founded on entire unconsciousness of self, andso mingled with open appreciation of the unanticipated pleasures of theoccasion. Nothing could have been farther from G. Selden than any desireto attempt to convey the impression that he had enjoyed the hospitalityof persons of rank on previous occasions. He found indeed a gleefulpoint in the joke of the incongruousness of his own presence amid suchsurroundings. 

"What Little Willie was expecting, " he remarked once, to the keen joyof Mr. Penzance, "was a hunk of bread and cheese at a village saloonsomewhere. I ought to have said 'pub, ' oughtn't I? You don't call themsaloons here. "

He was encouraged to talk, and in his care-free fluency he opened upmany vistas to the interested Mr. Penzance, who found himself, so tospeak, whirled along Broadway, rushed up the steps of the elevatedrailroad and struggling to obtain a seat, or a strap to hang to on aSixth Avenue train. The man was saturated with the atmosphere of thehot battle he lived in. From his childhood he had known nothing butthe fever heat of his "little old New York, " as he called it withaffectionate slanginess, and any temperature lower than that he wasaccustomed to would have struck him as being below normal. Penzance wasimpressed by his feeling of affection for the amazing city of his birth. He admired, he adored it, he boasted joyously of its perfervid charm. 

"Something doing, " he said. "That's what my sort of a fellowlikes--something doing. You feel it right there when you walk alongthe streets. Little old New York for mine. It's good enough for LittleWillie. And it never stops. Why, Broadway at night----"

He forgot his chop, and leaned forward on the table to pour forth hisdescription. The manservant, standing behind Mount Dunstan's chair, forgot himself also, thought he was a trained domestic whose duty itwas to present dishes to the attention without any apparent mentalprocesses. Certainly it was not his business to listen, and gazefascinated. This he did, however, actually for the time unconscious ofhis breach of manners. The very crudity of the language used, the oddlysounding, sometimes not easily translatable slang phrases, used as ifthey were a necessary part of any conversation--the blunt, uneducatedbareness of figure--seemed to Penzance to make more roughly vivid thepicture dashed off. The broad thoroughfare almost as thronged by nightas by day. Crowds going to theatres, loaded electric cars, whizzing andclanging bells, the elevated railroad rushing and roaring past withinhearing, theatre fronts flaming with electric light, announcements ofnames of theatrical stars and the plays they appeared in, electriclight advertisements of brands of cigars, whiskies, breakfast foods, allblazing high in the night air in such number and with such strength ofbrilliancy that the whole thoroughfare was as bright with light as aballroom or a theatre. The vicar felt himself standing in the midst ofit all, blinded by the glare. 

"Sit down on the sidewalk and read your newspaper, a book, amagazine--any old thing you like, " with an exultant laugh. 

The names of the dramatic stars blazing over entrances to the theatreswere often English names, their plays English plays, their companiesmade up of English men and women. G. Selden was as familiar with themand commented upon their gifts as easily as if he had drawn his dramafrom the Strand instead of from Broadway. The novels piled up in thestations of what he called "the L" (which revealed itself as beinga New-York-haste abbreviation of Elevated railroad), were in largeproportion English novels, and he had his ingenuous estimate of Englishnovelists, as well as of all else. 

"Ruddy, now, " he said; "I like him. He's all right, even though wehaven't quite caught onto India yet. "

The dazzle and brilliancy of Broadway so surrounded Penzance that hefound it necessary to withdraw himself and return to his immediatesurroundings, that he might recover from his sense of interestedbewilderment. His eyes fell upon the stern lineaments of a Mount Dunstanin a costume of the time of Henry VIII. He was a burly gentleman, whose ruff-shortened thick neck and haughty fixedness of stare from thebackground of his portrait were such as seemed to eliminate him from thescheme of things, the clanging of electric cars, and the prevailingroar of the L. Confronted by his gaze, electric light advertisements ofwhiskies, cigars, and corsets seemed impossible. 

"He's all right, " continued G. Selden. "I'm ready to separate myselffrom one fifty any time I see a new book of his. He's got the goods withhim. "

The richness of colloquialism moved the vicar of Mount Dunstan to deepenjoyment. 

"Would you mind--I trust you won't, " he apologised courteously, "tellingme exactly the significance of those two last sentences. In think I seetheir meaning, but----"

G. Selden looked good-naturedly apologetic himself. 

"Well, it's slang--you see, " he explained. "I guess I can't help it. You--" flushing a trifle, but without any touch of resentment in theboyish colour, "you know what sort of a chap I am. I'm not passingmyself off as anything but an ordinary business hustler, am I--justunder salesman to a typewriter concern? I shouldn't like to think I'dgot in here on any bluff. I guess I sling in slang every half dozenwords----. "

"My dear boy, " Penzance was absolutely moved and he spoke withwarmth quite paternal, "Lord Mount Dunstan and I are genuinelyinterested--genuinely. He, because he knows New York a little, and Ibecause I don't. I am an elderly man, and have spent my life buriedin my books in drowsy villages. Pray go on. Your American slang hasfrequently a delightful meaning--a fantastic hilarity, or common sense, or philosophy, hidden in its origin. In that it generally differs fromEnglish slang, which--I regret to say--is usually founded on some sillycatch word. Pray go on. When you see a new book by Mr. Kipling, you areready to 'separate yourself from one fifty' because he 'has the goodswith him. '"

G. Selden suppressed an involuntary young laugh. 

"One dollar and fifty cents is usually the price of a book, " he said. "You separate yourself from it when you take it out of your clothes--Imean out of your pocket--and pay it over the counter. "

"There's a careless humour in it, " said Mount Dunstan grimly. "Thesuggestion of parting is not half bad. On the whole, it is subtle. "

"A great deal of it is subtle, " said Penzance, "though it all professesto be obvious. The other sentence has a commercial sound. "

"When a man goes about selling for a concern, " said the junior assistantof Jones, "he can prove what he says, if he has the goods with him. Iguess it came from that. I don't know. I only know that when a man is astraight sort of fellow, and can show up, we say he's got the goods withhim. "

They sat after lunch in the library, before an open window, looking intoa lovely sunken garden. Blossoms were breaking out on every side, androbins, thrushes, and blackbirds chirped and trilled and whistled, asMount Dunstan and Penzance led G. Selden on to paint further picturesfor them. 

Some of them were rather painful, Penzance thought. As connected withyouth, they held a touch of pathos Selden was all unconscious of. He hadhad a hard life, made up, since his tenth year, of struggles to earn hisliving. He had sold newspapers, he had run errands, he had swept out a"candy store. " He had had a few years at the public school, and a fewmonths at a business college, to which he went at night, after workhours. He had been "up against it good and plenty, " he told them. Heseemed, however, to have had a knack of making friends and of givingthem "a boost along" when such a chance was possible. Both of hislisteners realised that a good many people had liked him, and the reasonwas apparent enough to them. 

"When a chap gets sorry for himself, " he remarked once, "he's down andout. That's a stone-cold fact. There's lots of hard-luck stories thatyou've got to hear anyhow. The fellow that can keep his to himself isthe fellow that's likely to get there. "

"Get there?" the vicar murmured reflectively, and Selden chuckled again. 

"Get where he started out to go to--the White House, if you like. Thefellows that have got there kept their hardluck stories quiet, I bet. Guess most of 'em had plenty during election, if they were the kind tolie awake sobbing on their pillows because their feelings were hurt. "

He had never been sorry for himself, it was evident, though it must beadmitted that there were moments when the elderly English clergyman, whose most serious encounters had been annoying interviews withcottagers of disrespectful manner, rather shuddered as he heard hissimple recital of days when he had tramped street after street, carryinghis catalogue with him, and trying to tell his story of the Delkoff tofrantically busy men who were driven mad by the importunate sight ofhim, to worried, ill-tempered ones who broke into fury when they heardhis voice, and to savage brutes who were only restrained by law fromkicking him into the street. 

"You've got to take it, if you don't want to lose your job. Some ofthem's as tired as you are. Sometimes, if you can give 'em a jolly andmake 'em laugh, they'll listen, and you may unload a machine. But it'sno merry jest just at first--particularly in bad weather. The first fiveweeks I was with the Delkoff I never made a sale. Had to live on my tenper, and that's pretty hard in New York. Three and a half for yourhall bedroom, and the rest for your hash and shoes. But I held on, andgradually luck began to turn, and I began not to care so much when a mangave it to me hot. "

The vicar of Mount Dunstan had never heard of the "hall bedroom" as aninstitution. A dozen unconscious sentences placed it before his mentalvision. He thought it horribly touching. A narrow room at the back ofa cheap lodging house, a bed, a strip of carpet, a washstand--this thesole refuge of a male human creature, in the flood tide of youth, nomore than this to come back to nightly, footsore and resentful of soul, after a day's tramp spent in forcing himself and his wares on peoplewho did not want him or them, and who found infinite variety in theforcefulness of their method of saying so. 

"What you know, when you go into a place, is that nobody wants to seeyou, and no one will let you talk if they can help it. The only thing isto get in and rattle off your stunt before you can be fired out. "

Sometimes at first he had gone back at night to the hall bedroom, andsat on the edge of the narrow bed, swinging his feet, and asking himselfhow long he could hold out. But he had held out, and evidently developedinto a good salesman, being bold and of imperturbable good spirits andtemper, and not troubled by hypersensitiveness. Hearing of the "hallbedroom, " the coldness of it in winter, and the breathless heat insummer, the utter loneliness of it at all times and seasons, one couldnot have felt surprise if the grown-up lad doomed to its narrowness ashome had been drawn into the electric-lighted gaiety of Broadway, andbeing caught in its maelstrom, had been sucked under to its lowestdepths. But it was to be observed that G. Selden had a clear eye, and ahealthy skin, and a healthy young laugh yet, which were all wonderfullyto his credit, and added enormously to one's liking for him. 

"Do you use a typewriter?" he said at last to Mr. Penzance. "It wouldcut out half your work with your sermons. If you do use one, I'd justlike to call your attention to the Delkoff. It's the most up-to-datemachine on the market to-day, " drawing out the catalogue. 

"I do not use one, and I am extremely sorry to say that I could notafford to buy one, " said Mr. Penzance with considerate courtesy, "but dotell me about it. I am afraid I never saw a typewriter. "

It was the most hospitable thing he could have done, and was of the tactof courts. He arranged his pince nez, and taking the catalogue, appliedhimself to it. G. Selden's soul warmed within him. To be listened tolike this. To be treated as a gentleman by a gentleman--by "a fine oldswell like this--Hully gee!"

"This isn't what I'm used to, " he said with genuine enjoyment. "Itdoesn't matter, your not being ready to buy now. You may be sometime, oryou may run up against someone who is. Little Willie's always ready tosay his piece. "

He poured it forth with glee--the improved mechanical appliances, the cuts in the catalogue, the platen roller, the ribbon switch, thetwenty-six yards of red or blue typing, the fifty per cent. Saving inribbon expenditure alone, the new basket shift, the stationary carriage, the tabulator, the superiority to all other typewriting machines--theprice one hundred dollars without discount. And both Mount Dunstan andMr. Penzance listened entranced, examined cuts in the catalogue, askedquestions, and in fact ended by finding that they must repress an actualdesire to possess the luxury. The joy their attitude bestowed uponSelden was the thing he would feel gave the finishing touch to the hourswhich he would recall to the end of his days as the "time of his life. "Yes, by gee! he was having "the time of his life. "

Later he found himself feeling--as Miss Vanderpoel had felt--ratheras if the whole thing was a dream. This came upon him when, with MountDunstan and Penzance, he walked through the park and the curiouslybeautiful old gardens. The lovely, soundless quiet, broken into only bybird notes, or his companions' voices, had an extraordinary effect onhim. 

"It's so still you can hear it, " he said once, stopping in a velvet, moss-covered path. "Seems like you've got quiet shut up here, and you'veturned it on till the air's thick with it. Good Lord, think of littleold Broadway keeping it up, and the L whizzing and thundering alongevery three minutes, just the same, while we're standing here! You can'tbelieve it. "

It would have gone hard with him to describe to them the value of hisenjoyment. Again and again there came back to him the memory of thegrandmother who wore the black net cap trimmed with purple ribbons. Apparently she had remained to the last almost contumaciously British. She had kept photographs of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort on herbedroom mantelpiece, and had made caustic, international comparisons. But she had seen places like this, and her stories became realities tohim now. But she had never thought of the possibility of any chance ofhis being shown about by the lord of the manor himself--lunching, bygee! and talking to them about typewriters. He vaguely knew that if thegrandmother had not emigrated, and he had been born in Dunstan village, he would naturally have touched his forehead to Mount Dunstan and thevicar when they passed him in the road, and conversation between themwould have been an unlikely thing. Somehow things had been changed byDestiny--perhaps for the whole of them, as years had passed. 

What he felt when he stood in the picture gallery neither of hiscompanions could at first guess. He ceased to talk, and wanderedsilently about. Secretly he found himself a trifle awed by being lookeddown upon by the unchanging eyes of men in strange, rich garments--incorslet, ruff, and doublet, velvet, powder, curled love locks, brocadeand lace. The face of long-dead loveliness smiled out from its canvas, or withheld itself haughtily from his salesman's gaze. Wonderful barewhite shoulders, and bosoms clasped with gems or flowers and lace, defied him to recall any treasures of Broadway to compare with them. Elderly dames, garbed in stiff splendour, held stiff, unsympatheticinquiry in their eyes, as they looked back upon him. What exactly was athirty shilling bicycle suit doing there? In the Delkoff, plainly nonewere interested. A pretty, masquerading shepherdess, with a lamb and acrook, seemed to laugh at him from under her broad beribboned strawhat. After looking at her for a minute or so, he gave a half laughhimself--but it was an awkward one. 

"She's a looker, " he remarked. "They're a lot of them lookers--notall--but a fair show----"

"A looker, " translated Mount Dunstan in a low voice to Penzance, "means, I believe, a young women with good looks--a beauty. "

"Yes, she IS a looker, by gee, " said G. Selden, "but--but--" the awkwardhalf laugh, taking on a depressed touch of sheepishness, "she makes mefeel 'way off--they all do. "

That was it. Surrounded by them, he was fascinated but not cheered. Theywere all so smilingly, or disdainfully, or indifferently unconscious ofthe existence of the human thing of his class. His aspect, his life, andhis desires were as remote as those of prehistoric man. His Broadway, his L railroad, his Delkoff--what were they where did they come intothe scheme of the Universe? They silently gazed and lightly smiled orfrowned THROUGH him as he stood. He was probably not in the least awarethat he rather loudly sighed. 

"Yes, " he said, "they make me feel 'way off. I'm not in it. But she is alooker. Get onto that dimple in her cheek. "

Mount Dunstan and Penzance spent the afternoon in doing their best forhim. He was well worth it. Mr. Penzance was filled with delight, andsaturated with the atmosphere of New York. 

"I feel, " he said, softly polishing his eyeglasses and almostaffectionately smiling, "I really feel as if I had been walking downBroadway or Fifth Avenue. I believe that I might find my way to--well, suppose we say Weber & Field's, " and G. Selden shouted with glee. 

Never before, in fact, had he felt his heart so warmed by spontaneousaffection as it was by this elderly, somewhat bald and thin-facedclergyman of the Church of England. This he had never seen before. Without the trained subtlety to have explained to himself the finelysweet and simply gracious deeps of it, he was moved and uplifted. He wasglad he had "come across" it, he felt a vague regret at passing on hisway, and leaving it behind. He would have liked to feel that perhaps hemight come back. He would have liked to present him with a Delkoff, andteach him how to run it. He had delighted in Mount Dunstan, and rejoicedin him, but he had rather fallen in love with Penzance. Certain Americandoubts he had had of the solidity and permanency of England's positionand power were somewhat modified. When fellows like these two stood atthe first rank, little old England was a pretty safe proposition. 

After they had given him tea among the scents and songs of the sunkengarden outside the library window, they set him on his way. The shadowswere lengthening and the sunlight falling in deepening gold when theywalked up the avenue and shook hands with him at the big entrance gates. 

"Well, gentlemen, " he said, "you've treated me grand--as fine as silk, and it won't be like Little Willie to forget it. When I go back toNew York it'll be all I can do to keep from getting the swell head andbragging about it. I've enjoyed myself down to the ground, every minute. I'm not the kind of fellow to be likely to be able to pay you backyour kindness, but, hully gee! if I could I'd do it to beat the band. Good-bye, gentlemen--and thank you--thank you. "

Across which one of their minds passed the thought that the sound of thehollow impact of a trotting horse's hoofs on the road, which each thatmoment became conscious of hearing was the sound of the advancing footof Fate? It crossed no mind among the three. There was no reason whyit should. And yet at that moment the meaning of the regular, stirringsound was a fateful thing. 

"Someone on horseback, " said Penzance. 

He had scarcely spoken before round the curve of the road she came. Afinely slender and spiritedly erect girl's figure, upon a satin-skinnedbright chestnut with a thoroughbred gait, a smart groom riding behindher. She came towards them, was abreast them, looked at Mount Dunstan, asmiling dimple near her lip as she returned his quick salute. 

"Miss Vanderpoel, " he said low to the vicar, "Lady Anstruther's sister. "

Mr. Penzance, replacing his own hat, looked after her with surprisedpleasure. 

"Really, " he exclaimed, "Miss Vanderpoel! What a fine girl! Howunusually handsome!"

Selden turned with a gasp of delighted, amazed recognition. 

"Miss Vanderpoel, " he burst forth, "Reuben Vanderpoel's daughter! Theone that's over here visiting her sister. Is it that one--sure?"

"Yes, " from Mount Dunstan without fervour. "Lady Anstruthers lives atStornham, about six miles from here. "

"Gee, " with feverish regret. "If her father was there, and I could getnext to him, my fortune would be made. "

"Should you, " ventured Penzance politely, "endeavour to sell him atypewriter?"

"A typewriter! Holy smoke! I'd try to sell him ten thousand. A fellowlike that syndicates the world. If I could get next to him----" and hemounted his bicycle with a laugh. 

"Get next, " murmured Penzance. 

"Get on the good side of him, " Mount Dunstan murmured in reply. 

"So long, gentlemen, good-bye, and thank you again, " called G. Selden ashe wheeled off, and was carried soundlessly down the golden road. 

CHAPTER XXIV

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF STORNHAM

The satin-skinned chestnut was one of the new horses now standing inthe Stornham stables. There were several of them--a pair for the landau, saddle horses, smart young cobs for phaeton or dog cart, a pony forUghtred--the animals necessary at such a place at Stornham. The stablesthemselves had been quickly put in order, grooms and stable boys keptthem as they had not been kept for years. The men learned in a week'stime that their work could not be done too well. There were newcarriages as well as horses. They had come from London after LadyAnstruthers and her sister returned from town. The horses had beenbrought down by their grooms--immensely looked after, blanketed, hooded, and altogether cared for as if they were visiting dukes and duchesses. They were all fine, handsome, carefully chosen creatures. When theydanced and sidled through the village on their way to the Court, theycreated a sensation. Whosoever had chosen them had known his business. The older vehicles had been repaired in the village by Tread, and didhim credit. Fox had also done his work well. 

Plenty more of it had come into their work-shops. Tools to be used onthe estate, garden implements, wheelbarrows, lawn rollers, things neededabout the house, stables, and cottages, were to be attended to. Thechurch roof was being repaired. Taking all these things and the "doingup" of the Court itself, there was more work than the village couldmanage, and carpenters, bricklayers, and decorators were necessarilybrought from other places. Still Joe Buttle and Sim Soames were allowedto lead in all such things as lay within their capabilities. It was theywho made such a splendid job of the entrance gates and the lodges. Itwas astonishing how much was done, and how the sense of life in theair--the work of resulting prosperity, made men begin to tread with lesslistless steps as they went to and from their labour. In the cottagesthings were being done which made downcast women bestir themselves andlook less slatternly. Leaks mended here, windows there, the hopelesscopper in the tiny washhouse replaced by a new one, chimneys cured ofthe habit of smoking, a clean, flowered paper put on a wall, a coat ofwhitewash--they were small matters, but produced great effect. 

Betty had begun to drop into the cottages, and make the acquaintanceof their owners. Her first visits, she observed, created greatconsternation. Women looked frightened or sullen, children staredand refused to speak, clinging to skirts and aprons. She found theatmosphere clear after her second visit. The women began to talk, andthe children collected in groups and listened with cheerful grins. She could pick up little Jane's kitten, or give a pat to small Thomas'mongrel dog, in a manner which threw down barriers. 

"Don't put out your pipe, " she said to old Grandfather Doby, risingtotteringly respectful from his chimney-side chair. "You have only justlighted it. You mustn't waste a whole pipeful of tobacco because I havecome in. "

The old man, grown childish with age, tittered and shuffled and giggled. Such a joke as the grand young lady was having with him. She saw he hadonly just lighted his pipe. The gentry joked a bit sometimes. But he wasafraid of his grandson's wife, who was frowning and shaking her head. 

Betty went to him, and put her hand on his arm. 

"Sit down, " she said, "and I will sit by you. " And she sat down andshowed him that she had brought a package of tobacco with her, andactually a wonder of a red and yellow jar to hold it, at the sight ofwhich unheard-of joys his rapture was so great that his trembling handscould scarcely clasp his treasures. 

"Tee-hee! Tee-hee-ee! Deary me! Thankee--thankee, my lady, " he tittered, and he gazed and blinked at her beauty through heavenly tears. 

"Nearly a hundred years old, and he has lived on sixteen shillings aweek all his life, and earned it by working every hour between sunriseand sunset, " Betty said to her sister, when she went home. "A man hasone life, and his has passed like that. It is done now, and all theyears and work have left nothing in his old hands but his pipe. That'sall. I should not like to put it out for him. Who am I that I can buyhim a new one, and keep it filled for him until the end? How did ithappen? No, " suddenly, "I must not lose time in asking myself that. Imust get the new pipe. "

She did it--a pipe of great magnificence--such as drew to the Dobycottage as many callers as the village could provide, each coming withfevered interest, to look at it--to be allowed to hold and examine itfor a few moments, guessing at its probable enormous cost, and returningit reverently, to gaze at Doby with respect--the increase of which canbe imagined when it was known that he was not only possessor of thepipe, but of an assurance that he would be supplied with as much tobaccoas he could use, to the end of his days. From the time of the adventof the pipe, Grandfather Doby became a man of mark, and his life in thechimney corner a changed thing. A man who owns splendours and unlimited, excellent shag may like friends to drop in and crack jokes--and evensmoke a pipe with him--a common pipe, which, however, is not amiss whenexcellent shag comes free. 

"He lives in a wild whirl of gaiety--a social vortex, " said Betty toLady Anstruthers, after one of her visits. "He is actually rejuvenated. I must order some new white smocks for him to receive his visitors in. Someone brought him an old copy of the Illustrated London News lastnight. We will send him illustrated papers every week. "

In the dull old brain, God knows what spark of life had been relighted. Young Mrs. Doby related with chuckles that granddad had begged that hischair might be dragged to the window, that he might sit and watch thevillage street. Sitting there, day after day, he smoked and looked athis pictures, and dozed and dreamed, his pipe and tobacco jar besidehim on the window ledge. At any sound of wheels or footsteps his facelighted, and if, by chance, he caught a glimpse of Betty, he totteredto his feet, and stood hurriedly touching his bald forehead with areverent, palsied hand. 

"'Tis 'urr, " he would say, enrapt. "I seen 'urr--I did. " And young Mrs. Doby knew that this was his joy, and what he waited for as one waits forthe coming of the sun. 

"'Tis 'urr! 'Tis 'urr!"

The vicar's wife, Mrs. Brent, who since the affair of John Wilson's firehad dropped into the background and felt it indiscreet to present talesof distress at the Court, began to recover her courage. Her perfunctoryvisits assumed a new character. The vicarage had, of course, calledpromptly upon Miss Vanderpoel, after her arrival. Mrs. Brent admiredMiss Vanderpoel hugely. 

"You seem so unlike an American, " she said once in her most tactful, ingratiating manner--which was very ingratiating indeed. 

"Do I? What is one like when one is like an American? I am one, youknow. "

"I can scarcely believe it, " with sweet ardour. 

"Pray try, " said Betty with simple brevity, and Mrs. Brent felt thatperhaps Miss Vanderpoel was not really very easy to get on with. 

"She meant to imply that I did not speak through my nose, and talk toomuch, and too vivaciously, in a shrill voice, " Betty said afterwards, intalking the interview over with Rosy. "I like to convince myself thatis not one's sole national characteristic. Also it was not exactly Mrs. Brent's place to kindly encourage me with the information that I do notseem to belong to my own country. "

Lady Anstruthers laughed, and Betty looked at her inquiringly. 

"You said that just like--just like an Englishwoman. "

"Did I?" said Betty. 

Mrs. Brent had come to talk to her because she did not wish to troubledear Lady Anstruthers. Lady Anstruthers already looked much stronger, but she had been delicate so long that one hesitated to distress herwith village matters. She did not add that she realised that she wascoming to headquarters. The vicar and herself were much disturbedabout a rather tiresome old woman--old Mrs. Welden--who lived in atiny cottage in the village. She was eighty-three years old, and arespectable old person--a widow, who had reared ten children. Thechildren had all grown up, and scattered, and old Mrs. Welden hadnothing whatever to live on. No one knew how she lived, and reallyshe would be better off in the workhouse. She could be sent to BrexleyUnion, and comfortably taken care of, but she had that singular, obstinate dislike to going, which it was so difficult to manage. Shehad asked for a shilling a week from the parish, but that could not beallowed her, as it would merely uphold her in her obstinate intentionof remaining in her cottage, and taking care of herself--which she couldnot do. Betty gathered that the shilling a week would be a drain on theparish funds, and would so raise the old creature to affluence that shewould feel she could defy fate. And the contumacity of old men and womenshould not be strengthened by the reckless bestowal of shillings. 

Knowing that Miss Vanderpoel had already gained influence among thevillage people, Mrs. Brent said, she had come to ask her if she wouldsee old Mrs. Welden and argue with her in such a manner as wouldconvince her that the workhouse was the best place for her. It was, ofcourse, so much pleasanter if these old people could be induced to go toBrexley willingly. 

"Shall I be undermining the whole Political Economy of Stornham if Itake care of her myself?" suggested Betty. 

"You--you will lead others to expect the same thing will be done forthem. "

"When one has resources to draw on, " Miss Vanderpoel commented, "inthe case of a woman who has lived eighty-three years and brought up tenchildren until they were old and strong enough to leave her to take careof herself, it is difficult for the weak of mind to apply the laws ofPolitical Economics. I will go and see old Mrs. Welden. "

If the Vanderpoels would provide for all the obstinate old men and womenin the parish, the Political Economics of Stornham would proffer nomarked objections. "A good many Americans, " Mrs. Brent reflected, "seemed to have those odd, lavish ways, " as witness Lady Anstruthersherself, on her first introduction to village life. Miss Vanderpoel wasevidently a much stronger character, and extremely clever, and somehowthe stream of the American fortune was at last being directed towardsStornham--which, of course, should have happened long ago. A good dealwas "being done, " and the whole situation looked more promising. So wasthe matter discussed and summed up, the same evening after dinner, atthe vicarage. 

Betty found old Mrs. Welden's cottage. It was in a green lane, turningfrom the village street--which was almost a green lane itself. A tinyhedged-in front garden was before the cottage door. A crazy-lookingwicket gate was in the hedge, and a fuschia bush and a few old roseswere in the few yards of garden. There were actually two or threegeraniums in the window, showing cheerful scarlet between the short, white dimity curtains. 

"A house this size and of this poverty in an American village, " wasBetty's thought, "would be a bare and straggling hideousness, with oldtomato cans in the front yard. Here is one of the things we have tolearn from them. "

When she knocked at the door an old woman opened it. She was awell-preserved and markedly respectable old person, in a decent printfrock and a cap. At the sight of her visitor she beamed and made asuggestion of curtsey. 

"How do you do, Mrs. Welden?" said Betty. "I am Lady Anstruthers'sister, Miss Vanderpoel. I thought I would like to come and see you. "

"Thank you, miss, I am obliged for the kindness, miss. Won't you come inand have a chair?"

There were no signs of decrepitude about her, and she had a cheeryold eye. The tiny front room was neat, though there was scarcely spaceenough in it to contain the table covered with its blue-checked cottoncloth, the narrow sofa, and two or three chairs. There were a few smallcoloured prints, and a framed photograph or so on the walls, and on thetable was a Bible, and a brown earthenware teapot, and a plate. 

"Tom Wood's wife, that's neighbour next door to me, " she said, "gave mea pinch o' tea--an' I've just been 'avin it. Tom Woods, miss, 'as justbeen took on by Muster Kedgers as one of the new under gardeners at theCourt. "

Betty found her delightful. She made no complaints, and was evidentlypleased with the excitement of receiving a visitor. The truth was, thatin common with every other old woman, she had secretly aspired to beingvisited some day by the amazing young lady from "Meriker. " Betty had yetto learn of the heartburnings which may be occasioned by an unconsciousfavouritism. She was not aware that when she dropped in to talk to oldDoby, his neighbour, old Megworth, peered from behind his curtains, withthe dew of envy in his rheumy eyes. 

"S'ems, " he mumbled, "as if they wasn't nobody now in Stornham villagebut Gaarge Doby--s'ems not. " They were very fierce in their jealousyof attention, and one must beware of rousing evil passions in theoctogenarian breast. 

The young lady from "Meriker" had not so far had time to make a call atany cottage in old Mrs. Welden's lane--and she had knocked just at oldMrs. Welden's door. This was enough to put in good spirits even a lesscheery old person. 

At first Betty wondered how she could with delicacy ask personalquestions. A few minutes' conversation, however, showed her that thepersonal affairs of Sir Nigel's tenants were also the affairs of notonly himself, but of such of his relatives as attended to their naturalduty. Her presence in the cottage, and her interest in Mrs. Welden'sready flow of simple talk, were desirable and proper compliments to theold woman herself. She was a decent and self-respecting old person, butin her mind there was no faintest glimmer of resentment of questionsconcerning rent and food and the needs of her simple, hard-drivenexistence. She had answered such questions on many occasions, when theyhad not been asked in the manner in which her ladyship's sister askedthem. Mrs. Brent had scolded her and "poked about" her cottage, goinginto her tiny "wash 'us, " and up into her infinitesimal bedroom underthe slanting roof, to see that they were kept clean. Miss Vanderpoelshowed no disposition to "poke. " She sat and listened, and made aninquiry here and there, in a nice voice and with a smile in hereyes. There was some pleasure in relating the whole history of youreighty-three years to a young lady who listened as if she wanted to hearit. So old Mrs. Welden prattled on. About her good days, when she wasyoung, and was kitchenmaid at the parsonage in a village twenty milesaway; about her marriage with a young farm labourer; about his "steady"habits, and the comfort they had together, in spite of the yearlyarrival of a new baby, and the crowding of the bit of a cottage hismaster allowed them. Ten of 'em, and it had been "up before sunrise, anda good bit of hard work to keep them all fed and clean. " But she had notminded that until Jack died quite sudden after a sunstroke. It was oddhow much colour her rustic phraseology held. She made Betty see it all. The apparent natural inevitableness of their being turned out of thecottage, because another man must have it; the years during whichshe worked her way while the ten were growing up, having measles, andchicken pox, and scarlet fever, one dying here and there, dropping outquite in the natural order of things, and being buried by the parish incorners of the ancient church yard. Three of them "was took" by scarletfever, then one of a "decline, " then one or two by other illnesses. Onlyfour reached man and womanhood. One had gone to Australia, but he neverwas one to write, and after a year or two, Betty gathered, he had seemedto melt away into the great distance. Two girls had married, and Mrs. Welden could not say they had been "comf'able. " They could barely feedthemselves and their swarms of children. The other son had never beensteady like his father. He had at last gone to London, and London hadswallowed him up. Betty was struck by the fact that she did not seemto feel that the mother of ten might have expected some return for herlabours, at eighty-three. 

Her unresentful acceptance of things was at once significant andmoving. Betty found her amazing. What she lived on it was not easy tounderstand. She seemed rather like a cheerful old bird, getting up eachunprovided-for morning, and picking up her sustenance where she foundit. 

"There's more in the sayin' 'the Lord pervides' than a good manythinks, " she said with a small chuckle, marked more by a genial andcomfortable sense of humour than by an air of meritoriously quoting thevicar. "He DO. "

She paid one and threepence a week in rent for her cottage, and thiswas the most serious drain upon her resources. She apparently could livewithout food or fire, but the rent must be paid. "An' I do get a bitbe'ind sometimes, " she confessed apologetically, "an' then it's atrouble to get straight. "

Her cottage was one of a short row, and she did odd jobs for the womenwho were her neighbours. There were always babies to be looked after, and "bits of 'elp" needed, sometimes there were "movings" from onecottage to another, and "confinements" were plainly at once exhilaratingand enriching. Her temperamental good cheer, combined with herexperience, made her a desirable companion and assistant. She wasengagingly frank. 

"When they're new to it, an' a bit frightened, I just give 'em a cupof 'ot tea, an' joke with 'em to cheer 'em up, " she said. "I says toCharles Jenkins' wife, as lives next door, 'come now, me girl, it's beengoin' on since Adam an' Eve, an' there's a good many of us left, isn'tthere?' An' a fine boy it was, too, miss, an' 'er up an' about before'er month. "

She was paid in sixpences and spare shillings, and in cups of tea, or afresh-baked loaf, or screws of sugar, or even in a garment not yet wornbeyond repair. And she was free to run in and out, and grow a flower orso in her garden, and talk with a neighbour over the low dividing hedge. 

"They want me to go into the 'Ouse, '" reaching the dangerous subject atlast. "They say I'll be took care of an' looked after. But I don't wantto do it, miss. I want to keep my bit of a 'ome if I can, an' be free tocome an' go. I'm eighty-three, an' it won't be long. I 'ad a shilling aweek from the parish, but they stopped it because they said I ought togo into the 'Ouse. '"

She looked at Betty with a momentarily anxious smile. 

"P'raps you don't quite understand, miss, " she said. "It'll seem likenothin' to you--a place like this. "

"It doesn't, " Betty answered, smiling bravely back into the old eyes, though she felt a slight fulness of the throat. "I understand all aboutit. "

It is possible that old Mrs. Welden was a little taken aback by anattitude which, satisfactory to her own prejudices though it might be, was, taken in connection with fixed customs, a trifle unnatural. 

"You don't mind me not wantin' to go?" she said. 

"No, " was the answer, "not at all. "

Betty began to ask questions. How much tea, sugar, soap, candles, bread, butter, bacon, could Mrs. Welden use in a week? It was not very easy tofind out the exact quantities, as Mrs. Welden's estimates of such thingshad been based, during her entire existence, upon calculation as to howlittle, not how much she could use. 

When Betty suggested a pound of tea, a half pound--the old woman smiledat the innocent ignorance the suggestion of such reckless profusionimplied. 

"Oh, no! Bless you, miss, no! I couldn't never do away with it. Aquarter, miss--that'd be plenty--a quarter. "

Mrs. Welden's idea of "the best, " was that at two shillings a pound. Quarter of a pound would cost sixpence (twelve cents, thought Betty). A pound of sugar would be twopence, Mrs. Welden would use half a pound(the riotous extravagance of two cents). Half a pound of butter, "Goodtub butter, miss, " would be ten pence three farthings a pound. Soap, candles, bacon, bread, coal, wood, in the quantities required by Mrs. Welden, might, with the addition of rent, amount to the dizzying heightof eight or ten shillings. 

"With careful extravagance, " Betty mentally summed up, "I might spendalmost two dollars a week in surrounding her with a riot of luxury. "

She made a list of the things, and added some extras as an idea of herown. Life had not afforded her this kind of thing before, she realised. She felt for the first time the joy of reckless extravagance, andthrilled with the excitement of it. 

"You need not think of Brexley Union any more, " she said, when she, having risen to go, stood at the cottage door with old Mrs. Welden. "The things I have written down here shall be sent to you every Saturdaynight. I will pay your rent. "

"Miss--miss!" Mrs. Welden looked affrighted. "It's too much, miss. An'coals eighteen pence a hundred!"

"Never mind, " said her ladyship's sister, and the old woman, looking upinto her eyes, found there the colour Mount Dunstan had thought of asbeing that of bluebells under water. "I think we can manage it, Mrs. Welden. Keep yourself as warm as you like, and sometime I will come andhave a cup of tea with you and see if the tea is good. "

"Oh! Deary me!" said Mrs. Welden. "I can't think what to say, miss. Itlifts everythin'--everythin'. It's not to be believed. It's like bein'left a fortune. "

When the wicket gate swung to and the young lady went up the lane, theold woman stood staring after her. And here was a piece of news to runinto Charley Jenkins' cottage and tell--and what woman or man in the rowwould quite believe it?

CHAPTER XXV

"WE BEGAN TO MARRY THEM, MY GOOD FELLOW!"

Lord Dunholm and his eldest son, Lord Westholt, sauntered togethersmoking their after-dinner cigars on the broad-turfed terraceoverlooking park and gardens which seemed to sweep without boundaryline into the purplish land beyond. The grey mass of the castle stoodclear-cut against the blue of a sky whose twilight was still almostdaylight, though in the purity of its evening stillness a star alreadyhung, here and there, and a young moon swung low. The great spaces aboutthem held a silence whose exquisite entirety was marked at intervalsby the distant bark of a shepherd dog driving his master's sheep tothe fold, their soft, intermittent plaints--the mother ewes' mellowanswering to the tender, fretful lambs--floated on the air, a lovelypart of the ending day's repose. Where two who are friends strolltogether at such hours, the great beauty makes for silence or forthoughtful talk. These two men--father and son--were friends andintimates, and had been so from Westholt's first memory of the time whenhis childish individuality began to detach itself from the background ofmisty and indistinct things. They had liked each other, and their likingand intimacy had increased with the onward moving and change of years. After sixty sane and decently spent active years of life, Lord Dunholm, in either country tweed or evening dress, was a well-built and handsomeman; at thirty-three his son was still like him. 

"Have you seen her?" he was saying. 

"Only at a distance. She was driving Lady Anstruthers across the marshesin a cart. She drove well and----" he laughed as he flicked the ash fromhis cigar--"the back of her head and shoulders looked handsome. "

"The American young woman is at present a factor which is without doubtto be counted with, " Lord Dunholm put the matter without lightness. "Anyyoung woman is a factor, but the American young woman just now--justnow----" He paused a moment as though considering. "It did not seem atall necessary to count with them at first, when they began to appearamong us. They were generally curiously exotic, funny little creatureswith odd manners and voices. They were often most amusing, and one likedto hear them chatter and see the airy lightness with which they tooksuperfluous, and sometimes unsuperfluous, conventions, as a hunter takesa five-barred gate. But it never occurred to us to marry them. We didnot take them seriously enough. But we began to marry them--we began tomarry them, my good fellow!"

The final words broke forth with such a suggestion of sudden anxietythat, in spite of himself, Westholt laughed involuntarily, and hisfather, turning to look at him, laughed also. But he recovered hisseriousness. 

"It was all rather a muddle at first, " he went on. "Things were notfairly done, and certain bad lots looked on it as a paying scheme on theone side, while it was a matter of silly, little ambitions on the other. But that it is an extraordinary country there is no sane denying--huge, fabulously resourceful in every way--area, variety of climate, wealth ofminerals, products of all sorts, soil to grow anything, and sun and rainenough to give each thing what it needs; last, or rather first, a peoplewho, considered as a nation, are in the riot of youth, and who began bybeing English--which we Englishmen have an innocent belief is the onemethod of 'owning the earth. ' That figure of speech is an Americanism Icarefully committed to memory. Well, after all, look at the map--look atthe map! There we are. "

They had frequently discussed together the question of the developmentof international relations. Lord Dunholm, a man of far-reaching andclear logic, had realised that the oddly unaccentuated growth ofintercourse between the two countries might be a subject to be reflectedon without lightness. 

"The habit we have of regarding America and Americans as rather a joke, "he had once said, "has a sort of parallel in the condescendingly amiableamusement of a parent at the precocity or whimsicalness of a child. Butthe child is shooting up amazingly--amazingly. In a way which suggestsdivers possibilities. "

The exchange of visits between Dunholm and Stornham had been rare andformal. From the call made upon the younger Lady Anstruthers on hermarriage, the Dunholms had returned with a sense of puzzled pity for thelittle American bride, with her wonderful frock and her uneasy, childisheyes. For some years Lady Anstruthers had been too delicate to makeor return calls. One heard painful accounts of her apparent wretchedill-health and of the condition of her husband's estate. 

"As the relations between the two families have evidently been strainedfor years, " Lord Dunholm said, "it is interesting to hear of the suddenadvent of the sister. It seems to point to reconciliation. And you saythe girl is an unusual person. 

"From what one hears, she would be unusual if she were an English girlwho had spent her life on an English estate. That an American whois making her first visit to England should seem to see at once thepractical needs of a neglected place is a thing to wonder at. What canshe know about it, one thinks. But she apparently does know. They sayshe has made no mistakes--even with the village people. She is managing, in one way or another, to give work to every man who wants it. Result, of course--unbounded rustic enthusiasm. "

Lord Dunholm laughed between the soothing whiffs of his cigar. 

"How clever of her! And what sensible good feeling! Yes--yes! Sheevidently has learned things somewhere. Perhaps New York has foundit wise to begin to give young women professional training in themanagement of English estates. Who knows? Not a bad idea. "

It was the rustic enthusiasm, Westholt explained, which had in a mannerspread her fame. One heard enlightening and illustrative anecdotes ofher. He related several well worth hearing. She had evidently a sense ofhumour and unexpected perceptions. 

"One detail of the story of old Doby's meerschaum, " Westholt said, "pleased me enormously. She managed to convey to him--without hurtinghis aged feelings or overwhelming him with embarrassment--that if hepreferred a clean churchwarden or his old briarwood, he need not feelobliged to smoke the new pipe. He could regard it as a trophy. Now, howdid she do that without filling him with fright and confusion, lest shemight think him not sufficiently grateful for her present? But theytell me she did it, and that old Doby is rapturously happy and takes themeerschaum to bed with him, but only smokes it on Sundays--sitting athis window blowing great clouds when his neighbours are coming fromchurch. It was a clever girl who knew that an old fellow might secretlylike his old pipe best. "

"It was a deliciously clever girl, " said Lord Dunholm. "One wants toknow and make friends with her. We must drive over and call. I confess, I rather congratulate myself that Anstruthers is not at home. "

"So do I, " Westholt answered. "One wonders a little how far he and hissister-in-law will 'foregather' when he returns. He's an unpleasantbeggar. "

A few days later Mrs. Brent, returning from a call on Mrs. CharleyJenkins, was passed by a carriage whose liveries she recognised half wayup the village street. It was the carriage from Dunholm Castle. Lord andLady Dunholm and Lord Westholt sat in it. They were, of course, goingto call at the Court. Miss Vanderpoel was beginning to draw people. Shenaturally would. She would be likely to make quite a difference in theneighbourhood now that it had heard of her and Lady Anstruthers had beenseen driving with her, evidently no longer an unvisitable invalid, butactually decently clothed and in her right mind. Mrs. Brent slackenedher steps that she might have the pleasure of receiving and respondinggracefully to salutations from the important personages in the landau. She felt that the Dunholms were important. There were earldoms ANDearldoms, and that of Dunholm was dignified and of distinction. 

A common-looking young man on a bicycle, who had wheeled into thevillage with the carriage, riding alongside it for a hundred yards orso, stopped before the Clock Inn and dismounted, just as Mrs. Brentneared him. He saw her looking after the equipage, and lifting his capspoke to her civilly. 

"This is Stornham village, ain't it, ma'am?" he inquired. 

"Yes, my man. " His costume and general aspect seemed to indicate that hewas of the class one addressed as "my man, " though there was something alittle odd about him. 

"Thank you. That wasn't Miss Vanderpoel's eldest sister in thatcarriage, was it?"

"Miss Vanderpoel's----" Mrs. Brent hesitated. "Do you mean LadyAnstruthers?"

"I'd forgotten her name. I know Miss Vanderpoel's eldest sister lives atStornham--Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughter. "

"Lady Anstruthers' younger sister is a Miss Vanderpoel, and she isvisiting at Stornham Court now. " Mrs. Brent could not help adding, curiously, "Why do you ask?"

"I am going to see her. I'm an American. "

Mrs. Brent coughed to cover a slight gasp. She had heard remarkablethings of the democratic customs of America. It was painful not to beable to ask questions. 

"The lady in the carriage was the Countess of Dunholm, " she said rathergrandly. "They are going to the Court to call on Miss Vanderpoel. "

"Then Miss Vanderpoel's there yet. That's all right. Thank you, ma'am, "and lifting his cap again he turned into the little public house. 

The Dunholm party had been accustomed on their rare visits to Stornhamto be received by the kind of man-servant in the kind of livery whichis a manifest, though unwilling, confession. The men who threw open thedoors were of regulation height, well dressed, and of trained bearing. The entrance hall had lost its hopeless shabbiness. It was a completeand picturesquely luxurious thing. The change suggested magic. The magicwhich had been used, Lord Dunholm reflected, was the simplest and mostpowerful on earth. Given surroundings, combined with a gift for knowingvalues of form and colour, if you have the power to spend thousands ofguineas on tiger skins, Oriental rugs, and other beauties, barrenness iseasily transformed. 

The drawing-room wore a changed aspect, and at a first glance it was tobe seen that in poor little Lady Anstruthers, as she had generally beencalled, there was to be noted alteration also. In her case thechange, being in its first stages, could not perhaps be yet calledtransformation, but, aided by softly pretty arrangement of dress andhair, a light in her eyes, and a suggestion of pink under her skin, onerecalled that she had once been a pretty little woman, and that afterall she was only about thirty-two years old. 

That her sister, Miss Vanderpoel, had beauty, it was not necessary tohesitate in deciding. Neither Lord Dunholm nor his wife nor theirson did hesitate. A girl with long limbs an alluring profile, andextraordinary black lashes set round lovely Irish-blue eyes, possessesphysical capital not to be argued about. 

She was not one of the curious, exotic little creatures, whose thin, though sometimes rather sweet, and always gay, high-pitched young voicesLord Dunholm had been so especially struck by in the early days of theAmerican invasion. Her voice had a tone one would be likely to rememberwith pleasure. How well she moved--how well her black head was set onher neck! Yes, she was of the new type--the later generation. 

These amazing, oddly practical people had evolved it--planned it, perhaps, bought--figuratively speaking--the architects and material todesign and build it--bought them in whatever country they found them, England, France, Italy Germany--pocketing them coolly and carrying themback home to develop, complete, and send forth into the world when theirinvention was a perfected thing. Struck by the humour of his fancy, LordDunholm found himself smiling into the Irish-blue eyes. They smiledback at him in a way which warmed his heart. There were no pauses inthe conversation which followed. In times past, calls at Stornham hadgenerally held painfully blank moments. Lady Dunholm was as pleased asher husband. A really charming girl was an enormous acquisition to theneighbourhood. 

Westholt, his father saw, had found even more than the story of oldDoby's pipe had prepared him to expect. 

Country calls were not usually interesting or stimulating, and this onewas. Lord Dunholm laid subtly brilliant plans to lead Miss Vanderpoel totalk of her native land and her views of it. He knew that she would saythings worth hearing. Incidentally one gathered picturesque detail. Tohave vibrated between the two continents since her thirteenth year, tohave spent a few years at school in one country, a few years in another, and yet a few years more in still another, as part of an arrangededucational plan; to have crossed the Atlantic for the holidays, and tohave journeyed thousands of miles with her father in his private car; tomake the visits of a man of great schemes to his possessions of mines, railroads, and lands which were almost principalities--these things hadbeen merely details of her life, adding interest and variety, it wastrue, but seeming the merely normal outcome of existence. They werenormal to Vanderpoels and others of their class who were abnormalitiesin themselves when compared with the rest of the world. 

Her own very lack of any abnormality reached, in Lord Dunholm's mind, the highest point of illustration of the phase of life she beautifullyrepresented--for beautiful he felt its rare charms were. 

When they strolled out to look at the gardens he found talk with her noless a stimulating thing. She told her story of Kedgers, and showedthe chosen spot where thickets of lilies were to bloom, with the giantslifting white archangel trumpets above them in the centre. 

"He can be trusted, " she said. "I feel sure he can be trusted. He lovesthem. He could not love them so much and not be able to take care ofthem. " And as she looked at him in frank appeal for sympathy, LordDunholm felt that for the moment she looked like a tall, queenly child. 

But pleased as he was, he presently gave up his place at her side toWestholt. He must not be a selfish old fellow and monopolise her. Hehoped they would see each other often, he said charmingly. He thoughtshe would be sure to like Dunholm, which was really a thoroughly Englishold place, marked by all the features she seemed so much attracted by. There were some beautiful relics of the past there, and some rathershocking ones--certain dungeons, for instance, and a gallows mount, on which in good old times the family gallows had stood. This hadapparently been a working adjunct to the domestic arrangements of everyrespectable family, and that irritating persons should dangle fromit had been a simple domestic necessity, if one were to believe oldstories. 

"It was then that nobles were regarded with respect, " he said, with hisfine smile. "In the days when a man appeared with clang of arms andwith javelins and spears before, and donjon keeps in the background, theattitude of bent knees and awful reverence were the inevitable results. When one could hang a servant on one's own private gallows, or chop offhis hand for irreverence or disobedience--obedience and reverence were arule. Now, a month's notice is the extremity of punishment, and the oldpomp of armed servitors suggests comic opera. But we can show you relicsof it at Dunholm. "

He joined his wife and began at once to make himself so delightful toRosy that she ceased to be afraid of him, and ended by talking almostgaily of her London visit. 

Betty and Westholt walked together. The afternoon being lovely, they hadall sauntered into the park to look at certain views, and the sunwas shining between the trees. Betty thought the young man almost ascharming as his father, which was saying much. She had fallen wholly inlove with Lord Dunholm--with his handsome, elderly face, his voice, hiserect bearing, his fine smile, his attraction of manner, his courteousease and wit. He was one of the men who stood for the best of all theyhad been born to represent. Her own father, she felt, stood for the bestof all such an American as himself should be. Lord Westholt would intime be what his father was. He had inherited from him good looks, goodfeeling, and a sense of humour. Yes, he had been given from the outsetall that the other man had been denied. She was thinking of MountDunstan as "the other man, " and spoke of him. 

"You know Lord Mount Dunstan?" she said. 

Westholt hesitated slightly. 

"Yes--and no, " he answered, after the hesitation. "No one knows him verywell. You have not met him?" with a touch of surprise in his tone. 

"He was a passenger on the Meridiana when I last crossed the Atlantic. There was a slight accident and we were thrown together for a fewmoments. Afterwards I met him by chance again. I did not know who hewas. "

Lord Westholt showed signs of hesitation anew. In fact, he was ratherdisturbed. She evidently did not know anything whatever of the MountDunstans. She would not be likely to hear the details of the scandalwhich had obliterated them, as it were, from the decent world. 

The present man, though he had not openly been mixed up with the hideousthing, had borne the brand because he had not proved himself to possessany qualities likely to recommend him. It was generally understood thathe was a bad lot also. To such a man the allurements such a youngwoman as Miss Vanderpoel would present would be extraordinary. It wasunfortunate that she should have been thrown in his way. At the sametime it was not possible to state the case clearly during one's firstcall on a beautiful stranger. 

"His going to America was rather spirited, " said the mellow voice besidehim. "I thought only Americans took their fates in their hands inthat way. For a man of his class to face a rancher's life meansdetermination. It means the spirit----" with a low little laugh at theleap of her imagination--"of the men who were Mount Dunstans in earlydays and went forth to fight for what they meant to have. He went tofight. He ought to have won. He will win some day. "

"I do not know about fighting, " Lord Westholt answered. Had the fellowbeen telling her romantic stories? "The general impression was that hewent to America to amuse himself. "

"No, he did not do that, " said Betty, with simple finality. "A sheepranch is not amusing----" She stopped short and stood still for amoment. They had been walking down the avenue, and she stopped becauseher eyes had been caught by a figure half sitting, half lying in themiddle of the road, a prostrate bicycle near it. It was the figure ofa cheaply dressed young man, who, as she looked, seemed to make anineffectual effort to rise. 

"Is that man ill?" she exclaimed. "I think he must be. " They wenttowards him at once, and when they reached him he lifted a dazed whiteface, down which a stream of blood was trickling from a cut on hisforehead. He was, in fact, very white indeed, and did not seem to knowwhat he was doing. 

"I am afraid you are hurt, " Betty said, and as she spoke the rest ofthe party joined them. The young man vacantly smiled, and making anunconscious-looking pass across his face with his hand, smeared theblood over his features painfully. Betty kneeled down, and drawing outher handkerchief, lightly wiped the gruesome smears away. Lord Westholtsaw what had happened, having given a look at the bicycle. 

"His chain broke as he was coming down the incline, and as he fell hegot a nasty knock on this stone, " touching with his foot a rather largeone, which had evidently fallen from some cartload of building material. 

The young man, still vacantly smiling, was fumbling at his breastpocket. He began to talk incoherently in good, nasal New York, atthe mere sound of which Lady Anstruthers made a little yearning stepforward. 

"Superior any other, " he muttered. "Tabulator spacer--marginal releasekey--call your 'tention--instantly--'justable--Delkoff--no equal onmarket. " And having found what he had fumbled for, he handed a card toMiss Vanderpoel and sank unconscious on her breast. 

"Let me support him, Miss Vanderpoel, " said Westholt, starting forward. 

"Never mind, thank you, " said Betty. "If he has fainted I suppose hemust be laid flat on the ground. Will you please to read the card. "

It was the card Mount Dunstan had read the day before. 

J. BURRIDGE & SON, DELKOFF TYPEWRITER CO. 

BROADWAY, NEW YORK. G. SELDEN. 

"He is probably G. Selden, " said Westholt. "Travelling in the interestsof his firm, poor chap. The clue is not of much immediate use, however. "

They were fortunately not far from the house, and Westholt went backquickly to summon servants and send for the village doctor. The Dunholmswere kindly sympathetic, and each of the party lent a handkerchief tostaunch the bleeding. Lord Dunholm helped Miss Vanderpoel to lay theyoung man down carefully. 

"I am afraid, " he said; "I am really afraid his leg is broken. It wastwisted under him. What can be done with him?"

Miss Vanderpoel looked at her sister. 

"Will you allow him to be carried to the house temporarily, Rosy?" sheasked. "There is apparently nothing else to be done. "

"Yes, yes, " said Lady Anstruthers. "How could one send him away, poorfellow! Let him be carried to the house. "

Miss Vanderpoel smiled into Lord Dunholm's much approving, elderly eyes. 

"G. Selden is a compatriot, " she said. "Perhaps he heard I was here andcame to sell me a typewriter. "

Lord Westholt returning with two footmen and a light mattress, G. Seldenwas carried with cautious care to the house. The afternoon sun, breaking through the branches of the ancestral oaks, kindly touched hiskeen-featured, white young face. Lord Dunholm and Lord Westholt eachlent a friendly hand, and Miss Vanderpoel, keeping near, once or twicewiped away an insistent trickle of blood which showed itself frombeneath the handkerchiefs. Lady Dunholm followed with Lady Anstruthers. 

Afterwards, during his convalescence, G. Selden frequently felt withregret that by his unconsciousness of the dignity of his cortege at themoment he had missed feeling himself to be for once in a positionhe would have designated as "out of sight" in the novelty of itsimportance. To have beheld him, borne by nobles and liveried menials, accompanied by ladies of title, up the avenue of an English park on hisway to be cared for in baronial halls, would, he knew, have added ajoy to the final moments of his grandmother, which the consolations ofreligion could scarcely have met equally in competition. His own pointof view, however, would not, it is true, have been that of the old womanin the black net cap and purple ribbons, but of a less reverent nature. His enjoyment, in fact, would have been based upon that transatlanticsense of humour, whose soul is glee at the incompatible, which wouldhave been full fed by the incongruity of "Little Willie being yankedalong by a bunch of earls, and Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughtersfollowing the funeral. " That he himself should have been unconscious ofthe situation seemed to him like "throwing away money. "

The doctor arriving after he had been put to bed found slight concussionof the brain and a broken leg. With Lady Anstruthers' kind permission, it would certainly be best that he should remain for the present wherehe was. So, in a bedroom whose windows looked out upon spreading lawnsand broad-branched trees, he was as comfortably established as waspossible. G. Selden, through the capricious intervention of Fate, ifhe had not "got next" to Reuben S. Vanderpoel himself, had mostundisputably "got next" to his favourite daughter. 

As the Dunholm carriage rolled down the avenue there reigned for a fewminutes a reflective silence. It was Lady Dunholm who broke it. "That, "she said in her softly decided voice, "that is a nice girl. "

Lord Dunholm's agreeable, humorous smile flickered into evidence. 

"That is it, " he said. "Thank you, Eleanor, for supplying me with aquite delightful early Victorian word. I believe I wanted it. She is abeauty and she is clever. She is a number of other things--but she isalso a nice girl. If you will allow me to say so, I have fallen in lovewith her. "

"If you will allow me to say so, " put in Westholt, "so have I--quitefatally. "

"That, " said his father, with speculation in his eye, "is more serious. "

CHAPTER XXVI

"WHAT IT MUST BE TO YOU--JUST YOU!"

G. Selden, awakening to consciousness two days later, lay and staredat the chintz covering of the top of his four-post bed through a fewminutes of vacant amazement. It was a four-post bed he was lying on, wasn't it? And his leg was bandaged and felt unmovable. The last thinghe remembered was going down an incline in a tree-bordered avenue. Therewas nothing more. He had been all right then. Was this a four-post bedor was it not? Yes, it was. And was it part of the furnishings of aswell bedroom--the kind of bedroom he had never been in before? Tip top, in fact? He stared and tried to recall things--but could not, and in hisbewilderment exclaimed aloud. 

"Well, " he said, "if this ain't the limit! You may search ME!"

A respectable person in a white apron came to him from the other side ofthe room. It was Buttle's wife, who had been hastily called in. 

"Sh--sh, " she said soothingly. "Don't you worry. Nobody ain't goin' tosearch you. Nobody ain't. There! Sh, sh, sh, " rather as if he were ababy. Beginning to be conscious of a curious sense of weakness, Seldenlay and stared at her in a helplessness which might have been consideredpathetic. Perhaps he had got "bats in his belfry, " and there was no usein talking. 

At that moment, however, the door opened and a young lady entered. She was "a looker, " G. Selden's weakness did not interfere with hisperceiving. "A looker, by gee!" She was dressed, as if for going out, in softly tinted, exquisite things, and a large, strange hydrangea blueflower under the brim of her hat rested on soft and full black hair. Theblack hair gave him a clue. It was hair like that he had seen as ReubenS. Vanderpoel's daughter rode by when he stood at the park gates atMount Dunstan. "Bats in his belfry, " of course. 

"How is he?" she said to the nurse. 

"He's been seeming comfortable all day, miss, " the woman answered, "buthe's light-headed yet. He opened his eyes quite sensible looking a bitago, but he spoke queer. He said something was the limit, and that wemight search him. "

Betty approached the bedside to look at him, and meeting the disturbedinquiry in his uplifted eyes, laughed, because, seeing that he was notdelirious, she thought she understood. She had not lived in New Yorkwithout hearing its argot, and she realised that the exclamation whichhad appeared delirium to Mrs. Buttle had probably indicated that theunexplainableness of the situation in which G. Selden found himselfstruck him as reaching the limit of probability, and that the mostextended search of his person would fail to reveal any clue tosatisfactory explanation. 

She bent over him, with her laugh still shining in her eyes. 

"I hope you feel better. Can you tell me?" she said. 

His voice was not strong, but his answer was that of a young man whoknew what he was saying. 

"If I'm not off my head, ma'am, I'm quite comfortable, thank you, " hereplied. 

"I am glad to hear that, " said Betty. "Don't be disturbed. Your mind isquite clear. "

"All I want, " said G. Selden impartially, "is just to know where I'm at, and how I blew in here. It would help me to rest better. "

"You met with an accident, " the "looker" explained, still smiling withboth lips and eyes. "Your bicycle chain broke and you were thrown andhurt yourself. It happened in the avenue in the park. We found you andbrought you in. You are at Stornham Court, which belongs to Sir NigelAnstruthers. Lady Anstruthers is my sister. I am Miss Vanderpoel. "

"Hully gee!" ejaculated G. Selden inevitably. "Hully GEE!" The splendourof the moment was such that his brain whirled. As it was not yet in thephysical condition to whirl with any comfort, he found himself closinghis eyes weakly. 

"That's right, " Miss Vanderpoel said. "Keep them closed. I must nottalk to you until you are stronger. Lie still and try not to think. The doctor says you are getting on very well. I will come and see youagain. "

As the soft sweep of her dress reached the door he managed to open hiseyes. 

"Thank you, Miss Vanderpoel, " he said. "Thank you, ma'am. " And as hiseyelids closed again he murmured in luxurious peace: "Well, if that'sher--she can have ME--and welcome!"

*****

She came to see him again each day--sometimes in a linen frock andgarden hat, sometimes in her soft tints and lace and flowers before orafter her drive in the afternoon, and two or three times in the evening, with lovely shoulders and wonderfully trailing draperies--looking likethe women he had caught far-off glimpses of on the rare occasion of hishaving indulged himself in the highest and most remotely placed seat inthe gallery at the opera, which inconvenience he had borne not throughany ardent desire to hear the music, but because he wanted to seethe show and get "a look-in" at the Four Hundred. He believed veryimplicitly in his Four Hundred, and privately--though perhaps almostunconsciously--cherished the distinction his share of them conferredupon him, as fondly as the English young man of his rudimentary typecherishes his dukes and duchesses. The English young man may revel inhis coroneted beauties in photograph shops, the young American dwellsfondly on flattering, or very unflattering, reproductions of hismulti-millionaires' wives and daughters in the voluminous illustratedsheets of his Sunday paper, without which life would be a wretched andsavourless thing. 

Selden had never seen Miss Vanderpoel in his Sunday paper, and here hewas lying in a room in the same house with her. And she coming in to seehim and talk to him as if he was one of the Four Hundred himself! Thecomfort and luxury with which he found himself surrounded sank intoinsignificance when compared with such unearthly luck as this. LadyAnstruthers came in to see him also, and she several times brought withher a queer little lame fellow, who was spoken of as "Master Ughtred. ""Master" was supposed by G. Selden to be a sort of title conferred uponthe small sons of baronets and the like. The children he knew in NewYork and elsewhere answered to the names of Bob, or Jimmy, or Bill. Noparallel to "Master" had been in vogue among them. 

Lady Anstruthers was not like her sister. She was a little thing, andboth she and Master Ughtred seemed fond of talking of New York. She hadnot been home for years, and the youngster had never seen it at all. He had some queer ideas about America, and seemed never to have seenanything but Stornham and the village. G. Selden liked him, and wasvaguely sorry for a little chap to whom a description of the festivitiesattendant upon the Fourth of July and a Presidential election seemedlike stories from the Arabian Nights. 

"Tell me about the Tammany Tiger, if you please, " he said once. "I wantto know what kind of an animal it is. "

From a point of view somewhat different from that of Mount Dunstan andMr. Penzance, Betty Vanderpoel found talk with him interesting. To herhe did not wear the aspect of a foreign product. She had not met andconversed with young men like him, but she knew of them. Stringentprecautions were taken to protect her father from their ingenuousenterprises. They were not permitted to enter his offices; they wereeven discouraged from hovering about their neighbourhood when seen andsuspected. The atmosphere, it was understood, was to be, if possible, disinfected of agents. This one, lying softly in the four-post bed, cheerfully grateful for the kindness shown him, and plainly filled withdelight in his adventure, despite the physical discomforts attendingit, gave her, as he began to recover, new views of the life he lived incommon with his kind. It was like reading scenes from a realistic novelof New York life to listen to his frank, slangy conversation. To her, as well as to Mr. Penzance, sidelights were thrown upon existence in the"hall bedroom" and upon previously unknown phases of business life inBroadway and roaring "downtown" streets. 

His determination, his sharp readiness, his control of temper underrebuff and superfluous harshness, his odd, impersonal summing up of menand things, and good-natured patience with the world in general, were, she knew, business assets. She was even moved--no less--by the remoteconnection of such a life with that of the first Reuben Vanderpoel whohad laid the huge, solid foundations of their modern fortune. The firstReuben Vanderpoel must have seen and known the faces of men as G. Selden saw and knew them. Fighting his way step by step, knockingpertinaciously at every gateway which might give ingress to some passageleading to even the smallest gain, meeting with rebuff and indifferenceonly to be overcome by steady and continued assault--if G. Selden was anuisance, the first Vanderpoel had without doubt worn that aspect uponinnumerable occasions. No one desires the presence of the man who whilehaving nothing to give must persist in keeping himself in evidence, evenif by strategy or force. From stories she was familiar with, she hadgathered that the first Reuben Vanderpoel had certainly lacked a certainyouth of soul she felt in this modern struggler for life. He had beenthe cleverer man of the two; G. Selden she secretly liked the better. 

The curiosity of Mrs. Buttle, who was the nurse, had been awakened by asingular feature of her patient's feverish wanderings. 

"He keeps muttering, miss, things I can't make out about Lord MountDunstan, and Mr. Penzance, and some child he calls Little Willie. Hetalks to them the same as if he knew them--same as if he was with themand they were talking to him quite friendly. "

One morning Betty, coming to make her visit of inquiry found the patientlooking thoughtful, and when she commented upon his air of pondering, his reply cast light upon the mystery. 

"Well, Miss Vanderpoel, " he explained, "I was lying here thinking ofLord Mount Dunstan and Mr. Penzance, and how well they treated me--Ihaven't told you about that, have I?

"That explains what Mrs. Buttle said, " she answered. "When you weredelirious you talked frequently to Lord Mount Dunstan and Mr. Penzance. We both wondered why. "

Then he told her the whole story. Beginning with his sitting on thegrassy bank outside the park, listening to the song of the robin, he ended with the adieux at the entrance gates when the sound of herhorse's trotting hoofs had been heard by each of them. 

"What I've been lying here thinking of, " he said, "is how queer it wasit happened just that way. If I hadn't stopped just that minute, and ifyou hadn't gone by, and if Lord Mount Dunstan hadn't known you and saidwho you were, Little Willie would have been in London by this time, hustling to get a cheap bunk back to New York in. "

"Because?" inquired Miss Vanderpoel. 

G. Selden laughed and hesitated a moment. Then he made a clean breast ofit. 

"Say, Miss Vanderpoel, " he said, "I hope it won't make you mad if Iown up. Ladies like you don't know anything about chaps like me. On thesquare and straight out, when I seen you and heard your name I couldn'thelp remembering whose daughter you was. Reuben S. Vanderpoel spells abig thing. Why, when I was in New York we fellows used to get togetherand talk about what it'd mean to the chap who could get next to ReubenS. Vanderpoel. We used to count up all the business he does, and all theclerks he's got under him pounding away on typewriters, and how they'dbe bound to get worn out and need new ones. And we'd make calculationshow many a man could unload, if he could get next. It was a kind oftypewriting junior assistant fairy story, and we knew it couldn't happenreally. But we used to chin about it just for the fun of the thing. One of the boys made up a thing about one of us saving Reuben S. 'slife--dragging him from under a runaway auto and, when he says, 'Whatcan I do to show my gratitude, young man?' him handing out his catalogueand saying, 'I should like to call your attention to the Delkoff, sir, 'and getting him to promise he'd never use any other, as long as helived!"

Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughter laughed as spontaneously as any girlmight have done. G. Selden laughed with her. At any rate, she hadn't gotmad, so far. 

"That was what did it, " he went on. "When I rode away on my bike I gotthinking about it and could not get it out of my head. The next day Ijust stopped on the road and got off my wheel, and I says to myself:'Look here, business is business, if you ARE travelling in Europe andlunching at Buckingham Palace with the main squeeze. Get busy! What'llthe boys say if they hear you've missed a chance like this? YOU hit thepike for Stornham Castle, or whatever it's called, and take your nervewith you! She can't do more than have you fired out, and you've beenfired before and got your breath after it. So I turned round and madetime. And that was how I happened on your avenue. And perhaps it wasbecause I was feeling a bit rattled I lost my hold when the chain broke, and pitched over on my head. There, I've got it off my chest. I wasthinking I should have to explain somehow. "

Something akin to her feeling of affection for the nice, long-leggedWesterner she had seen rambling in Bond Street touched Betty again. The Delkoff was the centre of G. Selden's world as the flowers were ofKedgers', as the "little 'ome" was of Mrs. Welden's. 

"Were you going to try to sell ME a typewriter?" she asked. 

"Well, " G. Selden admitted, "I didn't know but what there might be usefor one, writing business letters on a big place like this. Straight, Iwon't say I wasn't going to try pretty hard. It may look like gall, butyou see a fellow has to rush things or he'll never get there. A chaplike me HAS to get there, somehow. "

She was silent a few moments and looked as if she was thinking somethingover. Her silence and this look on her face actually caused to dawn inthe breast of Selden a gleam of daring hope. He looked round at her witha faint rising of colour. 

"Say, Miss Vanderpoel--say----" he began, and then broke off. 

"Yes?" said Betty, still thinking. 

"C-COULD you use one--anywhere?" he said. "I don't want to rush thingstoo much, but--COULD you?"

"Is it easy to learn to use it?"

"Easy!" his head lifted from his pillow. "It's as easy as falling offa log. A baby in a perambulator could learn to tick off orders for itsbottle. And--on the square--there isn't its equal on the market, MissVanderpoel--there isn't. " He fumbled beneath his pillow and actuallybrought forth his catalogue. 

"I asked the nurse to put it there. I wanted to study it now and thenand think up arguments. See--adjustable to hold with perfect ease anenvelope, an index card, or a strip of paper no wider than a postagestamp. Unsurpassed paper feed, practical ribbon mechanism--perfect andpermanent alignment. "

As Mount Dunstan had taken the book, Betty Vanderpoel took it. Never hadG. Selden beheld such smiling in eyes about to bend upon his catalogue. 

"You will raise your temperature, " she said, "if you excite yourself. You mustn't do that. I believe there are two or three people on theestate who might be taught to use a typewriter. I will buy three. Yes--we will say three. "

She would buy three. He soared to heights. He did not know how to thankher, though he did his best. Dizzying visions of what he would have totell "the boys" when he returned to New York flashed across his mind. The daughter of Reuben S. Vanderpoel had bought three Delkoffs, and hewas the junior assistant who had sold them to her. 

"You don't know what it means to me, Miss Vanderpoel, " he said, "but ifyou were a junior salesman you'd know. It's not only the sale--thoughthat's a rake-off of fifteen dollars to me--but it's because it's YOUthat's bought them. Gee!" gazing at her with a frank awe whose obvioussincerity held a queer touch of pathos. "What it must be to be YOU--justYOU!"

She did not laugh. She felt as if a hand had lightly touched her onher naked heart. She had thought of it so often--had been bewilderedrestlessly by it as a mere child--this difference in human lot--thischance. Was it chance which had placed her entity in the centre ofBettina Vanderpoel's world instead of in that of some little cash girlwith hair raked back from a sallow face, who stared at her as she passedin a shop--or in that of the young Frenchwoman whose life was spentin serving her, in caring for delicate dresses and keeping guard overornaments whose price would have given to her own humbleness ease forthe rest of existence? What did it mean? And what Law was laid upon her?What Law which could only work through her and such as she who hadbeen born with almost unearthly power laid in their hands--the reinsof monstrous wealth, which guided or drove the world? Sometimes feartouched her, as with this light touch an her heart, because she did notKNOW the Law and could only pray that her guessing at it might be right. And, even as she thought these things, G. Selden went on. 

"You never can know, " he said, "because you've always been in it. Andthe rest of the world can't know, because they've never been anywherenear it. " He stopped and evidently fell to thinking. 

"Tell me about the rest of the world, " said Betty quietly. 

He laughed again. 

"Why, I was just thinking to myself you didn't know a thing about it. And it's queer. It's the rest of us that mounts up when you come tonumbers. I guess it'd run into millions. I'm not thinking of beggars andstarving people, I've been rushing the Delkoff too steady to get ontoany swell charity organisation, so I don't know about them. I'm justthinking of the millions of fellows, and women, too, for the matter ofthat, that waken up every morning and know they've got to hustle fortheir ten per or their fifteen per--if they can stir it up as thick asthat. If it's as much as fifty per, of course, seems like to me, they'reon Easy Street. But sometimes those that's got to fifty per--or evenmore--have got more things to do with it--kids, you know, and more rentand clothes. They've got to get at it just as hard as we have. Why, MissVanderpoel, how many people do you suppose there are in a million thatdon't have to worry over their next month's grocery bills, and the rentof their flat? I bet there's not ten--and I don't know the ten. "

He did not state his case uncheerfully. "The rest of the world"represented to him the normal condition of things. 

"Most married men's a bit afraid to look an honest grocery bill in theface. And they WILL come in--as regular as spring hats. And I tell YOU, when a man's got to live on seventy-five a month, a thing that'll takeall the strength and energy out of a twenty-dollar bill sorter gets himdown on the mat. "

Like old Mrs. Welden's, his roughly sketched picture was a graphic one. 

"'Tain't the working that bothers most of us. We were born to that, andmost of us would feel like deadbeats if we were doing nothing. It's theearning less than you can live on, and getting a sort of tired feelingover it. It's the having to make a dollar-bill look like two, andwatching every other fellow try to do the same thing, and not often makethe trip. There's millions of us--just millions--every one of uswith his Delkoff to sell----" his figure of speech pleased him and hechuckled at his own cleverness--"and thinking of it, and talking aboutit, and--under his vest--half afraid that he can't make it. And whatyou say in the morning when you open your eyes and stretch yourself is, 'Hully gee! I've GOT to sell a Delkoff to-day, and suppose I shouldn't, and couldn't hold down my job!' I began it over my feeding bottle. Sodid all the people I know. That's what gave me a sort of a jolt justnow when I looked at you and thought about you being YOU--and what itmeant. "

When their conversation ended she had a much more intimate knowledgeof New York than she had ever had before, and she felt it a richpossession. She had heard of the "hall bedroom" previously, and shehad seen from the outside the "quick lunch" counter, but G. Seldenunconsciously escorted her inside and threw upon faces and lives theglare of a flashlight. 

"There was a thing I've been thinking I'd ask you, Miss Vanderpoel, " hesaid just before she left him. "I'd like you to tell me, if you please. It's like this. You see those two fellows treated me as fine as silk. Imean Lord Mount Dunstan and Mr. Penzance. I never expected it. I neversaw a lord before, much less spoke to one, but I can tell you thatone's just about all right--Mount Dunstan. And the other one--the oldvicar--I've never taken to anyone since I was born like I took to him. The way he puts on his eye-glasses and looks at you, sorter kind andcurious about you at the same time! And his voice and his way of sayinghis words--well, they just GOT me--sure. And they both of 'em did saythey'd like to see me again. Now do you think, Miss Vanderpoel, it wouldlook too fresh--if I was to write a polite note and ask if either ofthem could make it convenient to come and take a look at me, if itwouldn't be too much trouble. I don't WANT to be too fresh--and perhapsthey wouldn't come anyhow--and if it is, please won't you tell me, MissVanderpoel?"

Betty thought of Mount Dunstan as he had stood and talked to her inthe deepening afternoon sun. She did not know much of him, but shethought--having heard G. Selden's story of the lunch--that he wouldcome. She had never seen Mr. Penzance, but she knew she should like tosee him. 

"I think you might write the note, " she said. "I believe they would cometo see you. "

"Do you?" with eager pleasure. "Then I'll do it. I'd give a good deal tosee them again. I tell you, they are just It--both of them. "

CHAPTER XXVII

LIFE

Mount Dunstan, walking through the park next morning on his way to thevicarage, just after post time, met Mr. Penzance himself coming to makean equally early call at the Mount. Each of them had a letter in hishand, and each met the other's glance with a smile. 

"G. Selden, " Mount Dunstan said. "And yours?"

"G. Selden also, " answered the vicar. "Poor young fellow, what ill-luck. And yet--is it ill-luck? He says not. "

"He tells me it is not, " said Mount Dunstan. "And I agree with him. "

Mr. Penzance read his letter aloud. 

"DEAR SIR:

"This is to notify you that owing to my bike going back on me when goingdown hill, I met with an accident in Stornham Park. Was cut about thehead and leg broken. Little Willie being far from home and mother, youcan see what sort of fix he'd been in if it hadn't been for the kindnessof Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughters--Miss Bettina and her sister LadyAnstruthers. The way they've had me taken care of has been great. I've been under a nurse and doctor same as if I was Albert Edward withappendycytus (I apologise if that's not spelt right). Dear Sir, this isto say that I asked Miss Vanderpoel if I should be butting in too muchif I dropped a line to ask if you could spare the time to call and seeme. It would be considered a favour and appreciated by

"G. SELDEN, "Delkoff Typewriter Co. Broadway. 

"P. S. Have already sold three Delkoffs to Miss Vanderpoel. "

"Upon my word, " Mr. Penzance commented, and his amiable fervour quiteglowed, "I like that queer young fellow--I like him. He does not wish to'butt in too much. ' Now, there is rudimentary delicacy in that. And whata humorous, forceful figure of speech! Some butting animal--a goat, Iseem to see, preferably--forcing its way into a group or closed circleof persons. "

His gleeful analysis of the phrase had such evident charm for him thatMount Dunstan broke into a shout of laughter, even as G. Selden had doneat the adroit mention of Weber & Fields. 

"Shall we ride over together to see him this morning? An hour with G. Selden, surrounded by the atmosphere of Reuben S. Vanderpoel, would be acheering thing, " he said. 

"It would, " Mr. Penzance answered. "Let us go by all means. Weshould not, I suppose, " with keen delight, "be 'butting in' upon LadyAnstruthers too early?" He was quite enraptured with his own aptness. "Like G. Selden, I should not like to 'butt in, '" he added. 

The scent and warmth and glow of a glorious morning filled the hour. Combining themselves with a certain normal human gaiety which surroundedthe mere thought of G. Selden, they were good things for Mount Dunstan. Life was strong and young in him, and he had laughed a big young laugh, which had, perhaps tended to the waking in him of the feeling he wassuddenly conscious of--that a six-mile ride over a white, tree-dappled, sunlit road would be pleasant enough, and, after all, if at the end ofthe gallop one came again upon that other in whom life was strong andyoung, and bloomed on rose-cheek and was the far fire in the blue deepsof lovely eyes, and the slim straightness of the fair body, why wouldit not be, in a way, all to the good? He had thought of her on more thanone day, and felt that he wanted to see her again. 

"Let us go, " he answered Penzance. "One can call on an invalid at anytime. Lady Anstruthers will forgive us. "

In less than an hour's time they were on their way. They laughed andtalked as they rode, their horses' hoofs striking out a cheerful ringingaccompaniment to their voices. There is nothing more exhilarating thanthe hollow, regular ring and click-clack of good hoofs going well overa fine old Roman road in the morning sunlight. They talked of the juniorassistant salesman and of Miss Vanderpoel. Penzance was much pleased bythe prospect of seeing "this delightful and unusual girl. " He had heardstories of her, as had Lord Westholt. He knew of old Doby's pipe, andof Mrs. Welden's respite from the Union, and though such incidents wouldseem mere trifles to the dweller in great towns, he had himself livedand done his work long enough in villages to know the village mindand the scale of proportions by which its gladness and sadness weremeasured. He knew more of all this than Mount Dunstan could, since MountDunstan's existence had isolated itself, from rather gloomy choice. Butas he rode, Mount Dunstan knew that he liked to hear these things. There was the suggestion of new life and new thought in them, and suchsuggestion was good for any man--or woman, either--who had fallen intoliving in a dull, narrow groove. 

"It is the new life in her which strikes me, " he said. "She has broughtwealth with her, and wealth is power to do the good or evil that growsin a man's soul; but she has brought something more. She might have comehere and brought all the sumptuousness of a fashionable young beauty, who drove through the village and drew people to their windows, and madeclodhoppers scratch their heads and pull their forelocks, and childrenbob curtsies and stare. She might have come and gone and left amind-dazzling memory and nothing else. A few sovereigns tossed hereand there would have earned her a reputation--but, by gee! to quoteSelden--she has begun LIVING with them, as if her ancestors had done itfor six hundred years. And what _I_ see is that if she had come withouta penny in her pocket she would have done the same thing. " He paused apondering moment, and then drew a sharp breath which was an exclamationin itself. "She's Life!" he said. "She's Life itself! Good God! what athing it is for a man or woman to be Life--instead of a mass of tissueand muscle and nerve, dragged about by the mere mechanism of living!"

Penzance had listened seriously. 

"What you say is very suggestive, " he commented. "It strikes me as true, too. You have seen something of her also, at least more than I have. "

"I did not think these things when I saw her--though I suppose Ifelt them unconsciously. I have reached this way of summing her up byprocesses of exclusion and inclusion. One hears of her, as you knowyourself, and one thinks her over. "

"You have thought her over?"

"A lot, " rather grumpily. "A beautiful female creature inevitablygives an unbeautiful male creature something to think of--if he is nototherwise actively employed. I am not. She has become a sort of dawningrelief to my hopeless humours. Being a low and unworthy beast, I amsometimes resentful enough of the unfairness of things. She has toomuch. "

When they rode through Stornham village they saw signs of work alreadydone and work still in hand. There were no broken windows or palings orhanging wicket gates; cottage gardens had been put in order, and therewere evidences of such cheering touches as new bits of window curtainand strong-looking young plants blooming between them. So many small, but necessary, things had been done that the whole village wore theaspect of a place which had taken heart, and was facing existence in ahopeful spirit. A year ago Mount Dunstan and his vicar riding through ithad been struck by its neglected and dispirited look. 

As they entered the hall of the Court Miss Vanderpoel was descending thestaircase. She was laughing a little to herself, and she looked pleasedwhen she saw them. 

"It is good of you to come, " she said, as they crossed the hall to thedrawing-room. "But I told him I really thought you would. I have justbeen talking to him, and he was a little uncertain as to whether he hadassumed too much. "

"As to whether he had 'butted in, '" said Mr. Penzance. "I think he musthave said that. "

"He did. He also was afraid that he might have been 'too fresh. '"answered Betty. 

"On our part, " said Mr. Penzance, with gentle glee, "we hesitated amoment in fear lest we also might appear to be 'butting in. '"

Then they all laughed together. They were laughing when Lady Anstruthersentered, and she herself joined them. But to Mount Dunstan, who felt herto be somehow a touching little person, there was manifest a tendernessin her feeling for G. Selden. For that matter, however, there wassomething already beginning to be rather affectionate in the attitude ofeach of them. They went upstairs to find him lying in state upon abig sofa placed near a window, and his joy at the sight of them was agenuine, human thing. In fact, he had pondered a good deal in secreton the possibility of these swell people thinking he had "more than hisshare of gall" to expect them to remember him after he passed on hisjunior assistant salesman's way. Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughterswere of the highest of his Four Hundred, but they were Americans, andAmericans were not as a rule so "stuck on themselves" as the English. And here these two swells came as friendly as you please. And that niceold chap that was a vicar, smiling and giving him "the glad hand"!

Betty and Mount Dunstan left Mr. Penzance talking to the convalescentafter a short time. Mount Dunstan had asked to be shown the gardens. Hewanted to see the wonderful things he had heard had been already done tothem. 

They went down the stairs together and passed through the drawing-roominto the pleasure grounds. The once neglected lawns had already beenmown and rolled, clipped and trimmed, until they spread before the eyehuge measures of green velvet; even the beds girdling and adorning themwere brilliant with flowers. 

"Kedgers!" said Betty, waving her hand. "In my ignorance I thought wemust wait for blossoms until next year; but it appears that wonders canbe brought all ready to bloom for one from nursery gardens, and can bemade to grow with care--and daring--and passionate affection. Ihave seen Kedgers turn pale with anguish as he hung over a bed oftransplanted things which seemed to droop too long. They droop just atfirst, you know, and then they slowly lift their heads, slowly, as ifto listen to a Voice calling--calling. Once I sat for quite a long timebefore a rose, watching it. When I saw it BEGIN to listen, I felt alittle trembling pass over my body. I seemed to be so strangely near tosuch a strange thing. It was Life--Life coming back--in answer to whatwe cannot hear. "

She had begun lightly, and then her voice had changed. It was veryquiet at the end of her speaking. Mount Dunstan simply repeated her lastwords. 

"To what we cannot hear. "

"One feels it so much in a garden, " she said. "I have never lived in agarden of my own. This is not mine, but I have been living in it--withKedgers. One is so close to Life in it--the stirring in the brown earth, the piercing through of green spears, that breaking of buds and pouringforth of scent! Why shouldn't one tremble, if one thinks? I have stoodin a potting shed and watched Kedgers fill a shallow box with damp richmould and scatter over it a thin layer of infinitesimal seeds; then hemoistens them and carries them reverently to his altars in a greenhouse. The ledges in Kedgers' green-houses are altars. I think he offersprayers before them. Why not? I should. And when one comes to see them, the moist seeds are swelled to fulness, and when one comes again theyare bursting. And the next time, tiny green things are curling outward. And, at last, there is a fairy forest of tiniest pale green stems andleaves. And one is standing close to the Secret of the World! And whyshould not one prostrate one's self, breathing softly--and touchingone's awed forehead to the earth?"

Mount Dunstan turned and looked at her--a pause in his step--they werewalking down a turfed path, and over their heads meeting branches ofnew leaves hung. Something in his movement made her turn and pause also. They both paused--and quite unknowingly. 

"Do you know, " he said, in a low and rather unusual voice, "that aswe were on our way here, I said of you to Penzance, that you wereLife--YOU!"

For a few seconds, as they stood so, his look held her--their eyesinvoluntarily and strangely held each other. Something softly glowing inthe sunlight falling on them both, something raining down in the songof a rising skylark trilling in the blue a field away, something in thewarmed incense of blossoms near them, was calling--calling in the Voice, though they did not know they heard. Strangely, a splendid blush rosein a fair flood under her skin. She was conscious of it, and felt asecond's amazed impatience that she should colour like a schoolgirlsuspecting a compliment. He did not look at her as a man looks who hasmade a pretty speech. His eyes met hers straight and thoughtfully, andhe repeated his last words as he had before repeated hers. 

"That YOU were Life--you!"

The bluebells under water were for the moment incredibly lovely. Herfeeling about the blush melted away as the blush itself had done. 

"I am glad you said that!" she answered. "It was a beautiful thing tosay. I have often thought that I should like it to be true. "

"It is true, " he said. 

Then the skylark, showering golden rain, swept down to earth and itsnest in the meadow, and they walked on. 

She learned from him, as they walked together, and he also learned fromher, in a manner which built for them as they went from point to point, a certain degree of delicate intimacy, gradually, during their ramble, tending to make discussion and question possible. Her intelligent andbroad interest in the work on the estate, her frank desire to acquiresuch practical information as she lacked, aroused in himself an interesthe had previously seen no reason that he should feel. He realised thathis outlook upon the unusual situation was being illuminated by anintelligence at once brilliant and fine, while it was also full ofnice shading. The situation, of course, WAS unusual. A beautiful youngsister-in-law appearing upon the dark horizon of a shamefully ill-usedestate, and restoring, with touches of a wand of gold, what a fellowwho was a blackguard should have set in order years ago. That LadyAnstruthers' money should have rescued her boy's inheritance insteadof being spent upon lavish viciousness went without saying. WhatMount Dunstan was most struck by was the perfect clearness, and itscombination with a certain judicial good breeding, in Miss Vanderpoel'sview of the matter. She made no confidences, beautifully candid as hermanner was, but he saw that she clearly understood the thing she wasdoing, and that if her sister had had no son she would not havedone this, but something totally different. He had an idea that LadyAnstruthers would have been swiftly and lightly swept back to New York, and Sir Nigel left to his own devices, in which case Stornham Courtand its village would gradually have crumbled to decay. It was for SirUghtred Anstruthers the place was being restored. She was quite clear onthe matter of entail. He wondered at first--not unnaturally--how a girlhad learned certain things she had an obviously clear knowledge of. Asthey continued to converse he learned. Reuben S. Vanderpoel was withoutdoubt a man remarkable not only in the matter of being the owner of vastwealth. The rising flood of his millions had borne him upon its strangesurface a thinking, not an unthinking being--in fact, a strong andfine intelligence. His thousands of miles of yearly journeying in hissumptuous private car had been the means of his accumulating not merelyadded gains, but ideas, points of view, emotions, a human outlook worthcounting as an asset. His daughter, when she had travelled with him, hadseen and talked with him of all he himself had seen. When she had notbeen his companion she had heard from him afterwards all best worthhearing. She had become--without any special process--familiar withthe technicalities of huge business schemes, with law and commerceand political situations. Even her childish interest in the worldof enterprise and labour had been passionate. So she hadacquired--inevitably, while almost unconsciously--a remarkableeducation. 

"If he had not been HIMSELF he might easily have grown tired of a littlegirl constantly wanting to hear things--constantly asking questions, "she said. "But he did not get tired. We invented a special knock on thedoor of his private room. It said, 'May I come in, father?' If he wasbusy he answered with one knock on his desk, and I went away. If he hadtime to talk he called out, 'Come, Betty, ' and I went to him. I used tosit upon the floor and lean against his knee. He had a beautiful way ofstroking my hair or my hand as he talked. He trusted me. He told me ofgreat things even before he had talked of them to men. He knew I wouldnever speak of what was said between us in his room. That was part ofhis trust. He said once that it was a part of the evolution of race, that men had begun to expect of women what in past ages they really onlyexpected of each other. "

Mount Dunstan hesitated before speaking. 

"You mean--absolute faith--apart from affection?"

"Yes. The power to be quite silent, even when one is tempted tospeak--if to speak might betray what it is wiser to keep to one's selfbecause it is another man's affair. The kind of thing which is goodfaith among business men. It applies to small things as much as tolarge, and to other things than business. "

Mount Dunstan, recalling his own childhood and his own father, feltagain the pressure of the remote mental suggestion that she had hadtoo much, a childhood and girlhood like this, the affection andcompanionship of a man of large and ordered intelligence, of clear andjudicial outlook upon an immense area of life and experience. There wasno cause for wonder that her young womanhood was all it presented tohimself, as well as to others. Recognising the shadow of resentment inhis thought, he swept it away, an inward sense making it clear to himthat if their positions had been reversed, she would have been moregenerous than himself. 

He pulled himself together with an unconscious movement of hisshoulders. Here was the day of early June, the gold of the sun inits morning, the green shadows, the turf they walked on together, theskylark rising again from the meadow and showering down its song. Whythink of anything else. What a line that was which swept from her chindown her long slim throat to its hollow! The colour between the velvetof her close-set lashes--the remembrance of her curious splendidblush--made the man's lost and unlived youth come back to him. Whatdid it matter whether she was American or English--what did it matterwhether she was insolently rich or beggarly poor? He would let himselfgo and forget all but the pleasure of the sight and hearing of her. 

So as they went they found themselves laughing together and talkingwithout restraint. They went through the flower and kitchen gardens;they saw the once fallen wall rebuilt now with the old brick; theyvisited the greenhouses and came upon Kedgers entranced with business, but enraptured at being called upon to show his treasures. His eyes, turning magnetised upon Betty, revealed the story of his soul. MountDunstan remarked that when he spoke to her of his flowers it was asif there existed between them the sympathy which might be engenderedbetween two who had sat up together night after night with delicatechildren. 

"He's stronger to-day, miss, " he said, as they paused before a newwonderful bloom. "What he's getting now is good for him. I had to changehis food, miss, but this seems all right. His colour's better. "

Betty herself bent over the flower as she might have bent over a child. Her eyes softened, she touched a leaf with a slim finger, as delicatelyas if it had been a new-born baby's cheek. As Mount Dunstan watched herhe drew a step nearer to her side. For the first time in his lifehe felt the glow of a normal and simple pleasure untouched by anybitterness. 

CHAPTER XXVIII

SETTING THEM THINKING

Old Doby, sitting at his open window, with his pipe and illustratedpapers on the table by his side, began to find life a series of thrills. The advantage of a window giving upon the village street unspeakablyincreased. For many years he had preferred the chimney corner greatly, and had rejoiced at the drawing in of winter days when a fire must bewell kept up, and a man might bend over it, and rub his hands slowlygazing into the red coals or little pointed flames which seemed the onlythings alive and worthy the watching. The flames were blue at the baseand yellow at the top, and jumped looking merry, and caught at bits ofblack coal, and set them crackling and throwing off splinters till theywere ablaze and as much alive as the rest. A man could get comfort andentertainment therefrom. There was naught else so good to live with. Nothing happened in the street, and every dull face that passed was anold story, and told an old tale of stupefying hard labour and hard days. 

But now the window was a better place to sit near. Carts went by withmen whistling as they walked by the horses heads. Loads of things wantedfor work at the Court. New faces passed faces of workmen--sometimesgrinning, "impident youngsters, " who larked with the young women, andcalled out to them as they passed their cottages, if a good-lookingone was loitering about her garden gate. Old Doby chuckled at theirlove-making chaff, remembering dimly that seventy years ago he had beenjust as proper a young chap, and had made love in the same way. Lord, Lord, yes! He had been a bold young chap as ever winked an eye. Then, too, there were the vans, heavy-loaded and closed, and coming alongslowly. Every few days, at first, there had come a van from "Lunnon. "Going to the Court, of course. And to sit there, and hear the women talkabout what might be in them, and to try to guess one's self, that was arare pastime. Fine things going to the Court these days--furniture andgrandeur filling up the shabby or empty old rooms, and making them looklike other big houses--same as Westerbridge even, so the women said. The women were always talking and getting bits of news somehow, andwere beginning to be worth listening to, because they had something moreinteresting to talk about than children's worn-out shoes, and whoopingcough. 

Doby heard everything first from them. "Dang the women, they alwaysknowed things fust. " It was them as knowed about the smart carriagesas began to roll through the one village street. They were gentry'scarriages, with fine, stamping horses, and jingling silver harness, andbig coachmen, and tall footmen, and such like had long ago dropped offshowing themselves at Stornham. 

"But now the gentry has heard about Miss Vanderpoel, and what's beingdone at the Court, and they know what it means, " said young Mrs. Doby. "And they want to see her, and find out what she's like. It's her bringsthem. "

Old Doby chuckled and rubbed his hands. He knew what she was like. Thatstraight, slim back of hers, and the thick twist of black hair, and theway she had of laughing at you, as cheery as if a bell was ringing. Aye, he knew all about that. 

"When they see her once, they'll come agen, for sure, " he quaveredshrilly, and day by day he watched for the grand carriages with vivideagerness. If a day or two passed without his seeing one, he grewfretful, and was injured, feeling that his beauty was being neglected!"None to-day, nor yet yest'day, " he would cackle. "What be they folka-doin'?"

Old Mrs. Welden, having heard of the pipe, and come to see it, hadstruck up an acquaintance with him, and dropped in almost every day totalk and sit at his window. She was a young thing, by comparison, andcould bring him lively news, and, indeed, so stir him up with her gossipthat he was in danger of becoming a young thing himself. Her groceriesand his tobacco were subjects whose interest was undying. 

A great curiosity had been awakened in the county, and visitors camefrom distances greater than such as ordinarily include usual calls. Naturally, one was curious about the daughter of the Vanderpoel who wasa sort of national institution in his own country. His name had not beenso much heard of in England when Lady Anstruthers had arrived butthere had, at first, been felt an interest in her. But she had been afailure--a childish-looking girl--whose thin, fair, prettiness had nodistinction, and who was obviously overwhelmed by her surroundings. Shehad evidently had no influence over Sir Nigel, and had not been able toprevent his making ducks and drakes of her money, which of courseought to have been spent on the estate. Besides which a married womanrepresented fewer potentialities than a handsome unmarried girl entitledto expectations from huge American wealth. 

So the carriages came and came again, and, stately or unstately far-offneighbours sat at tea upon the lawn under the trees, and it was observedthat the methods and appointments of the Court had entirely changed. Nothing looked new and American. The silently moving men-servantscould not have been improved upon, there was plainly an excellentchef somewhere, and the massive silver was old and wonderful. Uponeverybody's word, the change was such as it was worth a long drivemerely to see!

The most wonderful thing, however, was Lady Anstruthers herself. Shehad begun to grow delicately plump, her once drawn and haggard face hadrounded out, her skin had smoothed, and was actually becoming pink andfair, a nimbus of pale fine hair puffed airily over her forehead, andshe wore the most charming little clothes, all of which made her lookfifteen years younger than she had seemed when, on the grounds ofill-health, she had retired into seclusion. The renewed relations withher family, the atmosphere by which she was surrounded, had evidentlygiven her a fresh lease of life, and awakened in her a new courage. 

When the summer epidemic of garden parties broke forth, old Dobygleefully beheld, day after day, the Court carriage drive by bearing herladyship and her sister attired in fairest shades and tints "same as ifthey was flowers. " Their delicate vaporousness, and rare colours, were sweet delights to the old man, and he and Mrs. Welden spent happyevenings discussing them as personal possessions. To these two Betty WASa personal possession, bestowing upon them a marked distinction. Theywere hers and she was theirs. No one else so owned her. Heaven had givenher to them that their last years might be lighted with splendour. 

On her way to one of the garden parties she stopped the carriage beforeold Doby's cottage, and went in to him to speak a few words. She was ofpale convolvulus blue that afternoon, and Doby, standing up touching hisforelock and Mrs. Welden curtsying, gazed at her with prayer intheir eyes. She had a few flowers in her hand, and a book of colouredphotographs of Venice. 

"These are pictures of the city I told you about--the city built in thesea--where the streets are water. You and Mrs. Welden can look at themtogether, " she said, as she laid flowers and book down. "I am going toDunholm Castle to a garden party this afternoon. Some day I will comeand tell you about it. "

The two were at the window staring spellbound, as she swept back to thecarriage between the sweet-williams and Canterbury bells bordering thenarrow garden path. 

"Do you know I really went in to let them see my dress, " she said, whenshe rejoined Lady Anstruthers. "Old Doby's granddaughter told me that heand Mrs. Welden have little quarrels about the colours I wear. It seemsthat they find my wardrobe an absorbing interest. When I put the book onthe table, I felt Doby touch my sleeve with his trembling old hand. Hethought I did not know. "

"What will they do with Venice?" asked Rosy. 

"They will believe the water is as blue as the photographs make it--andthe palaces as pink. It will seem like a chapter out of Revelations, which they can believe is true and not merely 'Scriptur, '--because _I_have been there. I wish I had been to the City of the Gates of Pearl, and could tell them about that. "

On the lawns at the garden parties she was much gazed at and commentedupon. Her height and her long slender neck held her head above those ofother girls, the dense black of her hair made a rich note of shadow amidthe prevailing English blondness. Her mere colouring set her apart. Rosy used to watch her with tender wonder, recalling her memory ofnine-year-old Betty, with the long slim legs and the demanding andaccusing child-eyes. She had always been this creature even in thosefar-off days. At the garden party at Dunholm Castle it became evidentthat she was, after a manner, unusually the central figure of theoccasion. It was not at all surprising, people said to each other. Nothing could have been more desirable for Lord Westholt. He combinedrank with fortune, and the Vanderpoel wealth almost constituted rank initself. Both Lord and Lady Dunholm seemed pleased with the girl. LordDunholm showed her great attention. When she took part in the dancingon the lawn, he looked on delightedly. He walked about the gardenswith her, and it was plain to see that their conversation was not theordinary polite effort to accord, usually marking the talk between amature man and a merely pretty girl. Lord Dunholm sometimes laughed withunfeigned delight, and sometimes the two seemed to talk of grave things. 

"Such occasions as these are a sort of yearly taking of the socialcensus of the county, " Lord Dunholm explained. "One invites ALL one'sneighbours and is invited again. It is a friendly duty one owes. "

"I do not see Lord Mount Dunstan, " Betty answered. "Is he here?"

She had never denied to herself her interest in Mount Dunstan, and shehad looked for him. Lord Dunholm hesitated a second, as his son had doneat Miss Vanderpoel's mention of the tabooed name. But, being an olderman, he felt more at liberty to speak, and gave her a rather long kindlook. 

"My dear young lady, " he said, "did you expect to see him here?"

"Yes, I think I did, " Betty replied, with slow softness. "I believe Irather hoped I should. "

"Indeed! You are interested in him?"

"I know him very little. But I am interested. I will tell you why. "

She paused by a seat beneath a tree, and they sat down together. She gave, with a few swift vivid touches, a sketch of the red-hairedsecond-class passenger on the Meridiana, of whom she had only thoughtthat he was an unhappy, rough-looking young man, until the brief momentin which they had stood face to face, each comprehending that the otherwas to be relied on if the worst should come to the worst. She hadunderstood his prompt disappearance from the scene, and had liked it. When she related the incident of her meeting with him when she thoughthim a mere keeper on his own lands, Lord Dunholm listened with a changedand thoughtful expression. The effect produced upon her imagination bywhat she had seen, her silent wandering through the sad beauty of thewronged place, led by the man who tried stiffly to bear himself as aservant, his unintended self-revelations, her clear, well-argued pointof view charmed him. She had seen the thing set apart from its countyscandal, and so had read possibilities others had been blind to. He wasimmensely touched by certain things she said about the First Man. 

"He is one of them, " she said. "They find their way in the end--theyfind their way. But just now he thinks there is none. He is standing inthe dark--where the roads meet. "

"You think he will find his way?" Lord Dunholm said. "Why do you thinkso?"

"Because I KNOW he will, " she answered. "But I cannot tell you WHY Iknow. "

"What you have said has been interesting to me, because of the lightyour own thought threw upon what you saw. It has not been Mount DunstanI have been caring for, but for the light you saw him in. You met himwithout prejudice, and you carried the light in your hand. You alwayscarry a light, my impression is, " very quietly. "Some women do. "

"The prejudice you speak of must be a bitter thing for a proud man tobear. Is it a just prejudice? What has he done?"

Lord Dunholm was gravely silent for a few moments. 

"It is an extraordinary thing to reflect, "--his words came slowly--"thatit may NOT be a just prejudice. _I_ do not know that he has doneanything--but seem rather sulky, and be the son of his father, and thebrother of his brother. "

"And go to America, " said Betty. "He could have avoided doing that--buthe cannot be called to account for his relations. If that is all--theprejudice is NOT just. "

"No, it is not, " said Lord Dunholm, "and one feels rather awkward athaving shared it. You have set me thinking again, Miss Vanderpoel. "

CHAPTER XXIX

THE THREAD OF G. SELDEN

The Shuttle having in its weaving caught up the thread of G. Selden'srudimentary existence and drawn it, with the young man himself, acrossthe sea, used curiously the thread in question, in the forming ofthe design of its huge web. As wool and coarse linen are sometimesinterwoven with rich silk for decorative or utilitarian purposes, soperhaps was this previously unvalued material employed. 

It was, indeed, an interesting truth that the young man, during hisconvalescence, without his own knowledge, acted as a species of magnetwhich drew together persons who might not easily otherwise have met. Mr. Penzance and Mount Dunstan rode over to see him every few days, andtheir visits naturally established relations with Stornham Court muchmore intimate than could have formed themselves in the same lengthof time under any of the ordinary circumstances of country life. Conventionalities lost their prominence in friendly intercourse withSelden. It was not, however, that he himself desired to dispense withconvention. His intense wish to "do the right thing, " and avoid givingoffence was the most ingenuous and touching feature of his broadcosmopolitan good nature. 

"If I ever make a break, sir, " he had once said, with almost passionatefervour, in talking to Mr. Penzance, "please tell me, and set me on theright track. No fellow likes to look like a hoosier, but I don't mindthat half as much as--as seeming not to APPRECIATE. "

He used the word "appreciate" frequently. It expressed for him manydegrees of thanks. 

"I tell you that's fine, " he said to Ughtred, who brought him a flowerfrom the garden. "I appreciate that. "

To Betty he said more than once:

"You know how I appreciate all this, Miss Vanderpoel. You DO know Iappreciate it, don't you?"

He had an immense admiration for Mount Dunstan, and talked to him agreat deal about America, often about the sheep ranch, and what it mighthave done and ought to have done. But his admiration for Mr. Penzancebecame affection. To him he talked oftener about England, and listenedto the vicar's scholarly stories of its history, its past glories andits present ones, as he might have listened at fourteen to stories fromthe Arabian Nights. 

These two being frequently absorbed in conversation, Mount Dunstan wasrather thrown upon Betty's hands. When they strolled together about theplace or sat under the deep shade of green trees, they talked not onlyof England and America, but of divers things which increased theirknowledge of each other. It is points of view which reveal qualities, tendencies, and innate differences, or accordances of thought, and thepoints of view of each interested the other. 

"Mr. Selden is asking Mr. Penzance questions about English history, "Betty said, on one of the afternoons in which they sat in the shade. "Ineed not ask you questions. You ARE English history. "

"And you are American history, " Mount Dunstan answered. 

"I suppose I am. "

At one of their chance meetings Miss Vanderpoel had told Lord Dunholmand Lord Westholt something of the story of G. Selden. The novelty of ithad delighted and amused them. Lord Dunholm had, at points, been touchedas Penzance had been. Westholt had felt that he must ride over toStornham to see the convalescent. He wanted to learn some New Yorkslang. 

He would take lessons from Selden, and he would also buy a Delkoff--twoDelkoffs, if that would be better. He knew a hard-working fellow whoought to have a typewriter. 

"Heath ought to have one, " he had said to his father. Heath was thehouse-steward. "Think of the letters the poor chap has to write totrades-people to order things, and unorder them, and blackguard theshopkeepers when they are not satisfactory. Invest in one for Heath, father. "

"It is by no means a bad idea, " Lord Dunholm reflected. "Time would besaved by the use of it, I have no doubt. "

"It saves time in any department where it can be used, " Betty hadanswered. "Three are now in use at Stornham, and I am going to presentone to Kedgers. This is a testimonial I am offering. Three weeks ago Ibegan to use the Delkoff. Since then I have used no other. If YOU usethem you will introduce them to the county. "

She understood the feeling of the junior assistant, when he foundhimself in the presence of possible purchasers. Her blood tingledslightly. She wished she had brought a catalogue. 

"We will come to Stornham to see the catalogue, " Lord Dunholm promised. 

"Perhaps you will read it aloud to us, " Westholt suggested gleefully. 

"G. Selden knows it by heart, and will repeat it to you with runningcomments. Do you know I shall be very glad if you decide to buy one--ortwo--or three, " with an uplift of the Irish blue eyes to Lord Dunholm. "The blood of the first Reuben Vanderpoel stirs in my veins--also I havebegun to be fond of G. Selden. "

Therefore it occurred that on the afternoon referred to Lady Anstruthersappeared crossing the sward with two male visitors in her wake. 

"Lord Dunholm and Lord Westholt, " said Betty, rising. 

For this meeting between the men Selden was, without doubt, responsible. While his father talked to Mount Dunstan, Westholt explained that theyhad come athirst for the catalogue. Presently Betty took him to thesheltered corner of the lawn, where the convalescent sat with Mr. Penzance. 

But, for a short time, Lord Dunholm remained to converse with MountDunstan. In a way the situation was delicate. To encounter by chance aneighbour whom one--for reasons--has not seen since his childhood, andto be equal to passing over and gracefully obliterating the interveningyears, makes demand even upon finished tact. Lord Dunholm's worldhad been a large one, and he had acquired experience tending to thedevelopment of the most perfect methods. If G. Selden had chanced tobe the magnet which had decided his course this special afternoon, MissVanderpoel it was who had stirred in him sufficient interest in MountDunstan to cause him to use the best of these methods when he foundhimself face to face with him. 

He beautifully eliminated the years, he eliminated all but the factsthat the young man's father and himself had been acquaintances in youth, that he remembered Mount Dunstan himself as a child, that he had heardwith interest of his visit to America. Whatsoever the young man felt, he made no sign which presented obstacles. He accepted the eliminationswith outward composure. He was a powerful-looking fellow, with a fineway of carrying his shoulders, and an eye which might be able to lightsavagely, but just now, at least, he showed nothing of the sulkiness hewas accused of. 

Lord Dunholm progressed admirably with him. He soon found that he neednot be upon any strain with regard to the eliminations. The man himselfcould eliminate, which was an assistance. 

They talked together when they turned to follow the others to theretreat of G. Selden. 

"Have you bought a Delkoff?" Lord Dunholm inquired. 

"If I could have afforded it, I should have bought one. "

"I think that we have come here with the intention of buying three. Wedid not know we required them until Miss Vanderpoel recited half a pageof the catalogue to us. "

"Three will mean a 'rake off' of fifteen dollars to G. Selden, " saidMount Dunstan. It was, he saw, necessary that he should explain themeaning of a "rake off, " and he did so to his companion's entertainment. 

The afternoon was a satisfactory one. They were all kind to G. Selden, and he on his part was an aid to them. In his innocence he steeredthree of them, at least, through narrow places into an open sea ofeasy intercourse. This was a good beginning. The junior assistant wasrecovering rapidly, and looked remarkably well. The doctor had told himthat he might try to use his leg. The inside cabin of the cheap Linerand "little old New York" were looming up before him. But what luck hehad had, and what a holiday! It had been enough to set a fellow up forten years' work. It would set up the boys merely to be told about it. Hedidn't know what HE had ever done to deserve such luck as had happenedto him. For the rest of his life he would he waving the Union Jackalongside of the Stars and Stripes. 

Mr. Penzance it was who suggested that he should try the strength of theleg now. 

"Yes, " Mount Dunstan said. "Let me help you. "

As he rose to go to him, Westholt good-naturedly got up also. They tooktheir places at either side of his invalid chair and assisted him torise and stand on his feet. 

"It's all right, gentlemen. It's all right, " he called out with adelighted flush, when he found himself upright. "I believe I could standalone. Thank you. Thank you. "

He was able, leaning on Mount Dunstan's arm, to take a few steps. Evidently, in a short time, he would find himself no longer disabled. 

Mr. Penzance had invited him to spend a week at the vicarage. He was todo this as soon as he could comfortably drive from the one place to theother. After receiving the invitation he had sent secretly to London forone of the Delkoffs he had brought with him from America as a specimen. He cherished in private a plan of gently entertaining his host byteaching him to use the machine. The vicar would thus be prepared forthat future in which surely a Delkoff must in some way fall into hishands. Indeed, Fortune having at length cast an eye on himself, mightchance to favour him further, and in time he might be able to send a"high-class machine" as a grateful gift to the vicarage. Perhaps Mr. Penzance would accept it because he would understand what it meant offeeling and appreciation. 

During the afternoon Lord Dunholm managed to talk a good deal withMount Dunstan. There was no air of intention in his manner, neverthelessintention was concealed beneath its courteous amiability. He wantedto get at the man. Before they parted he felt he had, perhaps, learnedthings opening up new points of view. 

. . . . . 

In the smoking-room at Dunholm that night he and his son talked of theirchance encounter. It seemed possible that mistakes had been made aboutMount Dunstan. One did not form a definite idea of a man's characterin the course of an afternoon, but he himself had been impressed by aconviction that there had been mistakes. 

"We are rather a stiff-necked lot--in the country--when we allowourselves to be taken possession of by an idea, " Westholt commented. 

"I am not at all proud of the way in which we have taken thingsfor granted, " was his father's summing up. "It is, perhaps, worthobserving, " taking his cigar from his mouth and smiling at the end ofit, as he removed the ash, "that, but for Miss Vanderpoel and G. Selden, we might never have had an opportunity of facing the fact that we maynot have been giving fair play. And one has prided one's self on one'sfair play. "

CHAPTER XXX

A RETURN

At the close of a long, warm afternoon Betty Vanderpoel came out uponthe square stone terrace overlooking the gardens, and that part ofthe park which, enclosing them, caused them, as they melted into itsgreenness, to lose all limitations and appear to be only a more bloomingbit of the landscape. 

Upon the garden Betty's eyes dwelt, as she stood still for some minutestaking in their effect thoughtfully. 

Kedgers had certainly accomplished much. His close-trimmed lawns didhim credit, his flower beds were flushed and azured, purpled and snowedwith bloom. Sweet tall spires, hung with blue or white or rosy flowerbells, lifted their heads above the colour of lower growths. Only thefervent affection, the fasting and prayer of a Kedgers could have donesuch wonders with new things and old. The old ones he had cherished andallured into a renewal of existence--the new ones he had so coaxed outof their earthen pots into the soil, luxuriously prepared for theirreception, and had afterwards so nourished and bedewed with softwaterings, so supported, watched over and adored that they had beenalmost unconscious of their transplanting. Without assistants he couldhave done nothing, but he had been given a sufficient number of undergardeners, and had even managed to inspire them with something of hisown ambition and solicitude. The result was before Betty's eyes inan aspect which, to such as knew the gardens well, --the Dunholms, forinstance, --was astonishing in its success. 

"I've had privileges, miss, and so have the flowers, " Kedgers had saidwarmly, when Miss Vanderpoel had reported to him, for his encouragement, Dunholm Castle's praise. "Not one of 'em has ever had to wait forhis food and drink, nor to complain of his bed not being what he wasaccustomed to. They've not had to wait for rain, for we've given it to'em from watering cans, and, thank goodness, the season's been kind to'em. "

Betty, descending the terrace steps, wandered down the paths betweenthe flower beds, glancing about her as she went. The air of neglect anddesolation had been swept away. Buttle and Tim Soames had been givenas many privileges as Kedgers. The chief points impressed upon them hadbeen that the work must be done, not only thoroughly, but quickly. Asmany additional workmen as they required, as much solid material as theyneeded, but there must be a despatch which at first it staggered themto contemplate. They had not known such methods before. They had beenaccustomed to work under money limitation throughout their lives, and, when work must be done with insufficient aid, it must be done slowly. Economy had been the chief factor in all calculations, speed had notentered into them, so leisureliness had become a fixed habit. But itseemed American to sweep leisureliness away into space with a freegesture. 

"It must be done QUICKLY, " Miss Vanderpoel had said. "If ten men cannotdo it quickly enough, you must have twenty--or as many more as areneeded. It is time which must be saved just now. "

Time more than money, it appeared. Buttle's experience had been that youmight take time, if you did not charge for it. When time began to meanmoney, that was a different matter. If you did work by the job, youmight drive in a few nails, loiter, and return without haste; if youworked by the hour, your absence would be inquired into. In the presentcase no one could loiter. That was realised early. The tall girl, withthe deep straight look at you, made you realise that without spokenwords. She expected energy something like her own. She was a new forceand spurred them. No man knew how it was done, but, when she appearedamong them--even in the afternoon--"lookin' that womany, " holding upher thin dress over lace petticoats, the like of which had not been seenbefore, she looked on with just the same straight, expecting eyes. They did not seem to doubt in the least that she would find that greatadvance had been made. 

So advance had been made, and work accomplished. As Betty walked fromone place to another she saw the signs of it with gratification. Theplace was not the one she had come to a few months ago. Hothouses, outbuildings, stables were in repair. Work was still being done indifferent places. In the house itself carpenters or decorators wereenclosed in some rooms, and at their business, but exterior orderprevailed. In the courtyard stablemen were at work, and her own groomcame forward touching his forehead. She paid a visit to the horses. Theywere fine creatures, and, when she entered their stalls, made room forher and whinnied gently, in well-founded expectation of sugar and breadwhich were kept in a cupboard awaiting her visits. She smoothed velvetnoses and patted satin sides, talking to Mason a little before she wenther way. 

Then she strolled into the park. The park was always a pleasure. She wasin a thoughtful mood, and the soft green shadowed silence lured her. Thesummer wind hus-s-shed the branches as it lightly waved them, the brownearth of the avenue was sun-dappled, there were bird notes and callsto be heard here and there and everywhere, if one only arrested one'sattention a moment to listen. And she was in a listening and dreamingmood--one of the moods in which bird, leaf, and wind, sun, shade, andscent of growing things have part. 

And yet her thoughts were of mundane things. 

It was on this avenue that G. Selden had met with his accident. He wasstill at Dunstan vicarage, and yesterday Mount Dunstan, in calling, hadtold them that Mr. Penzance was applying himself with delighted interestto a study of the manipulation of the Delkoff. 

The thought of Mount Dunstan brought with it the thought of her father. This was because there was frequently in her mind a connection betweenthe two. How would the man of schemes, of wealth, and power almostunbounded, regard the man born with a load about his neck--chainedto earth by it, standing in the midst of his hungering and thirstingpossessions, his hands empty of what would feed them and restore theirstrength? Would he see any solution of the problem? She couldimagine his looking at the situation through his gaze at the man, andconsidering both in his summing up. 

"Circumstances and the man, " she had heard him say. "But always the manfirst. "

Being no visionary, he did not underestimate the power of circumstance. This Betty had learned from him. And what could practically be done withcircumstance such as this? The question had begun to recur to her. Whatcould she herself have done in the care of Rosy and Stornham, ifchance had not placed in her hand the strongest lever? What she hadaccomplished had been easy--easy. All that had been required had beenthe qualities which control of the lever might itself tend to create inone. Given--by mere chance again--imagination and initiative, the movingof the lever did the rest. If chance had not been on one's side, whatthen? And where was this man's chance? She had said to Rosy, in speakingof the wealth of America, "Sometimes one is tired of it. " And Rosy hadreminded her that there were those who were not tired of it, whocould bear some of the burden of it, if it might be laid on their ownshoulders. The great beautiful, blind-faced house, awaiting its slowdoom in the midst of its lonely unfed lands--what could save it, and allit represented of race and name, and the stately history of men, butthe power one professed to call base and sordid--mere money? She felt asudden impatience at herself for having said she was tired of it. Thatwas a folly which took upon itself the aspect of an affectation. 

And, if a man could not earn money--or go forth to rob richer neighboursof it as in the good old marauding days--or accept it if it were offeredto him as a gift--what could he do? Nothing. If he had been born avillage labourer, he could have earned by the work of his hands enoughto keep his cottage roof over him, and have held up his head among hisfellows. But for such as himself there was no mere labour which wouldavail. He had not that rough honest resource. Only the decent living andorderly management of the generations behind him would have left to himfairly his own chance to hold with dignity the place in the world intowhich Fate had thrust him at the outset--a blind, newborn thing of whomno permission had been asked. 

"If I broke stones upon the highway for twelve hours a day, I mightearn two shillings, " he had said to Betty, on the previous day. "I couldbreak stones well, " holding out a big arm, "but fourteen shillings aweek will do no more than buy bread and bacon for a stonebreaker. "

He was ordinarily rather silent and stiff in his conversational attitudetowards his own affairs. Betty sometimes wondered how she herself knewso much about them--how it happened that her thoughts so often dweltupon them. The explanation she had once made to herself had been halfirony, half serious reflection. 

"It is a result of the first Reuben Vanderpoel. It is because I am ofthe fighting commercial stock, and, when I see a business problem, Icannot leave it alone, even when it is no affair of mine. "

As an exposition of the type of the commercial fighting-stock shepresented, as she paused beneath overshadowing trees, an aspectbeautifully suggesting a far different thing. 

She stood--all white from slim shoe to tilted parasol, --and either theresult of her inspection of the work done by her order, or a combinationof her summer-day mood with her feeling for the problem, had given hera special radiance. It glowed on lip and cheek, and shone in her Irisheyes. 

She had paused to look at a man approaching down the avenue. He was nota labourer, and she did not know him. Men who were not labourers usuallyrode or drove, and this one was walking. He was neither young nor old, and, though at a distance his aspect was not attracting, she found thatshe regarded him curiously, and waited for him to draw nearer. 

The man himself was glancing about him with a puzzled look and knittedforehead. When he had passed through the village he had seen things hehad not expected to see; when he had reached the entrance gate, and--forreasons of his own--dismissed his station trap, he had looked at thelodge scrutinisingly, because he was not prepared for its picturesquetrimness. The avenue was free from weeds and in order, the two gatesbeyond him were new and substantial. As he went on his way and reachedthe first, he saw at about a hundred yards distance a tall girl in whitestanding watching him. Things which were not easily explainable alwaysirritated him. That this place--which was his own affair--should presentan air of mystery, did not improve his humour, which was bad to beginwith. He had lately been passing through unpleasant things, which hadleft him feeling himself tricked and made ridiculous--as only women cantrick a man and make him ridiculous, he had said to himself. And therehad been an acrid consolation in looking forward to the relief ofventing one's self on a woman who dare not resent. 

"What has happened, confound it!" he muttered, when he caught sightof the girl. "Have we set up a house party?" And then, as he saw moredistinctly, "Damn! What a figure!"

By this time Betty herself had begun to see more clearly. Surely thiswas a face she remembered--though the passing of years and ugly livinghad thickened and blurred, somewhat, its always heavy features. Suddenlyshe knew it, and the look in its eyes--the look she had, as a child, unreasoningly hated. 

Nigel Anstruthers had returned from his private holiday. 

As she took a few quiet steps forward to meet him, their eyes rested oneach other. After a night or two in town his were slightly bloodshot, and the light in them was not agreeable. 

It was he who spoke first, and it is possible that he did not quiteintend to use the expletive which broke from him. But he was rememberingthings also. Here were eyes he, too, had seen before--twelve years agoin the face of an objectionable, long-legged child in New York. And hisown hatred of them had been founded in his own opinion on the best ofreasons. And here they gazed at him from the face of a young beauty--fora beauty she was. 

"Damn it!" he exclaimed; "it is Betty. "

"Yes, " she answered, with a faint, but entirely courteous, smile. "Itis. I hope you are very well. "

She held out her hand. "A delicious hand, " was what he said to himself, as he took it. And what eyes for a girl to have in her head were thosewhich looked out at him between shadows. Was there a hint of the devilin them? He thought so--he hoped so, since she had descended on theplace in this way. But WHAT the devil was the meaning of her being onthe spot at all? He was, however, far beyond the lack of astutenesswhich might have permitted him to express this last thought at thisparticular juncture. He was only betrayed into stupid mistakes, afterwards to be regretted, when rage caused him utterly to lose controlof his wits. And, though he was startled and not exactly pleased, he wasnot in a rage now. The eyelashes and the figure gave an agreeable fillipto his humour. Howsoever she had come, she was worth looking at. 

"How could one expect such a delightful thing as this?" he said, with atouch of ironic amiability. "It is more than one deserves. "

"It is very polite of you to say that, " answered Betty. 

He was thinking rapidly as he stood and gazed at her. There were, intruth, many things to think of under circumstances so unexpected. 

"May I ask you to excuse my staring at you?" he inquired with what Rosyhad called his "awful, agreeable smile. " "When I saw you last you were afierce nine-year-old American child. I use the word 'fierce' because--ifyou'll pardon my saying so--there was a certain ferocity about you. "

"I have learned at various educational institutions to conceal it, "smiled Betty. 

"May I ask when you arrived?"

"A short time after you went abroad. "

"Rosalie did not inform me of your arrival. "

"She did not know your address. You had forgotten to leave it. "

He had made a mistake and realised it. But she presented to him no airof having observed his slip. He paused a few seconds, still regardingher and still thinking rapidly. He recalled the mended windows and roofsand palings in the village, the park gates and entrance. Who the devilhad done all that? How could a mere handsome girl be concerned in it?And yet--here she was. 

"When I drove through the village, " he said next, "I saw that someremarkable changes had taken place on my property. I feel as if you canexplain them to me. "

"I hope they are changes which meet with your approval. "

"Quite--quite, " a little curtly. "Though I confess they mystify me. Though I am the son-in-law of an American multimillionaire, I could notafford to make such repairs myself. "

A certain small spitefulness which was his most frequent undoing made itimpossible for him to resist adding the innuendo in his last sentence. And again he saw it was a folly. The impersonal tone of her reply simplyleft him where he had placed himself. 

"We were sorry not to be able to reach you. As it seemed well to beginthe work at once, we consulted Messrs. Townlinson & Sheppard. "

"We?" he repeated. "Am I to have the pleasure, " with a slight wryness ofthe mouth, "of finding Mr. Vanderpoel also at Stornham?"

"No--not yet. As I was on the spot, I saw your solicitors and askedtheir advice and approval--for my father. If he had known how necessarythe work was, it would have been done before, for Ughtred's sake. "

Her voice was that of a person who, in stating obvious facts, providesno approach to enlightening comment upon them. And there was in hermanner the merest gracious impersonality. 

"Do I understand that Mr. Vanderpoel employed someone to visit the placeand direct the work?"

"It was really not difficult to direct. It was merely a matter ofengaging labour and competent foremen. "

An odd expression rose in his eyes. 

"You suggest a novel idea, upon my word, " he said. "Is it possible--yousee I know something of America--is it possible I must thank YOU for theworking of this magic?"

"You need not thank me, " she said, rather slowly, because it wasnecessary that she also should think of many things at once. "I couldnot have helped doing it. "

She wished to make all clear to him before he met Rosy. She knew it wasnot unnatural that the unexpectedness of his appearance might depriveLady Anstruthers of presence of mind. Instinct told her that what wasneeded in intercourse with him was, above all things, presence of mind. 

"I will tell you about it, " she said. "We will walk slowly up and downhere, if you do not object. "

He did not object. He wanted to hear the story as he could not hear itfrom his nervous little fool of a wife, who would be frightened intoforgetting things and their sequence. What he meant to discover waswhere he stood in the matter--where his father-in-law stood, and, ratherspecially, to have a chance to sum up the weaknesses and strengths ofthe new arrival. That would be to his interest. In talking this thingover she would unconsciously reveal how much vanity or emotion orinexperience he might count upon as factors safe to use in one'sdealings with her in the future. 

As he listened he was supported by the fact that he did not loseconsciousness of the eyes and the figure. But for these it is probablethat he would have gone blind with fury at certain points which forcedthemselves upon him. The first was that there had been an absurd andimmense expenditure which would simply benefit his son and not himself. He could not sell or borrow money on what had been given. Apparentlythe place had been re-established on a footing such as it had not restedupon during his own generation, or his father's. As he loathed life inthe country, it was not he who would enjoy its luxury, but his wifeand her child. The second point was that these people--this girl--hadsomehow had the sharpness to put themselves in the right, and to placehim in a position at which he could not complain without putting himselfin the wrong. Public opinion would say that benefits had been heapedupon him, that the correct thing had been done correctly with theknowledge and approval of the legal advisers of his family. It had beena masterly thing, that visit to Townlinson & Sheppard. He was obliged toaid his self-control by a glance at the eyelashes. She was a new sortof girl, this Betty, whose childhood he had loathed, and, to his jadedtaste, novelty appealed enormously. Her attraction for him was alsoadded to by the fact that he was not at all sure that there was notcombined with it a pungent spice of the old detestation. He was repelledas well as allured. She represented things which he hated. First, themere material power, which no man can bully, whatsoever his humour. Itwas the power he most longed for and, as he could not hope to possessit, most sneered at and raged against. Also, as she talked, it wasplain that her habit of self-control and her sense of resource wouldbe difficult to deal with. He was a survival of the type of man whosesimple creed was that women should not possess resources, as when theypossessed them they could rarely be made to behave themselves. 

But while he thought these things, he walked by her side and bothlistened and talked smiling the agreeable smile. 

"You will pardon my dull bewilderment, " he said. "It is not unnatural, is it--in a mere outsider?"

And Betty, with the beautiful impersonal smile, said:

"We felt it so unfortunate that even your solicitors did not know youraddress. "

When, at length, they turned and strolled towards the house, a carriagewas drawing up before the door, and at the sight of it, Betty saw hercompanion slightly lift his eyebrows. Lady Anstruthers had been out andwas returning. The groom got down from the box, and two men-servantsappeared upon the steps. Lady Anstruthers descended, laughing a littleas she talked to Ughtred, who had been with her. She was dressed inclear, pale grey, and the soft rose lining of her parasol warmed thecolour of her skin. 

Sir Nigel paused a second and put up his glass. 

"Is that my wife?" he said. "Really! She quite recalls New York. "

The agreeable smile was on his lips as he hastened forward. He alwaysmore or less enjoyed coming upon Rosalie suddenly. The obvious resultwas a pleasing tribute to his power. 

Betty, following him, saw what occurred. 

Ughtred saw him first, and spoke quick and low. 

"Mother!" he said. 

The tone of his voice was evidently enough. Lady Anstruthers turned withan unmistakable start. The rose lining of her parasol ceased to warm hercolour. In fact, the parasol itself stepped aside, and she stood with ablank, stiff, white face. 

"My dear Rosalie, " said Sir Nigel, going towards her. "You don't lookvery glad to see me. "

He bent and kissed her quite with the air of a devoted husband. Knowingwhat the caress meant, and seeing Rosy's face as she submitted toit, Betty felt rather cold. After the conjugal greeting he turned toUghtred. 

"You look remarkably well, " he said. 

Betty came forward. 

"We met in the park, Rosy, " she explained. "We have been talking to eachother for half an hour. "

The atmosphere which had surrounded her during the last three monthshad done much for Lady Anstruthers' nerves. She had the power to recoverherself. Sir Nigel himself saw this when she spoke. 

"I was startled because I was not expecting to see you, " she said. "Ithought you were still on the Riviera. I hope you had a pleasant journeyhome. "

"I had an extraordinarily pleasant surprise in finding your sisterhere, " he answered. And they went into the house. 

In descending the staircase on his way to the drawing-room beforedinner, Sir Nigel glanced about him with interested curiosity. Ifthe village had been put in order, something more had been done here. Remembering the worn rugs and the bald-headed tiger, he lifted hisbrows. To leave one's house in a state of resigned dilapidation andreturn to find it filled with all such things as comfort combined withexcellent taste might demand, was an enlivening experience--or wouldhave been so under some circumstances. As matters stood, perhaps, hemight have felt better pleased if things had been less well done. Butthey were very well done. They had managed to put themselves in theright in this also. The rich sobriety of colour and form left no openingfor supercilious comment--which was a neat weapon it was annoying to berobbed of. 

The drawing-room was fresh, brightly charming, and full of flowers. Betty was standing before an open window with her sister. His wife'sshoulders, he observed at once, had absolutely begun to suggestcontours. At all events, her bones no longer stuck out. But one didnot look at one's wife's shoulders when one could turn from them to afairness of velvet and ivory. "You know, " he said, approaching them, "Ifind all this very amazing. I have been looking out of my window on tothe gardens. "

"It is Betty who has done it all, " said Rosy. 

"I did not suspect you of doing it, my dear Rosalie, " smiling. "When Isaw Betty standing in the avenue, I knew at once that it was she who hadmended the chimney-pots in the village and rehung the gates. "

For the present, at least, it was evident that he meant to besufficiently amiable. At the dinner table he was conversational andasked many questions, professing a natural interest in what had beendone. It was not difficult to talk to a girl whose eyes and shoulderscombined themselves with a quick wit and a power to attract which hereluctantly owned he had never seen equalled. His reluctance arosefrom the fact that such a power complicated matters. He must be onthe defensive until he knew what she was going to do, what he must dohimself, and what results were probable or possible. He had spent hislife in intrigue of one order or another. He enjoyed outwitting peopleand rather preferred to attain an end by devious paths. He began everyacquaintance on the defensive. His argument was that you never knew howthings would turn out, consequently, it was as well to conduct one'sself at the outset with the discreet forethought of a man in thepresence of an enemy. He did not know how things would turn out inBetty's case, and it was a little confusing to find one's self watchingher with a sense of excitement. He would have preferred to be cool--tobe cold--and he realised that he could not keep his eyes off her. 

"I remember, with regret, " he said to her later in the evening, "thatwhen you were a child we were enemies. "

"I am afraid we were, " was Betty's impartial answer. 

"I am sure it was my fault, " he said. "Pray forget it. Since you haveaccomplished such wonders, will you not, in the morning, take me aboutthe place and explain to me how it has been done?"

When Betty went to her room she dismissed her maid as soon as possible, and sat for some time alone and waiting. She had had no opportunity tospeak to Rosy in private, and she was sure she would come to her. In thecourse of half an hour she heard a knock at the door. 

Yes, it was Rosy, and her newly-born colour had fled and left herlooking dragged again. She came forward and dropped into a low chairnear Betty, letting her face fall into her hands. 

"I'm very sorry, Betty, " she half whispered, "but it is no use. "

"What is no use?" Betty asked. 

"Nothing is any use. All these years have made me such a coward. Isuppose I always was a coward, but in the old days there never wasanything to be afraid of. "

"What are you most afraid of now?"

"I don't know. That is the worst. I am afraid of HIM--just ofhimself--of the look in his eyes--of what he may be planning quietly. Mystrength dies away when he comes near me. "

"What has he said to you?" she asked. 

"He came into my dressing-room and sat and talked. He looked about fromone thing to another and pretended to admire it all and congratulatedme. But though he did not sneer at what he saw, his eyes were sneeringat me. He talked about you. He said that you were a very clever woman. Idon't know how he manages to imply that a very clever woman is somethingcunning and debased--but it means that when he says it. It seems toinsinuate things which make one grow hot all over. "

She put out a hand and caught one of Betty's. 

"Betty, Betty, " she implored. "Don't make him angry. Don't. "

"I am not going to begin by making him angry, " Betty said. "And I do notthink he will try to make me angry--at first. "

"No, he will not, " cried Rosalie. "And--and you remember what I told youwhen first we talked about him?"

"And do you remember, " was Betty's answer, "what I said to you when Ifirst met you in the park? If we were to cable to New York this moment, we could receive an answer in a few hours. "

"He would not let us do it, " said Rosy. "He would stop us in someway--as he stopped my letters to mother--as he stopped me when I triedto run away. Oh, Betty, I know him and you do not. "

"I shall know him better every day. That is what I must do. I must learnto know him. He said something more to you than you have told me, Rosy. What was it?"

"He waited until Detcham left me, " Lady Anstruthers confessed, more thanhalf reluctantly. "And then he got up to go away, and stood with hishands resting on the chairback, and spoke to me in a low, queer voice. He said, 'Don't try to play any tricks on me, my good girl--and don'tlet your sister try to play any. You would both have reason to regretit. '"

She was a half-hypnotised thing, and Betty, watching her with curiousbut tender eyes, recognised the abnormality. 

"Ah, if I am a clever woman, " she said, "he is a clever man. He isbeginning to see that his power is slipping away. That was what G. Selden would call 'bluff. '"

CHAPTER XXXI

NO, SHE WOULD NOT

Sir Nigel did not invite Rosalie to accompany them, when the nextmorning, after breakfast, he reminded Betty of his suggestion of thenight before, that she should walk over the place with him, and show himwhat had been done. He preferred to make his study of his sister-in-lawundisturbed. 

There was no detail whose significance he missed as they went abouttogether. He had keen eyes and was a quite sufficiently practical personon such matters as concerned his own interests. In this case it was tohis interest to make up his mind as to what he might gain or lose by theappearance of his wife's family. He did not mean to lose--if it could behelped--anything either of personal importance or material benefit. Andit could only be helped by his comprehending clearly what he had to dealwith. Betty was, at present, the chief factor in the situation, and hewas sufficiently astute to see that she might not be easy to read. His personal theories concerning women presented to him two or threeeffective ways of managing them. You made love to them, you flatteredthem either subtly or grossly, you roughly or smoothly bullied them, or you harrowed them with haughty indifference--if your love-making hadproduced its proper effect--when it was necessary to lure or drive ortrick them into submission. Women should be made useful in one way oranother. Little fool as she was, Rosalie had been useful. He had, afterall was said and done, had some comparatively easy years as the resultof her existence. But she had not been useful enough, and there had evenbeen moments when he had wondered if he had made a mistake in separatingher entirely from her family. There might have been more to be gainedif he had allowed them to visit her and had played the part of a devotedhusband in their presence. A great bore, of course, but they could nothave spent their entire lives at Stornham. Twelve years ago, however, hehad known very little of Americans, and he had lost his temper. He wasreally very fond of his temper, and rather enjoyed referring to it withtolerant regret as being a bad one and beyond his control--with a mannerwhich suggested that the attribute was the inevitable result of strengthof character and masculine spirit. The luxury of giving way to it was agreat one, and it was exasperating as he walked about with this handsomegirl to find himself beginning to suspect that, where she was concerned, some self-control might be necessary. He was led to this thought becausethe things he took in on all sides could only have been achieved by aperson whose mind was a steadily-balanced thing. In one's treatment ofsuch a creature, methods must be well chosen. The crudest had sufficedto overwhelm Rosalie. He tried two or three little things as experimentsduring their walk. 

The first was to touch with dignified pathos on the subject of Ughtred. Betty, he intimated gently, could imagine what a man's grief anddisappointment might be on finding his son and heir deformed in such amanner. The delicate reserve with which he managed to convey his fearthat Rosalie's own uncontrolled hysteric attacks had been the cause ofthe misfortune was very well done. She had, of course, been very youngand much spoiled, and had not learned self-restraint, poor girl. 

It was at this point that Betty first realised a certain hideous thing. She must actually remain silent--there would be at the outset many timeswhen she could only protect her sister by refraining from either denialor argument. If she turned upon him now with refutation, it was Rosy whowould be called upon to bear the consequences. He would go at once toRosy, and she herself would have done what she had said she would notdo--she would have brought trouble upon the poor girl before she wasstrong enough to bear it. She suspected also that his intention wasto discover how much she had heard, and if she might be goaded intobetraying her attitude in the matter. 

But she was not to be so goaded. He watched her closely and her verycolour itself seemed to be under her own control. He had expected--ifshe had heard hysteric, garbled stories from his wife--to see a flameof scarlet leap up on the cheek he was admiring. There was no such leap, which was baffling in itself. Could it be that experience had taughtRosalie the discretion of keeping her mouth shut?

"I am very fond of Ughtred, " was the sole comment he was granted. "We made friends from the first. As he grows older and stronger, hismisfortune may be less apparent. He will be a very clever man. "

"He will be a very clever man if he is at all like----" He checkedhimself with a slight movement of his shoulders. "I was going to say athing utterly banal. I beg your pardon. I forgot for the moment that Iwas not talking to an English girl. "

It was so stupid that she turned and looked at him, smiling faintly. Buther answer was quite mild and soft. 

"Do not deprive me of compliments because I am a mere American, " shesaid. "I am very fond of them, and respond at once. "

"You are very daring, " he said, looking straight into hereyes--"deliciously so. American women always are, I think. "

"The young devil, " he was saying internally. "The beautiful young devil!She throws one off the track. "

He found himself more and more attracted and exasperated as they madetheir rounds. It was his sense of being attracted which was the causeof his exasperation. A girl who could stir one like this would be adangerous enemy. Even as a friend she would not be safe, because onefaced the absurd peril of losing one's head a little and forgettingthe precautions one should never lose sight of where a woman wasconcerned--the precautions which provided for one's holding a good tautrein in one's own hands. 

They went from gardens to greenhouses, from greenhouses to stables, andhe was on the watch for the moment when she would reveal some littlefeminine pose or vanity, but, this morning, at least, she laid nonebare. She did not strike him as a being of angelic perfections, butshe was very modern and not likely to show easily any openings in herarmour. 

"Of course, I continue to be amazed, " he commented, "though one oughtnot to be amazed at anything which evolves from your extraordinarycountry. In spite of your impersonal air, I shall persist in regardingyou as my benefactor. But, to be frank, I always told Rosalie that ifshe would write to your father he would certainly put things in order. "

"She did write once, you will remember, " answered Betty. 

"Did she?" with courteous vagueness. "Really, I am afraid I did not hearof it. My poor wife has her own little ideas about the disposal of herincome. "

And Betty knew that she was expected to believe that Rosy had hoardedthe money sent to restore the place, and from sheer weak miserliness hadallowed her son's heritage to fall to ruin. And but for Rosy's sake, she might have stopped upon the path and, looking at him squarely, havesaid, "You are lying to me. And I know the truth. "

He continued to converse amiably. 

"Of course, it is you one must thank, not only for rousing in the poorgirl some interest in her personal appearance, but also some interest inher neighbours. Some women, after they marry and pass girlhood, seem torelease their hold on all desire to attract or retain friends. For yearsRosalie has given herself up to a chronic semi-invalidism. When themistress of a house is always depressed and languid and does not returnvisits, neighbours become discouraged and drop off, as it were. "

If his wife had told stories to gain her sympathy his companion would besure to lose her temper and show her hand. If he could make her openlylose her temper, he would have made an advance. 

"One can quite understand that, " she said. "It is a great happiness tome to see Rosy gaining ground every day. She has taken me out with hera good many times, and people are beginning to realise that she likes tosee them at Stornham. "

"You are very delightful, " he said, "with your 'She has taken me out. 'When I glanced at the magnificent array of cards on the salver in thehall, I realised a number of things, and quite vulgarly lost my breath. The Dunholms have been very amiable in recalling our existence. Butcharming Americans--of your order--arouse amiable emotions. "

"I am very amiable myself, " said Betty. 

It was he who flushed now. He was losing patience at feeling himselfheld with such lightness at arm's length, and at being, in spite ofhimself, somehow compelled to continue to assume a jocular courtesy. 

"No, you are not, " he answered. 

"Not?" repeated Betty, with an incredulous lifting of her brows. 

"You are charming and clever, but I rather suspect you of being a vixen. At all events you are a spirited young woman and quick-witted enough tounderstand the attraction you must have for the sordid herd. "

And then he became aware--if not of an opening in her armour--at leastof a joint in it. For he saw, near her ear, a deepening warmth. That wasit. She was quick-witted, and she hid somewhere a hot pride. 

"I confess, however, " he proceeded cheerfully, "that notwithstanding myown experience of the habits of the sordid herd, I saw one card I wassurprised to find, though really"--shrugging his shoulders--"I ought tohave been less surprised to find it than to find any other. But it wasbold. I suppose the fellow is desperate. "

"You are speaking of----?" suggested Betty. 

"Of Mount Dunstan. Hang it all, it WAS bold!" As if in half-amuseddisgust. 

As she had walked through the garden paths, Betty had at intervals bentand gathered a flower, until she held in one hand a loose, fair sheaf. At this moment she stooped to break off a spire of pale blue campanula. And she was--as with a shock--struck with a consciousness that shebent because she must--because to do so was a refuge--a concealmentof something she must hide. It had come upon her without a second'swarning. Sir Nigel was right. She was a vixen--a virago. She was in sucha rage that her heart sprang up and down and her cheek and eyes were onfire. Her long-trained control of herself was gone. And her shock was alightning-swift awakening to the fact that she felt all this--shemust hide her face--because it was this one man--just this one and noother--who was being dragged into this thing with insult. 

It was an awakening, and she broke off, rather slowly, one--two--three--even four campanula stems before she stood uprightagain. 

As for Nigel Anstruthers--he went on talking in his low-pitched, disgusted voice. 

"Surely he might count himself out of the running. There will be a gooddeal of running, my dear Betty. You fair Americans have learned that bythis time. But that a man who has not even a decent name to offer--whois blackballed by his county--should coolly present himself as apretendant is an insolence he should be kicked for. "

Betty arranged her campanulas carefully. There was no exterior reasonwhy she should draw sword in Lord Mount Dunstan's defence. He hadcertainly not seemed to expect anything intimately interested fromher. His manner she had generally felt to be rather restrained. But onecould, in a measure, express one's self. 

"Whatsoever the 'running, '" she remarked, "no pretendant hascomplimented me by presenting himself, so far--and Lord Mount Dunstan isphysically an unusually strong man. "

"You mean it would be difficult to kick him? Is this partisanship? Ihope not. Am I to understand, " he added with deliberation, "that Rosaliehas received him here?"

"Yes. "

"And that you have received him, also--as you have received LordWestholt?"

"Quite. "

"Then I must discuss the matter with Rosalie. It is not to be discussedwith you. "

"You mean that you will exercise your authority in the matter?"

"In England, my dear girl, the master of a house is still sometimesguilty of exercising authority in matters which concern the reputationof his female relatives. In the absence of your father, I shall notallow you, while you are under my roof, to endanger your name in anydegree. I am, at least, your brother by marriage. I intend to protectyou. "

"Thank you, " said Betty. 

"You are young and extremely handsome, you will have an enormousfortune, and you have evidently had your own way all your life. A girl, such as you are, may either make a magnificent marriage or a ridiculousand humiliating one. Neither American young women, nor English youngmen, are as disinterested as they were some years ago. Each has begun tolearn what the other has to give. "

"I think that is true, " commented Betty. 

"In some cases there is a good deal to be exchanged on both sides. Youhave a great deal to give, and should get exchange worth accepting. Abeggared estate and a tainted title are not good enough. "

"That is businesslike, " Betty made comment again. 

Sir Nigel laughed quietly. 

"The fact is--I hope you won't misunderstand my saying it--you do notstrike me as being UN-businesslike, yourself. "

"I am not, " answered Betty. 

"I thought not, " rather narrowing his eyes as he watched her, because hebelieved that she must involuntarily show her hand if he irritated hersufficiently. "You do not impress me as being one of the girls who makeunsuccessful marriages. You are a modern New York beauty--not an earlyVictorian sentimentalist. " He did not despair of results from hisprocess of irritation. To gently but steadily convey to a beautiful andspirited young creature that no man could approach her without ulteriormotive was rather a good idea. If one could make it clear--with a casualair of sensibly taking it for granted--that the natural power of youth, wit, and beauty were rendered impotent by a greatness of fortune whoseproportions obliterated all else; if one simply argued from the premisethat young love was no affair of hers, since she must always be regardedas a gilded chattel, whose cost was writ large in plain figures, whatgirl, with blood in her veins, could endure it long without wincing?This girl had undue, and, as he regarded such matters, unseemly controlover her temper and her nerves, but she had blood enough in her veins, and presently she would say or do something which would give him a lead. 

"When you marry----" he began. 

She lifted her head delicately, but ended the sentence for him with eyeswhich were actually not unsmiling. 

"When I marry, I shall ask something in exchange for what I have togive. "

"If the exchange is to be equal, you must ask a great deal, " heanswered. "That is why you must be protected from such fellows as MountDunstan. "

"If it becomes necessary, perhaps I shall be able to protect myself, "she said. 

"Ah!" regretfully, "I am afraid I have annoyed you--and that you needprotection more than you suspect. " If she were flesh and blood, shecould scarcely resist resenting the implication contained in this. Butresist it she did, and with a cool little smile which stirred him tosudden, if irritated, admiration. 

She paused a second, and used the touch of gentle regret herself. 

"You have wounded my vanity by intimating that my admirers do not loveme for myself alone. "

He paused, also, and, narrowing his eyes again, looked straight betweenher lashes. 

"They ought to love you for yourself alone, " he said, in a low voice. "You are a deucedly attractive girl. "

"Oh, Betty, " Rosy had pleaded, "don't make him angry--don't make himangry. "

So Betty lifted her shoulders slightly without comment. 

"Shall we go back to the house now?" she said. "Rosalie will naturallybe anxious to hear that what has been done in your absence has met withyour approval. "

In what manner his approval was expressed to Rosalie, Betty did not hearthis morning, at least. Externally cool though she had appeared, theprocess had not been without its results, and she felt that she wouldprefer to be alone. 

"I must write some letters to catch the next steamer, " she said, as shewent upstairs. 

When she entered her room, she went to her writing table and sat down, with pen and paper before her. She drew the paper towards her and tookup the pen, but the next moment she laid it down and gave a slight pushto the paper. As she did so she realised that her hand trembled. 

"I must not let myself form the habit of falling into rages--or Ishall not be able to keep still some day, when I ought to do it, " shewhispered. "I am in a fury--a fury. " And for a moment she covered herface. 

She was a strong girl, but a girl, notwithstanding her powers. What shesuddenly saw was that, as if by one movement of some powerful unseenhand, Rosy, who had been the centre of all things, had been swept out ofher thought. Her anger at the injustice done to Rosy had been as nothingbefore the fire which had flamed in her at the insult flung at theother. And all that was undue and unbalanced. One might as well look thething straightly in the face. Her old child hatred of Nigel Anstruthershad sprung up again in ten-fold strength. There was, it was true, something abominable about him, something which made his words moreabominable than they would have been if another man had utteredthem--but, though it was inevitable that his method should rouse one, where those of one's own blood were concerned, it was not enough to fillone with raging flame when his malignity was dealing with those who werealmost strangers. Mount Dunstan was almost a stranger--she had met LordWestholt oftener. Would she have felt the same hot beat of the blood, ifLord Westholt had been concerned? No, she answered herself frankly, shewould not. 

CHAPTER XXXII

A GREAT BALL

A certain great ball, given yearly at Dunholm Castle, was one of themost notable social features of the county. It took place when the housewas full of its most interestingly distinguished guests, and, thoughother balls might be given at other times, this one was marked by adegree of greater state. On several occasions the chief guests hadbeen great personages indeed, and to be bidden to meet them implieda selection flattering in itself. One's invitation must convey byinference that one was either brilliant, beautiful, or admirable, if notimportant. 

Nigel Anstruthers had never appeared at what the uninvited were wont, with derisive smiles, to call The Great Panjandrum Function--which wasan ironic designation not employed by such persons as received cardsbidding them to the festivity. Stornham Court was not popular inthe county; no one had yearned for the society of the Dowager LadyAnstruthers, even in her youth; and a not too well-favoured young manwith an ill-favoured temper, noticeably on the lookout for grievances, is not an addition to one's circle. At nineteen Nigel had discoveredthe older Lord Mount Dunstan and his son Tenham to be congenialacquaintances, and had been so often absent from home that hisneighbours would have found social intercourse with him difficult, evenif desirable. Accordingly, when the county paper recorded the splendoursof The Great Panjandrum Function--which it by no means mentioned by thatname--the list of "Among those present" had not so far contained thename of Sir Nigel Anstruthers. 

So, on a morning a few days after his return, the master of Stornhamturned over a card of invitation and read it several times beforespeaking. 

"I suppose you know what this means, " he said at last to Rosalie, whowas alone with him. 

"It means that we are invited to Dunholm Castle for the ball, doesn'tit?"

Her husband tossed the card aside on the table. 

"It means that Betty will be invited to every house where there is a sonwho must be disposed of profitably. 

"She is invited because she is beautiful and clever. She would beinvited if she had no money at all, " said Rosy daringly. She wasactually growing daring, she thought sometimes. It would not have beenpossible to say anything like this a few months ago. 

"Don't make silly mistakes, " said Nigel. "There are a good many handsomegirls who receive comparatively little attention. But the hounds of warare let loose, when one of your swollen American fortunes appears. Theobviousness of it 'virtuously' makes me sick. It's as vulgar--as NewYork. "

What befel next brought to Sir Nigel a shock of curious enlightenment, but no one was more amazed than Rosy herself. She felt, when she heardher own voice, as if she must be rather mad. 

"I would rather, " she said quite distinctly, "that you did not speak tome of New York in that way. "

"What!" said Anstruthers, staring at her with contempt which wasderision. 

"It is my home, " she answered. "It is not proper that I should hear itspoken of slightingly. "

"Your home! It has not taken the slightest notice of you for twelveyears. Your people dropped you as if you were a hot potato. "

"They have taken me up again. " Still in amazement at her own boldness, but somehow learning something as she went on. 

He walked over to her side, and stood before her. 

"Look here, Rosalie, " he said. "You have been taking lessons from yoursister. She is a beauty and young and you are not. People will standthings from her they will not take from you. I would stand some thingsmyself, because it rather amuses a man to see a fine girl peacocking. It's merely ridiculous in you, and I won't stand it--not a bit of it. "

It was not specially fortunate for him that the door opened as he wasspeaking, and Betty came in with her own invitation in her hand. Hewas quick enough, however, to turn to greet her with a shrug of hisshoulders. 

"I am being favoured with a little scene by my wife, " he explained. "Sheis capable of getting up excellent little scenes, but I daresay she doesnot show you that side of her temper. "

Betty took a comfortable chintz-covered, easy chair. Her expression wasevasively speculative. 

"Was it a scene I interrupted?" she said. "Then I must not go awayand leave you to finish it. You were saying that you would not 'stand'something. What does a man do when he will not 'stand' a thing? Italways sounds so final and appalling--as if he were threatening horriblethings such as, perhaps, were a resource in feudal times. What IS theresource in these dull days of law and order--and policemen?"

"Is this American chaff?" he was disagreeably conscious that he was notwholly successful in his effort to be lofty. 

The frankness of Betty's smile was quite without prejudice. 

"Dear me, no, " she said. "It is only the unpicturesque result ofan unfeminine knowledge of the law. And I was thinking how one islimited--and yet how things are simplified after all. "

"Simplified!" disgustedly. 

"Yes, really. You see, if Rosy were violent she could not beat you--evenif she were strong enough--because you could ring the bell and give herinto custody. And you could not beat her because the same unpleasantthing would happen to you. Policemen do rob things of colour, don'tthey? And besides, when one remembers that mere vulgar law insiststhat no one can be forced to live with another person who is brutal orloathsome, that's simple, isn't it? You could go away from Rosy, " withsweet clearness, "at any moment you wished--as far away as you liked. "

"You seem to forget, " still feeling that convincing loftiness was noteasy, "that when a man leaves his wife, or she deserts him, it is shewho is likely to be called upon to bear the onus of public opinion. "

"Would she be called upon to bear it under all circumstances?"

"Damned clever woman as you are, you know that she would, as well as Iknow it. " He made an abrupt gesture with his hand. "You know that whatI say is true. Women who take to their heels are deucedly unpopular inEngland. "

"I have not been long in England, but I have been struck by theprevalence of a sort of constitutional British sense of fair playamong the people who really count. The Dunholms, for instance, haveit markedly. In America it is the men who force women to take to theirheels who are deucedly unpopular. The Americans' sense of fair play istheir most English quality. It was brought over in ships by the firstcolonists--like the pieces of fine solid old furniture, one even nowsees, here and there, in houses in Virginia. "

"But the fact remains, " said Nigel, with an unpleasant laugh, "the factremains, my dear girl. "

"The fact that does remain, " said Betty, not unpleasantly at all, andstill with her gentle air of mere unprejudiced speculation, "is that, ifa man or woman is properly ill-treated--PROPERLY--not in any amateurishway--they reach the point of not caring in the least--nothing matters, but that they must get away from the horror of the unbearable thing--never to see or hear of it again is heaven enough to make anythingelse a thing to smile at. But one could settle the other point byexperimenting. Suppose you run away from Rosy, and then we can see ifshe is cut by the county. "

His laugh was unpleasant again. 

"So long as you are with her, she will not be cut. There are a numberof penniless young men of family in this, as well as the adjoining, counties. Do you think Mount Dunstan would cut her?"

She looked down at the carpet thoughtfully a moment, and then lifted hereyes. 

"I do not think so, " she answered. "But I will ask him. "

He was startled by a sudden feeling that she might be capable of it. 

"Oh, come now, " he said, "that goes beyond a joke. You will not doany such absurd thing. One does not want one's domestic difficultiesdiscussed by one's neighbours. "

Betty opened coolly surprised eyes. 

"I did not understand it was a personal matter, " she remarked. "Where dothe domestic difficulties come in?"

He stared at her a few seconds with the look she did not like, whichwas less likeable at the moment, because it combined itself with otherthings. 

"Hang it, " he muttered. "I wish I could keep my temper as you can keepyours, " and he turned on his heel and left the room. 

Rosy had not spoken. She had sat with her hands in her lap, looking outof the window. She had at first had a moment of terror. She had, indeed, once uttered in her soul the abject cry: "Don't make him angry, Betty--oh, don't, don't!" And suddenly it had been stilled, and shehad listened. This was because she realised that Nigel himself waslistening. That made her see what she had not dared to allow herselfto see before. These trite things were true. There were laws to protectone. If Betty had not been dealing with mere truths, Nigel would havestopped her. He had been supercilious, but he could not contradict her. 

"Betty, " she said, when her sister came to her, "you said that to showME things, as well as to show them to him. I knew you did, and listenedto every word. It was good for me to hear you. "

"Clear-cut, unadorned facts are like bullets, " said Betty. "They reachhome, if one's aim is good. The shiftiest people cannot evade them. "

. . . . . 

A certain thing became evident to Betty during the time which elapsedbetween the arrival of the invitations and the great ball. Despite anobvious intention to assume an amiable pose for the time being, SirNigel could not conceal a not quite unexplainable antipathy to oneindividual. This individual was Mount Dunstan, whom it did not seem easyfor him to leave alone. He seemed to recur to him as a subject, withoutany special reason, and this somewhat puzzled Betty until she heard fromRosalie of his intimacy with Lord Tenham, which, in a measure, explainedit. The whole truth was that "The Lout, " as he had been called, hadindulged in frank speech in his rare intercourse with his brother andhis friends, and had once interfered with hot young fury in a matter inwhich the pair had specially wished to avoid all interference. His openscorn of their methods of entertaining themselves they had felt to bedisgusting impudence, which would have been deservedly punished with ahorsewhip, if the youngster had not been a big-muscled, clumsy oaf, witha dangerous eye. Upon this footing their acquaintance had stood in pastyears, and to decide--as Sir Nigel had decided--that the oaf in questionhad begun to make his bid for splendid fortune under the roof ofStornham Court itself was a thing not to be regarded calmly. It wasmore than he could stand, and the folly of temper, which was forever hisundoing, betrayed him into mistakes more than once. This girl, withher beauty and her wealth, he chose to regard as a sort of propertyrightfully his own. She was his sister-in-law, at least; she was livingunder his roof; he had more or less the power to encourage or discouragesuch aspirants as appeared. Upon the whole there was something soothingto one's vanity in appearing before the world as the person at presentresponsible for her. It gave a man a certain dignity of position, andhis chief girding at fate had always risen from the fact that he had nothad dignity of position. He would not be held cheap in this matter, atleast. But sometimes, as he looked at the girl he turned hot and sick, as it was driven home to him that he was no longer young, that he hadnever been good-looking, and that he had cut the ground from under hisfeet twelve years ago, when he had married Rosalie! If he could havewaited--if he could have done several other things--perhaps the cleveracting of a part, and his power of domination might have given him achance. Even that blackguard of a Mount Dunstan had a better one now. He was young, at least, and free--and a big strong beast. He wasforced, with bitter reluctance, to admit that he himself was not evenparticularly strong--of late he had felt it hideously. 

So he detested Mount Dunstan the more for increasing reasons, as he thought the matter over. It would seem, perhaps, but asubtle pleasure to the normal mind, but to him there waspleasure--support--aggrandisement--in referring to the ill case of theMount Dunstan estate, in relating illustrative anecdotes, in dwellingupon the hopelessness of the outlook, and the notable unpopularity ofthe man himself. A confiding young lady from the States was required, he said on one occasion, but it would be necessary that she should be ayoung person of much simplicity, who would not be alarmed or chilled bythe obvious. No one would realise this more clearly than Mount Dunstanhimself. He said it coldly and casually, as if it were the simplestmatter of fact. If the fellow had been making himself agreeableto Betty, it was as well that certain points should be--as it wereinadvertently--brought before her. 

Miss Vanderpoel was really rather fine, people said to each otherafterwards, when she entered the ballroom at Dunholm Castle with herbrother-in-law. She bore herself as composedly as if she had beenescorted by the most admirable and dignified of conservative relatives, instead of by a man who was more definitely disliked and disapproved ofthan any other man in the county whom decent people were likely to meet. Yet, she was far too clever a girl not to realise the situation clearly, they said to each other. She had arrived in England to find her sister aneglected wreck, her fortune squandered, and her existence stripped bareof even such things as one felt to be the mere decencies. There was butone thing to be deduced from the facts which had stared her in theface. But of her deductions she had said nothing whatever, which was, ofcourse, remarkable in a young person. It may be mentioned that, perhaps, there had been those who would not have been reluctant to hear what shemust have had to say, and who had even possibly given her a delicatelead. But the lead had never been taken. One lady had even remarkedthat, on her part, she felt that a too great reserve verged uponsecretiveness, which was not a desirable girlish quality. 

Of course the situation had been so much discussed that people werenaturally on the lookout for the arrival of the Stornham party, asit was known that Sir Nigel had returned home, and would be likely topresent himself with his wife and sister-in-law. There was not a dowagerpresent who did not know how and where he had reprehensibly spent thelast months. It served him quite right that the Spanish dancing personhad coolly left him in the lurch for a younger and more attractive, aswell as a richer man. If it were not for Miss Vanderpoel, one need notpretend that one knew nothing about the affair--in fact, if it had notbeen for Miss Vanderpoel, he would not have received an invitation--andpoor Lady Anstruthers would be sitting at home, still the forlorn littlefrump and invalid she had so wonderfully ceased to be since her sisterhad taken her in hand. She was absolutely growing even pretty and young, and her clothes were really beautiful. The whole thing was amazing. 

Betty, as well as Rosalie and Nigel--knew that many people turnedundisguisedly to look at them--even to watch them as they came into thesplendid ballroom. It was a splendid ballroom and a stately one, andLord Dunholm and Lord Westholt shared a certain thought when they mether, which was that hers was distinctly the proud young brilliance ofpresence which figured most perfectly against its background. Much aspeople wanted to look at Sir Nigel, their eyes were drawn from himto Miss Vanderpoel. After all it was she who made him an object ofinterest. One wanted to know what she would do with him--how she would"carry him off. " How much did she know of the distaste people felt forhim, since she would not talk or encourage talk? The Dunholms could nothave invited her and her sister, and have ignored him; but did she notguess that they would have ignored him, if they could? and was there notnatural embarrassment in feeling forced to appear in pomp, as it were, under his escort?

But no embarrassment was perceptible. Her manner committed her to norecognition of a shadow of a flaw in the character of her companion. Iteven carried a certain conviction with it, and the lookers-on felt theimpossibility of suggesting any such flaw by their own manner. For thisevening, at least, the man must actually be treated as if he were anentirely unobjectionable person. It appeared as if that was what thegirl wanted, and intended should happen. 

This was what Nigel himself had begun to perceive, but he did not put itpleasantly. Deucedly clever girl as she was, he said to himself, shesaw that it would be more agreeable to have no nonsense talked, and noruffling of tempers. He had always been able to convey to people thatthe ruffling of his temper was a thing to be avoided, and perhaps shehad already been sharp enough to realise this was a fact to be countedwith. She was sharp enough, he said to himself, to see anything. 

The function was a superb one. The house was superb, the rooms ofentertainment were in every proportion perfect, and were quite renownedfor the beauty of the space they offered; the people themselves were, through centuries of dignified living, so placed that intercourse withtheir kind was an easy and delightful thing. They need never doubteither their own effect, or the effect of their hospitalities. Sir Nigelsaw about him all the people who held enviable place in the county. Someof them he had never known, some of them had long ceased to recall hisexistence. There were those among them who lifted lorgnettes or stuckmonocles into their eyes as he passed, asking each other in politelysubdued tones who the man was who seemed to be in attendance on MissVanderpoel. Nigel knew this and girded at it internally, while he madethe most of his suave smile. 

The distinguished personage who was the chief guest was to be seen atthe upper end of the room talking to a tall man with broad shoulders, who was plainly interesting him for the moment. As the Stornham partypassed on, this person, making his bow, retired, and, as he turnedtowards them, Sir Nigel recognising him, the agreeable smile was for themoment lost. 

"How in the name of Heaven did Mount Dunstan come here?" broke from himwith involuntary heat. 

"Would it be rash to conclude, " said Betty, as she returned the bow of avery grand old lady in black velvet and an imposing tiara, "that he camein response to invitation?"

The very grand old lady seemed pleased to see her, and, with a royallittle sign, called her to her side. As Betty Vanderpoel was a greatsuccess with the Mrs. Weldens and old Dobys of village life, she wasalso a success among grand old ladies. When she stood before them therewas a delicate submission in her air which was suggestive of obedienceto the dignity of their years and state. Strongly conservative andrather feudal old persons were much pleased by this. In the presentirreverent iconoclasm of modern times, it was most agreeable to talk toa handsome creature who was as beautifully attentive as if she had beena specially perfect young lady-in-waiting. 

This one even patted Betty's hand a little, when she took it. She was agreat county potentate, who was known as Lady Alanby of Dole--her housebeing one of the most ancient and interesting in England. 

"I am glad to see you here to-night, " she said. "You are looking verynice. But you cannot help that. "

Betty asked permission to present her sister and brother-in-law. LadyAlanby was polite to both of them, but she gave Nigel a rather sharpglance through her gold pince-nez as she greeted him. 

"Janey and Mary, " she said to the two girls nearest her, "I daresayyou will kindly change your chairs and let Lady Anstruthers and MissVanderpoel sit next to me. "

The Ladies Jane and Mary Lithcom, who had been ordered about by her fromtheir infancy, obeyed with polite smiles. They were not particularlypretty girls, and were of the indigent noble. Jane, who had almostoverlarge blue eyes, sighed as she reseated herself a few chairs lowerdown. 

"It does seem beastly unfair, " she said in a low voice to her sister, "that a girl such as that should be so awfully good-looking. She oughtto have a turned-up nose. "

"Thank you, " said Mary, "I have a turned-up nose myself, and I've gotnothing to balance it. "

"Oh, I didn't mean a nice turned-up nose like yours, " said Jane; "Imeant an ugly one. Of course Lady Alanby wants her for Tommy. " And hermanner was not resigned. 

"What she, or anyone else for that matter, " disdainfully, "could wantwith Tommy, I don't know, " replied Mary. 

"I do, " answered Jane obstinately. "I played cricket with him when Iwas eight, and I've liked him ever since. It is AWFUL, " in a smotheredoutburst, "what girls like us have to suffer. "

Lady Mary turned to look at her curiously. 

"Jane, " she said, "are you SUFFERING about Tommy?"

"Yes, I am. Oh, what a question to ask in a ballroom! Do you want me toburst out crying?"

"No, " sharply, "look at the Prince. Stare at that fat woman curtsying tohim. Stare and then wink your eyes. "

Lady Alanby was talking about Mount Dunstan. 

"Lord Dunholm has given us a lead. He is an old friend of mine, and hehas been talking to me about it. It appears that he has been lookinginto things seriously. Modern as he is, he rather tilts at injustices, in a quiet way. He has satisfactorily convinced himself that Lord MountDunstan has been suffering for the sins of the fathers--which must beannoying. "

"Is Lord Dunholm quite sure of that?" put in Sir Nigel, with asuggestively civil air. 

Old Lady Alanby gave him an unencouraging look. 

"Quite, " she said. "He would be likely to be before he took any steps. "

"Ah, " remarked Nigel. "I knew Lord Tenham, you see. "

Lady Alanby's look was more unencouraging still. She quietly and openlyput up her glass and stared. There were times when she had not theremotest objection to being rude to certain people. 

"I am sorry to hear that, " she observed. "There never was any room formistake about Tenham. He is not usually mentioned. "

"I do not think this man would be usually mentioned, if everything wereknown, " said Nigel. 

Then an appalling thing happened. Lady Alanby gazed at him a fewseconds, and made no reply whatever. She dropped her glass, and turnedagain to talk to Betty. It was as if she had turned her back on him, andSir Nigel, still wearing an amiable exterior, used internally some badlanguage. 

"But I was a fool to speak of Tenham, " he thought. "A great fool. "

A little later Miss Vanderpoel made her curtsy to the exalted guest, and was commented upon again by those who looked on. It was not atall unnatural that one should find ones eyes following a girl who, representing a sort of royal power, should have the good fortune ofpossessing such looks and bearing. 

Remembering his child bete noir of the long legs and square, audaciouslittle face, Nigel Anstruthers found himself restraining a slight grinas he looked on at her dancing. Partners flocked about her like bees, and Lady Alanby of Dole, and other very grand old or middle-aged ladiesall found the evening more interesting because they could watch her. 

"She is full of spirit, " said Lady Alanby, "and she enjoys herself as agirl should. It is a pleasure to look at her. I like a girl who getsa magnificent colour and stars in her eyes when she dances. It lookshealthy and young. "

It was Tommy Miss Vanderpoel was dancing with when her ladyship saidthis. Tommy was her grandson and a young man of greater rank thanfortune. He was a nice, frank, heavy youth, who loved a simple countylife spent in tramping about with guns, and in friendly hobnobbing withthe neighbours, and eating great afternoon teas with people whose jokeswere easy to understand, and who were ready to laugh if you tried a jokeyourself. He liked girls, and especially he liked Jane Lithcom, butthat was a weakness his grandmother did not at all encourage, and, as hedanced with Betty Vanderpoel, he looked over her shoulder more than onceat a pair of big, unhappy blue eyes, whose owner sat against the wall. 

Betty Vanderpoel herself was not thinking of Tommy. In fact, duringthis brilliant evening she faced still further developments of her ownstrange case. Certain new things were happening to her. When she hadentered the ballroom she had known at once who the man was who stoodbefore the royal guest--she had known before he bowed low and withdrew. And her recognition had brought with it a shock of joy. For a fewmoments her throat felt hot and pulsing. It was true--the things whichconcerned him concerned her. All that happened to him suddenly becameher affair, as if in some way they were of the same blood. Nigel'sslighting of him had infuriated her; that Lord Dunholm had offered himfriendship and hospitality was a thing which seemed done to herself, and filled her with gratitude and affection; that he should be at thisplace, on this special occasion, swept away dark things from his path. It was as if it were stated without words that a conservative man of theworld, who knew things as they were, having means of reaching truths, vouched for him and placed his dignity and firmness at his side. 

And there was the gladness at the sight of him. It was an overpoweringlystrong thing. She had never known anything like it. She had not seenhim since Nigel's return, and here he was, and she knew that her lifequickened in her because they were together in the same room. He hadcome to them and said a few courteous words, but he had soon gone away. At first she wondered if it was because of Nigel, who at the time wasmaking himself rather ostentatiously amiable to her. Afterwards she sawhim dancing, talking, being presented to people, being, with a tactfuleasiness, taken care of by his host and hostess, and Lord Westholt. Shewas struck by the graceful magic with which this tactful ease surroundedhim without any obviousness. The Dunholms had given a lead, as LadyAlanby had said, and the rest were following it and ignoring intervalswith reposeful readiness. It was wonderfully well done. Apparentlythere had been no past at all. All began with this large young man, who, despite his Viking type, really looked particularly well in eveningdress. Lady Alanby held him by her chair for some time, openly enjoyingher talk with him, and calling up Tommy, that they might make friends. 

After a while, Betty said to herself, he would come and ask for a dance. But he did not come, and she danced with one man after another. Westholtcame to her several times and had more dances than one. Why did theother not come? Several times they whirled past each other, and whenit occurred they looked--both feeling it an accident--into each other'seyes. 

The strong and strange thing--that which moves on its way as do birthand death, and the rising and setting of the sun--had begun to move inthem. It was no new and rare thing, but an ancient and common one--ascommon and ancient as death and birth themselves; and part of the lawas they are. As it comes to royal persons to whom one makes obeisance attheir mere passing by, as it comes to scullery maids in royal kitchens, and grooms in royal stables, as it comes to ladies-in-waiting and thewomen who serve them, so it had come to these two who had been drawnnear to each other from the opposite sides of the earth, and eachstarted at the touch of it, and withdrew a pace in bewilderment, andsome fear. 

"I wish, " Mount Dunstan was feeling throughout the evening, "that hereyes had some fault in their expression--that they drew one less--thatthey drew ME less. I am losing my head. "

"It would be better, " Betty thought, "if I did not wish so much that hewould come and ask me to dance with him--that he would not keep away so. He is keeping away for a reason. Why is he doing it?"

The music swung on in lovely measures, and the dancers swung with it. Sir Nigel walked dutifully through the Lancers once with his wife, andonce with his beautiful sister-in-law. Lady Anstruthers, in her newbloom, had not lacked partners, who discovered that she was a childishlylight creature who danced extremely well. Everyone was kind to her, andthe very grand old ladies, who admired Betty, were absolutely benignin their manner. Betty's partners paid ingenuous court to her, and SirNigel found he had not been mistaken in his estimate of the dignity hisposition of escort and male relation gave to him. 

Rosy, standing for a moment looking out on the brilliancy and stateabout her, meeting Betty's eyes, laughed quiveringly. 

"I am in a dream, " she said. 

"You have awakened from a dream, " Betty answered. 

From the opposite side of the room someone was coming towards them, and, seeing him, Rosy smiled in welcome. 

"I am sure Lord Mount Dunstan is coming to ask you to dance with him, "she said. "Why have you not danced with him before, Betty?"

"He has not asked me, " Betty answered. "That is the only reason. "

"Lord Dunholm and Lord Westholt called at the Mount a few days afterthey met him at Stornham, " Rosalie explained in an undertone. "Theywanted to know him. Then it seems they found they liked each other. LadyDunholm has been telling me about it. She says Lord Dunholm thanksyou, because you said something illuminating. That was the word sheused--'illuminating. ' I believe you are always illuminating, Betty. "

Mount Dunstan was certainly coming to them. How broad his shoulderslooked in his close-fitting black coat, how well built his whole strongbody was, and how steadily he held his eyes! Here and there one sees aman or woman who is, through some trick of fate, by nature a compellingthing unconsciously demanding that one should submit to some domineeringattraction. One does not call it domineering, but it is so. This specialcreature is charged unfairly with more than his or her single share offorce. Betty Vanderpoel thought this out as this "other one" came toher. He did not use the ballroom formula when he spoke to her. He saidin rather a low voice:

"Will you dance with me?"

"Yes, " she answered. 

Lord Dunholm and his wife agreed afterwards that so noticeable a pairhad never before danced together in their ballroom. Certainly no pairhad ever been watched with quite the same interested curiosity. Someonlookers thought it singular that they should dance together at all, some pleased themselves by reflecting on the fact that no other twocould have represented with such picturesqueness the opposite polesof fate and circumstance. No one attempted to deny that they were anextraordinarily striking-looking couple, and that one's eyes followedthem in spite of one's self. 

"Taken together they produce an effect that is somehow rather amazing, "old Lady Alanby commented. "He is a magnificently built man, you know, and she is a magnificently built girl. Everybody should look like that. My impression would be that Adam and Eve did, but for the fact thatneither of them had any particular character. That affair of the applewas so silly. Eve has always struck me as being the kind of woman who, if she lived to-day, would run up stupid bills at her dressmakers andbe afraid to tell her husband. That wonderful black head of MissVanderpoel's looks very nice poised near Mount Dunstan's dark red one. "

"I am glad to be dancing with him, " Betty was thinking. "I am glad to benear him. "

"Will you dance this with me to the very end, " asked Mount Dunstan--"tothe very late note?"

"Yes, " answered Betty. 

He had spoken in a low but level voice--the kind of voice whose toneplaces a man and woman alone together, and wholly apart from all othersby whomsoever they are surrounded. There had been no preliminary speechand no explanation of the request followed. The music was a perfectthing, the brilliant, lofty ballroom, the beauty of colour and soundabout them, the jewels and fair faces, the warm breath of flowers inthe air, the very sense of royal presence and its accompanying state andceremony, seemed merely a naturally arranged background for the strangeconsciousness each held close and silently--knowing nothing of the mindof the other. 

This was what was passing through the man's mind. 

"This is the thing which most men experience several times during theirlives. It would be reason enough for all the great deeds and all thecrimes one hears of. It is an enormous kind of anguish and a fearfulkind of joy. It is scarcely to be borne, and yet, at this moment, Icould kill myself and her, at the thought of losing it. If I had begunearlier, would it have been easier? No, it would not. With me it isbound to go hard. At twenty I should probably not have been able to keepmyself from shouting it aloud, and I should not have known that it wasonly the working of the Law. 'Only!' Good God, what a fool I am! It isbecause it is only the Law that I cannot escape, and must go on to theend, grinding my teeth together because I cannot speak. Oh, her smoothyoung cheek! Oh, the deep shadows of her lashes! And while we sway roundand round together, I hold her slim strong body in the hollow of myarm. "

It was, quite possibly, as he thought this that Nigel Anstruthers, following him with his eyes as he passed, began to frown. He had beenwatching the pair as others had, he had seen what others saw, and now hehad an idea that he saw something more, and it was something which didnot please him. The instinct of the male bestirred itself--the curiousinstinct of resentment against another man--any other man. And, inthis case, Mount Dunstan was not any other man, but one for whom hisantipathy was personal. 

"I won't have that, " he said to himself. "I won't have it. "

. . . . . 

The music rose and swelled, and then sank into soft breathing, as theymoved in harmony together, gliding and swirling as they threaded theirway among other couples who swirled and glided also, some of them lightand smiling, some exchanging low-toned speech--perhaps saying wordswhich, unheard by others, touched on deep things. The exalted guest fellinto momentary silence as he looked on, being a man much attracted byphysical fineness and temperamental power and charm. A girl like thatwould bring a great deal to a man and to the country he belonged to. Agreat race might be founded on such superbness of physique and healthand beauty. Combined with abnormal resources, certainly no more couldbe asked. He expressed something of the kind to Lord Dunholm, who stoodnear him in attendance. 

To herself Betty was saying: "That was a strange thing he asked me. Itis curious that we say so little. I should never know much about him. I have no intelligence where he is concerned--only a strong, stupidfeeling, which is not like a feeling of my own. I am no longer BettyVanderpoel--and I wish to go on dancing with him--on and on--to the lastnote, as he said. "

She felt a little hot wave run over her cheek uncomfortably, and thenext instant the big arm tightened its clasp of her--for just onesecond--not more than one. She did not know that he, himself, had seenthe sudden ripple of red colour, and that the equally sudden contractionof the arm had been as unexpected to him and as involuntary as the quickwave itself. It had horrified and made him angry. He looked the nextinstant entirely stiff and cold. 

"He did not know it happened, " Betty resolved. 

"The music is going to stop, " said Mount Dunstan. "I know the waltz. Wecan get once round the room again before the final chord. It was to bethe last note--the very last, " but he said it quite rigidly, and Bettylaughed. 

"Quite the last, " she answered. 

The music hastened a little, and their gliding whirl became morerapid--a little faster--a little faster still--a running sweep of notes, a big, terminating harmony, and the thing was over. 

"Thank you, " said Mount Dunstan. "One will have it to remember. " And histone was slightly sardonic. 

"Yes, " Betty acquiesced politely. 

"Oh, not you. Only I. I have never waltzed before. "

Betty turned to look at him curiously. 

"Under circumstances such as these, " he explained. "I learned to danceat a particularly hideous boys' school in France. I abhorred it. Andthe trend of my life has made it quite easy for me to keep mytwelve-year-old vow that I would never dance after I left the place, unless I WANTED to do it, and that, especially, nothing should makeme waltz until certain agreeable conditions were fulfilled. Waltzing Iapproved of--out of hideous schools. I was a pig-headed, objectionablechild. I detested myself even, then. "

Betty's composure returned to her. 

"I am trusting, " she remarked, "that I may secretly regard myself asone of the agreeable conditions to be fulfilled. Do not dispel my hopesroughly. "

"I will not, " he answered. "You are, in fact, several of them. "

"One breathes with much greater freedom, " she responded. 

This sort of cool nonsense was safe. It dispelled feelings of tenseness, and carried them to the place where Sir Nigel and Lady Anstruthersawaited them. A slight stir was beginning to be felt throughout theballroom. The royal guest was retiring, and soon the rest began to meltaway. The Anstruthers, who had a long return drive before them, wereamong those who went first. 

When Lady Anstruthers and her sister returned from the cloak room, theyfound Sir Nigel standing near Mount Dunstan, who was going also, andtalking to him in an amiably detached manner. Mount Dunstan, himself, did not look amiable, or seem to be saying much, but Sir Nigel showed nosigns of being disturbed. 

"Now that you have ceased to forswear the world, " he said as his wifeapproached, "I hope we shall see you at Stornham. Your visits must notcease because we cannot offer you G. Selden any longer. "

He had his own reasons for giving the invitation--several of them. Andthere was a satisfaction in letting the fellow know, casually, that hewas not in the ridiculous position of being unaware of what hadoccurred during his absence--that there had been visits--and also theobjectionable episode of the American bounder. That the episode had beenobjectionable, he knew he had adroitly conveyed by mere tone and manner. 

Mount Dunstan thanked him in the usual formula, and then spoke to Betty. 

"G. Selden left us tremulous and fevered with ecstatic anticipation. Hecarried your kind letter to Mr. Vanderpoel, next to his heart. His brainseemed to whirl at the thought of what 'the boys' would say, when hearrived with it in New York. You have materialised the dream of hislife!"

"I have interested my father, " Betty answered, with a brilliant smile. "He liked the romance of the Reuben S. Vanderpoel who rewarded the saverof his life by unbounded orders for the Delkoff. "

. . . . . 

As their carriage drove away, Sir Nigel bent forward to look out of thewindow, and having done it, laughed a little. 

"Mount Dunstan does not play the game well, " he remarked. 

It was annoying that neither Betty nor his wife inquired what thegame in question might be, and that his temperament forced him intoexplaining without encouragement. 

"He should have 'stood motionless with folded arms, ' or something of thesort, and 'watched her equipage until it was out of sight. '"

"And he did not?" said Betty

"He turned on his heel as soon as the door was shut. "

"People ought not to do such things, " was her simple comment. To whichit seemed useless to reply. 

CHAPTER XXXIII

FOR LADY JANE

There is no one thing on earth of such interest as the study of the lawsof temperament, which impel, support, or entrap into folly and dangerthe being they rule. As a child, not old enough to give a definite nameto the thing she watched and pondered on, in child fashion, BettinaVanderpoel had thought much on this subject. As she had grown older, shehad never been ignorant of the workings of her own temperament, and shehad looked on for years at the laws which had wrought in her father'sbeing--the laws of strength, executive capacity, and that pleasure ingreat schemes, which is roused less by a desire for gain than for astrongly-felt necessity for action, resulting in success. She mentallyfollowed other people on their way, sometimes asking herself how far theindividual was to be praised or blamed for his treading of the path heseemed to choose. And now there was given her the opportunity to studythe workings of the nature of Nigel Anstruthers, which was a curiousthing. 

He was not an individual to be envied. Never was man more tormented bylack of power to control his special devil, at the right moment of time, and therefore, never was there one so inevitably his own frustration. This Betty saw after the passing of but a few days, and wondered how farhe was conscious or unconscious of the thing. At times it appeared toher that he was in a state of unrest--that he was as a man waveringbetween lines of action, swayed at one moment by one thought, at anotherby an idea quite different, and that he was harried because he could nothold his own with himself. 

This was true. The ball at Dunholm Castle had been enlightening, andhad wrought some changes in his points of view. Also other factors hadinfluenced him. In the first place, the changed atmosphere of Stornham, the fitness and luxury of his surroundings, the new dignity given to hisposition by the altered aspect of things, rendered external amiabilitymore easy. To ride about the country on a good horse, or drive in asmart phaeton, or suitable carriage, and to find that people who a yearago had passed him with the merest recognition, saluted him with politeintention, was, to a certain degree, stimulating to a vanity which hadbeen long ill-fed. The power which produced these results should, ofcourse, have been in his own hands--his money-making father-in-lawshould have seen that it was his affair to provide for that--but sincehe had not done so, it was rather entertaining that it should be, forthe present, in the hands of this extraordinarily good-looking girl. 

He had begun by merely thinking of her in this manner--as "thisextraordinarily good-looking girl, " and had not, for a moment, hesitatedbefore the edifying idea of its not being impossible to arrange a livelyflirtation with her. She was at an age when, in his opinion, girlhoodwas poised for flight with adventure, and his tastes had not led himin the direction of youth which was fastidious. His Riviera episode hadleft his vanity blistered and requiring some soothing application. Hislife had worked evil with him, and he had fallen ill on the hands of awoman who had treated him as a shattered, useless thing whose day wasdone and with whom strength and bloom could not be burdened. He had kepthis illness a hidden secret, on his return to Stornham, his one desirehaving been to forget--even to disbelieve in it, but dreams of itssuggestion sometimes awakened him at night with shudders and cold sweat. He was hideously afraid of death and pain, and he had had monstrouspain--and while he had lain battling with it, upon his bed in the villaon the Mediterranean, he had been able to hear, in the garden outside, the low voices and laughter of the Spanish dancer and the healthy, strong young fool who was her new adorer. 

When he had found himself face to face with Betty in the avenue, after the first leap of annoyance, which had suddenly died down intoperversely interested curiosity, he could have laughed outright atthe novelty and odd unexpectedness of the situation. The ill-mannered, impudently-staring, little New York beast had developed into THIS! Hangit! No man could guess what the embryo female creature might resultin. His mere shakiness of physical condition added strength to herattraction. She was like a young goddess of health and life andfire; the very spring of her firm foot upon the moss beneath it was astimulating thing to a man whose nerves sprung secret fears upon him. There were sparks between the sweep of her lashes, but she managed tocarry herself with the air of being as cool as a cucumber, which gavespice to the effort to "upset" her. If she did not prove suitablyamenable, there would be piquancy in getting the better of her--instirring up unpleasant little things, which would make it easier for herto go away than remain on the spot--if one should end by choosing to getrid of her. But, for the moment, he had no desire to get rid of her. Hewanted to see what she intended to do--to see the thing out, in fact. Itamused him to hear that Mount Dunstan was on her track. There existsfor persons of a certain type a pleasure full-fed by the mere sense ofhaving "got even" with an opponent. Throughout his life he had madea point of "getting even" with those who had irritatingly crossed hispath, or much disliked him. The working out of small or large plans toachieve this end had formed one of his most agreeable recreations. Hehad long owed Mount Dunstan a debt, which he had always meant to pay. Hehad not intended to forget the episode of the nice little village girlwith whom Tenham and himself had been getting along so enormously well, when the raging young ass had found them out, and made an absurdlyexaggerated scene, even going so far as threatening to smash the pair ofthem, marching off to the father and mother, and setting the vicar on, and then scratching together--God knows how--money enough to pack thelot off to America, where they had since done well. Why should a manforgive another who had made him look like a schoolboy and a fool? So, to find Mount Dunstan rushing down a steep hill into this thing, wasedifying. You cannot take much out of a man if you never encounter him. If you meet him, you are provided by Heaven with opportunities. You canfind out what he feels most sharply, and what he will suffer most bybeing deprived of. His impression was that there was a good deal to begot out of Mount Dunstan. He was an obstinate, haughty devil, and justthe fellow to conceal with a fury of pride a score of tender places inhis hide. 

At the ball he had seen that the girl's effect had been of a kind whicheven money and good looks uncombined with another thing might nothave produced. And she had the other thing--whatsoever it might be. Heobserved the way in which the Dunholms met and greeted her, he markedthe glance of the royal personage, and his manner, when after herpresentation he conversed with and detained her, he saw the turningof heads and exchange of remarks as she moved through the rooms. Mostespecially, he took in the bearing of the very grand old ladies, ledby Lady Alanby of Dole. Barriers had thrown themselves down, theseportentous, rigorous old pussycats admired her, even liked her. 

"Upon my word, " he said to himself. "She has a way with her, you know. She is a combination of Ethel Newcome and Becky Sharp. But she is morelevel-headed than either of them, There's a touch of Trix Esmond, too. "

The sense of the success which followed her, and the gradually-growingexcitement of looking on at her light whirls of dance, the carnationof her cheek, and the laughter and pleasure she drew about her, hadaffected him in a way by which he was secretly a little exhilarated. Hewas conscious of a rash desire to force his way through these laughing, vaunting young idiots, juggle or snatch their dances away from them, andseize on the girl himself. He had not for so long a time been impelledby such agreeable folly that he had sometimes felt the stab of thethought that he was past it. That it should rise in him again madehim feel young. There was nothing which so irritated him againstMount Dunstan as his own rebelling recognition of the man's youth, thestrength of his fine body, his high-held head and clear eye. 

These things and others it was which swayed him, as was plain to Bettyin the time which followed, to many changes of mood. 

"Are you sorry for a man who is ill and depressed, " he asked one day, "or do you despise him?"

"I am sorry. "

"Then be sorry for me. "

He had come out of the house to her as she sat on the lawn, under abroad, level-branched tree, and had thrown himself upon a rug with hishands clasped behind his head. 

"Are you ill?"

"When I was on the Riviera I had a fall. " He lied simply. "I strainedsome muscle or other, and it has left me rather lame. Sometimes I have agood deal of pain. "

"I am very sorry, " said Betty. "Very. "

A woman who can be made sorry it is rarely impossible to manage. Todwell with pathetic patience on your grievances, if she is weak andunintelligent, to deplore, with honest regret, your faults and blunders, if she is strong, are not bad ideas. 

He looked at her reflectively. 

"Yes, you are capable of being sorry, " he decided. For a few momentsof silence his eyes rested upon the view spread before him. To give theexpression of dignified reflection was not a bad idea either. 

"Do you know, " he said at length, "that you produce an extraordinaryeffect upon me, Betty?"

She was occupying herself by adding a few stitches to one of Rosy'sancient strips of embroidery, and as she answered, she laid it flat uponher knee to consider its effect. 

"Good or bad?" she inquired, with delicate abstraction. 

He turned his face towards her again--this time quickly. 

"Both, " he answered. "Both. "

His tone held the flash of a heat which he felt should have startled herslightly. But apparently it did not. 

"I do not like 'both, '" with composed lightness. "If you had said thatyou felt yourself develop angelic qualities when you were near me, I should feel flattered, and swell with pride. But 'both' leaves meunsatisfied. It interferes with the happy little conceit that one isan all-pervading, beneficent power. One likes to contemplate alarge picture of one's self--not plain, but coloured--as a wholesalereformer. "

"I see. Thank you, " stiffly and flushing. "You do not believe me. "

Her effect upon him was such that, for the moment, he found himselfchoosing to believe that he was in earnest. His desire to impress herwith his mood had actually led to this result. She ought to have beenrather moved--a little fluttered, perhaps, at hearing that she disturbedhis equilibrium. 

"You set yourself against me, as a child, Betty, " he said. "And you setyourself against me now. You will not give me fair play. You might giveme fair play. " He dropped his voice at the last sentence, and knew itwas well done. A touch of hopelessness is not often lost on a woman. 

"What would you consider fair play?" she inquired. 

"It would be fair to listen to me without prejudice--to let me explainhow it has happened that I have appeared to you a--a blackguard--I haveno doubt you would call it--and a fool. " He threw out his hand in animpatient gesture--impatient of himself--his fate--the tricks of badfortune which it implied had made of him a more erring mortal than hewould have been if left to himself, and treated decently. 

"Do not put it so strongly, " with conservative politeness. 

"I don't refuse to admit that I am handicapped by a devil of atemperament. That is an inherited thing. "

"Ah!" said Betty. "One of the temperaments one reads about--for whichno one is to be blamed but one's deceased relatives. After all, that iscomparatively easy to deal with. One can just go on doing what one wantsto do--and then condemn one's grandparents severely. "

A repellent quality in her--which had also the trick of transformingitself into an exasperating attraction--was that she deprived him of theluxury he had been most tenacious of throughout his existence. If theinjustice of fate has failed to bestow upon a man fortune, good looksor brilliance, his exercise of the power to disturb, to enrage those whodare not resent, to wound and take the nonsense out of those about him, will, at all events, preclude the possibility of his being passed overas a factor not to be considered. If to charm and bestow gives the senseof power, to thwart and humiliate may be found not wholly unsatisfying. 

But in her case the inadequacy of the usual methods had forced itselfupon him. It was as if the dart being aimed at her, she caught it inher hand in its flight, broke off its point and threw it lightly asidewithout comment. Most women cannot resist the temptation to answer aspeech containing a sting or a reproach. It was part of her abnormalitythat she could let such things go by in a detached silence, which didnot express even the germ of comment or opinion upon them. This, hesaid, was the result of her beastly sense of security, which, in itsturn, was the result of the atmosphere of wealth she had breathed sinceher birth. There had been no obstacle which could not be removed forher, no law of limitation had laid its rein on her neck. She had notbeen taught by her existence the importance of propitiating opinion. Under such conditions, how was fear to be learned? She had not learnedit. But for the devil in the blue between her lashes, he realised thathe should have broken loose long ago. 

"I suppose I deserved that for making a stupid appeal to sympathy, " heremarked. "I will not do it again. "

If she had been the woman who can be gently goaded into reply, shewould have made answer to this. But she allowed the observation topass, giving it free flight into space, where it lost itself after theannoying manner of its kind. 

"Have you any objection to telling me why you decided to come to Englandthis year?" he inquired, with a casual air, after the pause which shedid not fill in. 

The bluntness of the question did not seem to disturb her. She was notsorry, in fact, that he had asked it. She let her work lie upon herknee, and leaned back in her low garden chair, her hands resting uponits wicker arms. She turned on him a clear unprejudiced gaze. 

"I came to see Rosy. I have always been very fond of her. I did notbelieve that she had forgotten how much we had loved her, or howmuch she had loved us. I knew that if I could see her again I shouldunderstand why she had seemed to forget us. "

"And when you saw her, you, of course, decided that I had behaved, toquote my own words--like a blackguard and a fool. "

"It is, of course, very rude to say you have behaved like a fool, but--if you'll excuse my saying so--that is what has impressed me verymuch. Don't you know, " with a moderation, which singularly drove itselfhome, "that if you had been kind to her, and had made her happy, youcould have had anything you wished for--without trouble?"

This was one of the unadorned facts which are like bullets. Disgustedly, he found himself veering towards an outlook which forced him to admitthat there was probably truth in what she said, and he knew he heardmore truth as she went on. 

"She would have wanted only what you wanted, and she would not haveasked much in return. She would not have asked as much as I should. Whatyou did was not businesslike. " She paused a moment to give thought toit. "You paid too high a price for the luxury of indulging the inheritedtemperament. Your luxury was not to control it. But it was a badinvestment. "

"The figure of speech is rather commercial, " coldly. 

"It is curious that most things are, as a rule. There is always theparallel of profit and loss whether one sees it or not. The profitsare happiness and friendship--enjoyment of life and approbation. If theinherited temperament supplies one with all one wants of such things, itcannot be called a loss, of course. "

"You think, however, that mine has not brought me much?"

"I do not know. It is you who know. "

"Well, " viciously, "there HAS been a sort of luxury in it in lashing outwith one's heels, and smashing things--and in knowing that people preferto keep clear. "

She lifted her shoulders a little. 

"Then perhaps it has paid. "

"No, " suddenly and fiercely, "damn it, it has not!"

And she actually made no reply to that. 

"What do you mean to do?" he questioned as bluntly as before. He knewshe would understand what he meant. 

"Not much. To see that Rosy is not unhappy any more. We can preventthat. She was out of repair--as the house was. She is being rebuilt anddecorated. She knows that she will be taken care of. "

"I know her better than you do, " with a laugh. "She will not go away. She is too frightened of the row it would make--of what I should say. Ishould have plenty to say. I can make her shake in her shoes. "

Betty let her eyes rest full upon him, and he saw that she wassoftly summing him up--quite without prejudice, merely in interestedspeculation upon the workings of type. 

"You are letting the inherited temperament run away with you at thismoment, " she reflected aloud--her quiet scrutiny almost abstracted. "Itwas foolish to say that. "

He had known it was foolish two seconds after the words had left hislips. But a temper which has been allowed to leap hedges, uncheckedthroughout life, is in peril of forming a habit of taking them even atsuch times as a leap may land its owner in a ditch. This last was whather interested eyes were obviously saying. It suited him best at themoment to try to laugh. 

"Don't look at me like that, " he threw off. "As if you were calculatingthat two and two make four. "

"No prejudice of mine can induce them to make five or six--or three anda half, " she said. "No prejudice of mine--or of yours. "

The two and two she was calculating with were the likelihoods andunlikelihoods of the inherited temperament, and the practical powers shecould absolutely count on if difficulty arose with regard to Rosy. 

He guessed at this, and began to make calculations himself. 

But there was no further conversation for them, as they were obligedto rise to their feet to receive visitors. Lady Alanby of Dole and SirThomas, her grandson, were being brought out of the house to them byRosalie. 

He went forward to meet them--his manner that of the graceful host. LadyAlanby, having been welcomed by him, and led to the most comfortable, tree-shaded chair, found his bearing so elegantly chastened that shegazed at him with private curiosity. To her far-seeing and highlyexperienced old mind it seemed the bearing of a man who was "up tosomething. " What special thing did he chance to be "up to"? His glancecertainly lurked after Miss Vanderpoel oddly. Was he falling in unholylove with the girl, under his stupid little wife's very nose?

She could not, however, give her undivided attention to him, as shewished to keep her eye on her grandson and--outrageously enough fithappened that just as tea was brought out and Tommy was beginning tocheer up and quite come out a little under the spur of the activities ofhanding bread and butter and cress sandwiches, who should appear but thetwo Lithcom girls, escorted by their aunt, Mrs. Manners, with whom theylived. As they were orphans without money, if the Manners, who wererather well off, had not taken them in, they would have had to go to theworkhouse, or into genteel amateur shops, as they were not clever enoughfor governesses. 

Mary, with her turned-up nose, looked just about as usual, but Jane hada new frock on which was exactly the colour of the big, appealing eyes, with their trick of following people about. She looked a little pale andpathetic, which somehow gave her a specious air of being pretty, whichshe really was not at all. The swaying young thinness of those veryslight girls whose soft summer muslins make them look like delicatebags tied in the middle with fluttering ribbons, has almost invariablya foolish attraction for burly young men whose characters are chieflymarked by lack of forethought, and Lady Alanby saw Tommy's robust youngbody give a sort of jerk as the party of three was brought across thegrass. After it he pulled himself together hastily, and looked stiffand pink, shaking hands as if his elbow joint was out of order, being atonce too loose and too rigid. He began to be clumsy with the bread andbutter, and, ceasing his talk with Miss Vanderpoel, fell into silence. Why should he go on talking? he thought. Miss Vanderpoel was a crackinghandsome girl, but she was too clever for him, and he had to thinkof all sorts of new things to say when he talked to her. And--well, afellow could never imagine himself stretched out on the grass, puffinghappily away at a pipe, with a girl like that sitting near him, smiling--the hot turf smelling almost like hay, the hot blue sky curvingoverhead, and both the girl and himself perfectly happy--chock fullof joy--though neither of them were saying anything at all. You couldimagine it with some girls--you DID imagine it when you wakened early ona summer morning, and lay in luxurious stillness listening to the birdssinging like mad. 

Lady Jane was a nicely-behaved girl, and she tried to keep herfollowing blue eyes fixed on the grass, or on Lady Anstruthers, orMiss Vanderpoel, but there was something like a string, which sometimespulled them in another direction, and once when this had happened--quiteagainst her will--she was terrified to find Lady Alanby's glass liftedand fixed upon her. 

As Lady Alanby's opinion of Mrs. Manners was but a poor one, and asMrs. Manners was stricken dumb by her combined dislike and awe of LadyAlanby, a slight stiffness might have settled upon the gathering ifBetty had not made an effort. She applied herself to Lady Alanby andMrs. Manners at once, and ended by making them talk to each other. Whenthey left the tea table under the trees to look at the gardens, shewalked between them, playing upon the primeval horticultural passionswhich dominate the existence of all respectable and normal countryladies, until the gulf between them was temporarily bridged. This beingachieved, she adroitly passed them over to Lady Anstruthers, who, Nigelobserved with some curiosity, accepted the casual responsibility withoutmanifest discomfiture. 

To the aching Tommy the manner in which, a few minutes later, he foundhimself standing alone with Jane Lithcom in a path of clipped laurelswas almost bewilderingly simple. At the end of the laurel walk was apretty peep of the country, and Miss Vanderpoel had brought him to seeit. Nigel Anstruthers had been loitering behind with Jane and Mary. AsMiss Vanderpoel turned with him into the path, she stooped and picked ablossom from a clump of speedwell growing at the foot of a bit of wall. 

"Lady Jane's eyes are just the colour of this flower, " she said. 

"Yes, they are, " he answered, glancing down at the lovely little bluething as she held it in her hand. And then, with a thump of the heart, "Most people do not think she is pretty, but I--" quite desperately--"IDO. " His mood had become rash. 

"So do I, " Betty Vanderpoel answered. 

Then the others joined them, and Miss Vanderpoel paused to talk alittle--and when they went on she was with Mary and Nigel Anstruthers, and he was with Jane, walking slowly, and somehow the others meltedaway, turning in a perfectly natural manner into a side path. Their ownslow pace became slower. In fact, in a few moments, they were standingquite still between the green walls. Jane turned a little aside, andpicked off some small leaves, nervously. He saw the muslin on her chestlift quiveringly. 

"Oh, little Jane!" he said in a big, shaky whisper. The following eyesincontinently brimmed over. Some shining drops fell on the softness ofthe blue muslin. 

"Oh, Tommy, " giving up, "it's no use--talking at all. "

"You mustn't think--you mustn't think--ANYTHING, " he falteringlycommanded, drawing nearer, because it was impossible not to do it. 

What he really meant, though he did not know how decorously to say it, was that she must not think that he could be moved by any tall beauty, towards the splendour of whose possessions his revered grandmother mightbe driving him. 

"I am not thinking anything, " cried Jane in answer. "But she iseverything, and I am nothing. Just look at her--and then look at me, Tommy. "

"I'll look at you as long as you'll let me, " gulped Tommy, and he wasboy enough and man enough to put a hand on each of her shoulders, anddrown his longing in her brimming eyes. 

. . . . . 

Mary and Miss Vanderpoel were talking with a curious intimacy, inanother part of the garden, where they were together alone, Sir Nigelhaving been reattached to Lady Alanby. 

"You have known Sir Thomas a long time?" Betty had just said. 

"Since we were children. Jane reminded me at the Dunholms' ball that shehad played cricket with him when she was eight. "

"They have always liked each other?" Miss Vanderpoel suggested. 

Mary looked up at her, and the meeting of their eyes was frank torevelation. But for the clear girlish liking for herself she saw inBetty Vanderpoel's, Mary would have known her next speech to be ofimbecile bluntness. She had heard that Americans often had a queer, delightful understanding of unconventional things. This splendid girlwas understanding her. 

"Oh! You SEE!" she broke out. "You left them together on purpose!"

"Yes, I did. " And there was a comprehension so deep in her look thatMary knew it was deeper than her own, and somehow founded on somesubtler feeling than her own. "When two people want so much--care somuch to be together, " Miss Vanderpoel added quite slowly--even as if thewords rather forced themselves from her, "it seems as if the whole worldought to help them--everything in the world--the very wind, and rain, and sun, and stars--oh, things have no RIGHT to keep them apart. "

Mary stared at her, moved and fascinated. She scarcely knew that shecaught at her hand. 

"I have never been in the state that Jane is, " she poured forth. "And Ican't understand how she can be such a fool, but--but we care about eachother more than most girls do--perhaps because we have had no people. And it's the kind of thing there is no use talking against, it seems. It's killing the youngness in her. If it ends miserably, it will be asif she had had an illness, and got up from it a faded, done-for spinsterwith a stretch of hideous years to live. Her blue eyes will look likeboiled gooseberries, because she will have cried all the colour out ofthem. Oh! You UNDERSTAND! I see you do. "

Before she had finished both Miss Vanderpoel's hands were holding hers. 

"I do! I do, " she said. And she did, as a year ago she had not known shecould. "Is it Lady Alanby?" she ventured. 

"Yes. Tommy will be helplessly poor if she does not leave him her money. And she won't if he makes her angry. She is very determined. She willleave it to an awful cousin if she gets in a rage. And Tommy is notclever. He could never earn his living. Neither could Jane. They couldNEVER marry. You CAN'T defy relatives, and marry on nothing, unless youare a character in a book. "

"Has she liked Lady Jane in the past?" Miss Vanderpoel asked, as ifshe was, mentally, rapidly going over the ground, that she might quitecomprehend everything. 

"Yes. She used to make rather a pet of her. She didn't like me. She wastaken by Jane's meek, attentive, obedient ways. Jane was born a sweetlittle affectionate worm. Lady Alanby can't hate her, even now. She justpushes her out of her path. "

"Because?" said Betty Vanderpoel. 

Mary prefaced her answer with a brief, half-embarrassed laugh. 

"Because of YOU. "

"Because she thinks----?"

"I don't see how she can believe he has much of a chance. I don't thinkshe does--but she will never forgive him if he doesn't make a try atfinding out whether he has one or not. "

"It is very businesslike, " Betty made observation. 

Mary laughed. 

"We talk of American business outlook, " she said, "but very few ofus English people are dreamy idealists. We are of a coolness and adaring--when we are dealing with questions of this sort. I don't thinkyou can know the thing you have brought here. You descend on a dullcountry place, with your money and your looks, and you simply STAY andamuse yourself by doing extraordinary things, as if there was no Londonwaiting for you. Everyone knows this won't last. Next season you willbe presented, and have a huge success. You will be whirled about ina vortex, and people will sit on the edge, and cast big strong lines, baited with the most glittering things they can get together. You won'tbe able to get away. Lady Alanby knows there would be no chance forTommy then. It would be too idiotic to expect it. He must make his trynow. "

Their eyes met again, and Miss Vanderpoel looked neither shocked norangry, but an odd small shadow swept across her face. Mary, of course, did not know that she was thinking of the thing she had realised sooften--that it was not easy to detach one's self from the fact thatone was Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughter. As a result of it here one wasindecently and unwillingly disturbing the lives of innocent, unassuminglovers. 

"And so long as Sir Thomas has not tried--and found out--Lady Jane willbe made unhappy?"

"If he were to let you escape without trying, he would not be forgiven. His grandmother has had her own way all her life. "

"But suppose after I went away someone else came?"

Mary shook her head. 

"People like you don't HAPPEN in one neighbourhood twice in a lifetime. I am twenty-six and you are the first I have seen. "

"And he will only be safe if?"

Mary Lithcom nodded. 

"Yes--IF, " she answered. "It's silly--and frightful--but it is true. "

Miss Vanderpoel looked down on the grass a few moments, and then seemedto arrive at a decision. 

"He likes you? You can make him understand things?" she inquired. 

"Yes. "

"Then go and tell him that if he will come here and ask me a directquestion, I will give him a direct answer--which will satisfy LadyAlanby. "

Lady Mary caught her breath. 

"Do you know, you are the most wonderful girl I ever saw!" sheexclaimed. "But if you only knew what I feel about Janie!" And tearsrushed into her eyes. 

"I feel just the same thing about my sister, " said Miss Vanderpoel. "Ithink Rosy and Lady Jane are rather alike. "

. . . . . 

When Tommy tramped across the grass towards her he was turning red andwhite by turns, and looking somewhat like a young man who was beingmarched up to a cannon's mouth. It struck him that it was an Americankind of thing he was called upon to do, and he was not an American, butBritish from the top of his closely-cropped head to the rather thicksoles of his boots. He was, in truth, overwhelmed by his sense of hisinadequacy to the demands of the brilliantly conceived, but unheard-ofsituation. Joy and terror swept over his being in waves. 

The tall, proud, wood-nymph look of her as she stood under a tree, waiting for him, would have struck his courage dead on the spot andcaused him to turn and flee in anguish, if she had not made a littlemove towards him, with a heavenly, every-day humanness in her eyes. Theway she managed it was an amazing thing. He could never have managed itat all himself. 

She came forward and gave him her hand, and really it was HER hand whichheld his own comparatively steady. 

"It is for Lady Jane, " she said. "That prevents it from being ridiculousor improper. It is for Lady Jane. Her eyes, " with a soft-touched laugh, "are the colour of the blue speedwell I showed you. It is the colour ofbabies' eyes. And hers look as theirs do--as if they asked everybody notto hurt them. "

He actually fell upon his knee, and bending his head over her hand, kissed it half a dozen times with adoration. Good Lord, how she SAW andKNEW!

"If Jane were not Jane, and you were not YOU, " the words rushed fromhim, "it would be the most outrageous--the most impudent thing a manever had the cheek to do. "

"But it is not. " She did not draw her hand away, and oh, the girlishkindness of her smiling, supporting look. "You came to ask me if----"

"If you would marry me, Miss Vanderpoel, " his head bending over her handagain. "I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon. Oh Lord, I do. '

"I thank you for the compliment you pay me, " she answered. "I like youvery much, Sir Thomas--and I like you just now more than ever--but Icould not marry you. I should not make you happy, and I should not behappy myself. The truth is----" thinking a moment, "each of us reallybelongs to a different kind of person. And each of knows the fact. "

"God bless you, " he said. "I think you know everything in the world awoman can know--and remain an angel. "

It was an outburst of eloquence, and she took it in the prettiestway--with the prettiest laugh, which had in it no touch of mockery ordisbelief in him. 

"What I have said is quite final--if Lady Alanby should inquire, " shesaid--adding rather quickly, "Someone is coming. "

It pleased her to see that he did not hurry to his feet clumsily, buteven stood upright, with a shade of boyish dignity, and did not releaseher hand before he had bent his head low over it again. 

Sir Nigel was bringing with him Lady Alanby, Mrs. Manners, and his wife, and when Betty met his eyes, she knew at once that he had not made hisway to this particular garden without intention. He had discovered thatshe was with Tommy, and it had entertained him to break in upon them. 

"I did not intend to interrupt Sir Thomas at his devotions, " he remarkedto her after dinner. "Accept my apologies. "

"It did not matter in the least, thank you, " said Betty. 

. . . . . 

"I am glad to be able to say, Thomas, that you did not look an entirefool when you got up from your knees, as we came into the rose garden. "Thus Lady Alanby, as their carriage turned out of Stornham village. 

"I'm glad myself, " Tommy answered. 

"What were you doing there? Even if you were asking her to marry you, itwas not necessary to go that far. We are not in the seventeenth century. "

Then Tommy flushed. 

"I did not intend to do it. I could not help it. She was so--so niceabout everything. That girl is an angel. I told her so. "

"Very right and proper spirit to approach her in, " answered the oldwoman, watching him keenly. "Was she angel enough to say she would marryyou?"

Tommy, for some occult reason, had the courage to stare back into hisgrandmother's eyes, quite as if he were a man, and not a hobbledehoy, expecting to be bullied. 

"She does not want me, " he answered. "And I knew she wouldn't. Whyshould she? I did what you ordered me to do, and she answered me as Iknew she would. She might have snubbed me, but she has such a way withher--such a way of saying things and understanding, that--that--well, Ifound myself on one knee, kissing her hand--as if I was being presentedat court. "

Old Lady Alanby looked out on the passing landscape. 

"Well, you did your best, " she summed the matter up at last, "if youwent down on your knees involuntarily. If you had done it on purpose, itwould have been unpardonable. "

CHAPTER XXXIV

RED GODWYN

Stornham Court had taken its proper position in the county as a placewhich was equal to social exchange in the matter of entertainment. SirNigel and Lady Anstruthers had given a garden party, according to thedecrees of the law obtaining in country neighbourhoods. The curiosityto behold Miss Vanderpoel, and the change which had been worked in thewell-known desolation and disrepair, precluded the possibility of therefusal of any invitations sent, the recipient being in his or herright mind, and sound in wind and limb. That astonishing things had beenaccomplished, and that the party was a successful affair, could not butbe accepted as truths. Garden parties had been heard of, were a triflerepetitional, and even dull, but at this one there was real music andreal dancing, and clever entertainments were given at intervals in agreen-embowered little theatre, erected for the occasion. These wereagreeable additions to mere food and conversation, which were capable ofpalling. 

To the garden party the Anstruthers did not confine themselves. There were dinner parties at Stornham, and they also were successfulfunctions. The guests were of those who make for the success of suchentertainments. 

"I called upon Mount Dunstan this afternoon, " Sir Nigel said oneevening, before the first of these dinners. "He might expect it, as oneis asking him to dine. I wish him to be asked. The Dunholms have takenhim up so tremendously that no festivity seems complete without him. "

He had been invited to the garden party, and had appeared, but Bettyhad seen little of him. It is easy to see little of a guest at anout-of-door festivity. In assisting Rosalie to attend to her visitorsshe had been much occupied, but she had known that she might have seenmore of him, if he had intended that it should be so. He did not--forreasons of his own--intend that it should be so, and this she becameaware of. So she walked, played in the bowling green, danced and talkedwith Westholt, Tommy Alanby and others. 

"He does not want to talk to me. He will not, if he can avoid it, " waswhat she said to herself. 

She saw that he rather sought out Mary Lithcom, who was not accustomedto receiving special attention. The two walked together, dancedtogether, and in adjoining chairs watched the performance in theembowered theatre. Lady Mary enjoyed her companion very much, but shewondered why he had attached himself to her. 

Betty Vanderpoel asked herself what they talked to each other about, and did not suspect the truth, which was that they talked a good deal ofherself. 

"Have you seen much of Miss Vanderpoel?" Lady Mary had begun by asking. 

"I have SEEN her a good deal, as no doubt you have. "

Lady Mary's plain face expressed a somewhat touched reflectiveness. 

"Do you know, " she said, "that the garden parties have been a differentthing this whole summer, just because one always knew one would see herat them?"

A short laugh from Mount Dunstan. 

"Jane and I have gone to every garden party within twenty miles, eversince we left the schoolroom. And we are very tired of them. But thisyear we have quite cheered up. When we are dressing to go to somethingdull, we say to each other, 'Well, at any rate, Miss Vanderpoel will bethere, and we shall see what she has on, and how her things are made, 'and that's something--besides the fun of watching people make up to her, and hearing them talk about the men who want to marry her, and wonderwhich one she will take. She will not take anyone in this place, " thenice turned-up nose slightly suggesting a derisive sniff. "Who is therewho is suitable?"

Mount Dunstan laughed shortly again. 

"How do you know I am not an aspirant myself?" he said. He had amirthless sense of enjoyment in his own brazenness. Only he himself knewhow brazen the speech was. 

Lady Mary looked at him with entire composure. 

"I am quite sure you are not an aspirant for anybody. And I happento know that you dislike moneyed international marriages. You are soobviously British that, even if I had not been told that, I should knowit was true. Miss Vanderpoel herself knows it is true. "

"Does she?"

"Lady Alanby spoke of it to Sir Nigel, and I heard Sir Nigel tell her. "

"Exactly the kind of unnecessary thing he would be likely to repeat. "He cast the subject aside as if it were a worthless superfluity andwent on: "When you say there is no one suitable, you surely forget LordWestholt. "

"Yes, it's true I forgot him for the moment. But--" with a laugh--"onerather feels as if she would require a royal duke or something of thatsort. "

"You think she expects that kind of thing?" rather indifferently. 

"She? She doesn't think of the subject. She simply thinks of otherthings--of Lady Anstruthers and Ughtred, of the work at Stornham and thevillage life, which gives her new emotions and interest. She also thinksabout being nice to people. She is nicer than any girl I know. "

"You feel, however, she has a right to expect it?" still without morethan a casual air of interest. 

"Well, what do you feel yourself?" said Lady Mary. "Women who look likethat--even when they are not millionairesses--usually marry whom theychoose. I do not believe that the two beautiful Miss Gunnings rolledinto one would have made anything as undeniable as she is. One has seenportraits of them. Look at her as she stands there talking to Tommy andLord Dunholm!"

Internally Mount Dunstan was saying: "I am looking at her, thank you, "and setting his teeth a little. 

But Lady Mary was launched upon a subject which swept her along with it, and she--so to speak--ground the thing in. 

"Look at the turn of her head! Look at her mouth and chin, and her eyeswith the lashes sweeping over them when she looks down! You must havenoticed the effect when she lifts them suddenly to look at you. It's soodd and lovely that it--it almost----"

"Almost makes you jump, " ended Mount Dunstan drily. 

She did not laugh and, in fact, her expression became rathersympathetically serious. 

"Ah, " she said, "I believe you feel a sort of rebellion against theunfairness of the way things are dealt out. It does seem unfair, ofcourse. It would be perfectly disgraceful--if she were different. Ihad moments of almost hating her until one day not long ago she didsomething so bewitchingly kind and understanding of other people'sfeelings that I gave up. It was clever, too, " with a laugh, "clever anddaring. If she were a young man she would make a dashing soldier. "

She did not give him the details of the story, but went on to sayin effect what she had said to Betty herself of the inevitableincidentalness of her stay in the country. If she had not evidently cometo Stornham this year with a purpose, she would have spent the seasonin London and done the usual thing. Americans were generally presentedpromptly, if they had any position--sometimes when they had not. LadyAlanby had heard that the fact that she was with her sister had awakenedcuriosity and people were talking about her. 

"Lady Alanby said in that dry way of hers that the arrival of anunmarried American fortune in England was becoming rather like the visitof an unmarried royalty. People ask each other what it means and beginto arrange for it. So far, only the women have come, but Lady Alanbysays that is because the men have had no time to do anything but stayat home and make the fortunes. She believes that in another generationthere will be a male leisure class, and then it will swoop down too, andmarry people. She was very sharp and amusing about it. She said it wouldhelp them to rid themselves of a plethora of wealth and keep them frombursting. "

She was an amiable, if unsentimental person, Mary Lithcom--and was, quite without ill nature, expressing the consensus of public opinion. These young women came to the country with something practicalto exchange in these days, and as there were men who had certainequivalents to offer, so also there were men who had none, and whomdecency should cause to stand aside. Mount Dunstan knew that when shehad said, "Who is there who is suitable?" any shadow of a thought ofhimself as being in the running had not crossed her mind. And this wasnot only for the reasons she had had the ready composure to name, butfor one less conquerable. 

Later, having left Mary Lithcom, he decided to take a turn by himself. He had done his duty as a masculine guest. He had conversed with youngwomen and old ones, had danced, visited gardens and greenhouses, andtaken his part in all things. Also he had, in fact, reached a point whena few minutes of solitude seemed a good thing. He found himself turninginto the clipped laurel walk, where Tommy Alanby had stood with JaneLithcom, and he went to the end of it and stood looking out on the view. 

"Look at the turn of her head, " Lady Mary had said. "Look at her mouthand chin. " And he had been looking at them the whole afternoon, notbecause he had intended to do so, but because it was not possible toprevent himself from doing it. 

This was one of the ironies of fate. Orthodox doctrine might suggestthat it was to teach him that his past rebellion had been undue. Orthodox doctrine was ever ready with these soothing littleexplanations. He had raged and sulked at Destiny, and now he had beengiven something to rage for. 

"No one knows anything about it until it takes him by the throat, "he was thinking, "and until it happens to a man he has no rightto complain. I was not starving before. I was not hungering andthirsting--in sight of food and water. I suppose one of the most awfulthings in the world is to feel this and know it is no use. "

He was not in the condition to reason calmly enough to see that theremight be one chance in a thousand that it was of use. At such times themost intelligent of men and women lose balance and mental perspicacity. A certain degree of unreasoning madness possesses them. They see toomuch and too little. There were, it was true, a thousand chances againsthim, but there was one for him--the chance that selection might beon his side. He had not that balance of thought left which might havesuggested to him that he was a man young and powerful, and filled withan immense passion which might count for something. All he saw wasthat he was notably in the position of the men whom he had privatelydisdained when they helped themselves by marriage. Such marriages hehad held were insults to the manhood of any man and the womanhood ofany woman. In such unions neither party could respect himself orhis companion. They must always in secret doubt each other, fret atthemselves, feel distaste for the whole thing. Even if a man loved sucha woman, and the feeling was mutual, to whom would it occur to believeit--to see that they were not gross and contemptible? To no one. Wouldit have occurred to himself that such an extenuating circumstance waspossible? Certainly it would not. Pig-headed pride and obstinacy itmight be, but he could not yet face even the mere thought of it--evenif his whole position had not been grotesque. Because, after all, it wasgrotesque that he should even argue with himself. She--before his eyesand the eyes of all others--the most desirable of women; people dinningit in one's ears that she was surrounded by besiegers who waited for herto hold out her sceptre, and he--well, what was he! Not that his mentalattitude was that of a meek and humble lover who felt himself unworthyand prostrated himself before her shrine with prayers--he was, onthe contrary, a stout and obstinate Briton finding his stubbornly-heldbeliefs made as naught by a certain obsession--an intolerable longingwhich wakened with him in the morning, which sank into troubled sleepwith him at night--the longing to see her, to speak to her, to standnear her, to breathe the air of her. And possessed by this--full of theoverpowering strength of it--was a man likely to go to a woman and say, "Give your life and desirableness to me; and incidentally support me, feed me, clothe me, keep the roof over my head, as if I were an impotentbeggar"?

"No, by God!" he said. "If she thinks of me at all it shall be as a man. No, by God, I will not sink to that!"

. . . . . 

A moving touch of colour caught his eye. It was the rose of a parasolseen above the laurel hedge, as someone turned into the walk. He knewthe colour of it and expected to see other parasols and hear voices. Butthere was no sound, and unaccompanied, the wonderful rose-thing movedtowards him. 

"The usual things are happening to me, " was his thought as it advanced. "I am hot and cold, and just now my heart leaped like a rabbit. It wouldbe wise to walk off, but I shall not do it. I shall stay here, becauseI am no longer a reasoning being. I suppose that a horse who refuses toback out of his stall when his stable is on fire feels something of thesame thing. "

When she saw him she made an involuntary-looking pause, and thenrecovering herself, came forward. 

"I seem to have come in search of you, " she said. "You ought to beshowing someone the view really--and so ought I. "

"Shall we show it to each other?" was his reply. 

"Yes. " And she sat down on the stone seat which had been placed for thecomfort of view lovers. "I am a little tired--just enough to feel thatto slink away for a moment alone would be agreeable. It IS slinking toleave Rosalie to battle with half the county. But I shall only stay afew minutes. "

She sat still and gazed at the beautiful lands spread before her, butthere was no stillness in her mind, neither was there stillness in his. He did not look at the view, but at her, and he was asking himself whathe should be saying to her if he were such a man as Westholt. Thoughhe had boldness enough, he knew that no man--even though he is free tospeak the best and most passionate thoughts of his soul--could be surethat he would gain what he desired. The good fortune of Westholt, or ofany other, could but give him one man's fair chance. 

But having that chance, he knew he should not relinquish it soon. Thereswept back into his mind the story of the marriage of his ancestor, RedGodwyn, and he laughed low in spite of himself. 

Miss Vanderpoel looked up at him quickly. 

"Please tell me about it, if it is very amusing, " she said. 

"I wonder if it will amuse you, " was his answer. "Do you like savageromance?"

"Very much. "

It might seem a propos de rien, but he did not care in the least. Hewanted to hear what she would say. 

"An ancestor of mine--a certain Red Godwyn--was a barbarian immensely tomy taste. He became enamoured of rumours of the beauty of the daughterand heiress of his bitterest enemy. In his day, when one wanted a thing, one rode forth with axe and spear to fight for it. "

"A simple and alluring method, " commented Betty. "What was her name?"

She leaned in light ease against the stone back of her seat, the roselight cast by her parasol faintly flushed her. The silence of theirretreat seemed accentuated by its background of music from the gardens. They smiled a second bravely into each other's eyes, then their glancesbecame entangled, as they had done for a moment when they had stoodtogether in Mount Dunstan park. For one moment each had been heldprisoner then--now it was for longer. 

"Alys of the Sea-Blue Eyes. "

Betty tried to release herself, but could not. 

"Sometimes the sea is grey, " she said. 

His own eyes were still in hers. 

"Hers were the colour of the sea on a day when the sun shines on it, and there are large fleece-white clouds floating in the blue above. Theysparkled and were often like bluebells under water. "

"Bluebells under water sounds entrancing, " said Betty. 

He caught his breath slightly. 

"They were--entrancing, " he said. "That was evidently the devil ofit--saving your presence. "

"I have never objected to the devil, " said Betty. "He is an energetic, hard-working creature and paints himself an honest black. Please tell methe rest. "

"Red Godwyn went forth, and after a bloody fight took his enemy'scastle. If we still lived in like simple, honest times, I should takeDunholm Castle in the same way. He also took Alys of the Eyes and boreher away captive. "

"From such incidents developed the germs of the desire for femalesuffrage, " Miss Vanderpoel observed gently. 

"The interest of the story lies in the fact that apparently the savagewas either epicure or sentimentalist, or both. He did not treat the ladyill. He shut her in a tower chamber overlooking his courtyard, and afterallowing her three days to weep, he began his barbarian wooing. Arrayinghimself in splendour he ordered her to appear before him. He sat uponthe dais in his banquet hall, his retainers gathered about him--a greatfeast spread. In archaic English we are told that the board groanedbeneath the weight of golden trenchers and flagons. Minstrels played andsang, while he displayed all his splendour. "

"They do it yet, " said Miss Vanderpoel, "in London and New York andother places. "

"The next day, attended by his followers, he took her with him to rideover his lands. When she returned to her tower chamber she had learnedhow powerful and great a chieftain he was. She 'laye softely' and wasattended by many maidens, but she had no entertainment but to lookout upon the great green court. There he arranged games and trials ofstrength and skill, and she saw him bigger, stronger, and more splendidthan any other man. He did not even lift his eyes to her window. He alsosent her daily a rich gift. "

"How long did this go on?"

"Three months. At the end of that time he commanded her presence againin his banquet hall. He told her the gates were opened, the drawbridgedown and an escort waiting to take her back to her father's lands, ifshe would. "

"What did she do?"

"She looked at him long--and long. She turned proudly away--in thesea-blue eyes were heavy and stormy tears, which seeing----"

"Ah, he saw them?" from Miss Vanderpoel. 

"Yes. And seizing her in his arms caught her to his breast, calling fora priest to make them one within the hour. I am quoting the chronicle. Iwas fifteen when I read it first. "

"It is spirited, " said Betty, "and Red Godwyn was almost modern in hismethods. "

While professing composure and lightness of mood, the spell which worksbetween two creatures of opposite sex when in such case wrought in themand made them feel awkward and stiff. When each is held apart fromthe other by fate, or will, or circumstance, the spell is a stupefyingthing, deadening even the clearness of sight and wit. 

"I must slink back now, " Betty said, rising. "Will you slink back withme to give me countenance? I have greatly liked Red Godwyn. "

So it occurred that when Nigel Anstruthers saw them again it was as theycrossed the lawn together, and people looked up from ices and cups oftea to follow their slow progress with questioning or approving eyes. 

CHAPTER XXXV

THE TIDAL WAVE

There was only one man to speak to, and it being the nature of thebeast--so he harshly put it to himself--to be absolutely impelled tospeech at such times, Mount Dunstan laid bare his breast to him, tearingaside all the coverings pride would have folded about him. The man was, of course, Penzance, and the laying bare was done the evening after thestory of Red Godwyn had been told in the laurel walk. 

They had driven home together in a profound silence, the elder man asdeep in thought as the younger one. Penzance was thinking that therewas a calmness in having reached sixty and in knowing that the pain andhunger of earlier years would not tear one again. And yet, he himselfwas not untorn by that which shook the man for whom his affection hadgrown year by year. It was evidently very bad--very bad, indeed. Hewondered if he would speak of it, and wished he would, not because hehimself had much to say in answer, but because he knew that speech wouldbe better than hard silence. 

"Stay with me to-night, " Mount Dunstan said, as they drove through theavenue to the house. "I want you to dine with me and sit and talk late. I am not sleeping well. "

They often dined together, and the vicar not infrequently slept at theMount for mere companionship's sake. Sometimes they read, sometimes wentover accounts, planned economies, and balanced expenditures. A chamberstill called the Chaplain's room was always kept in readiness. It hadbeen used in long past days, when a household chaplain had sat belowthe salt and left his patron's table before the sweets were served. They dined together this night almost as silently as they had drivenhomeward, and after the meal they went and sat alone in the library. 

The huge room was never more than dimly lighted, and the far-off cornersseemed more darkling than usual in the insufficient illumination of thefar from brilliant lamps. Mount Dunstan, after standing upon the hearthfor a few minutes smoking a pipe, which would have compared ill with oldDoby's Sunday splendour, left his coffee cup upon the mantel and beganto tramp up and down--out of the dim light into the shadows, back out ofthe shadows into the poor light. 

"You know, " he said, "what I think about most things--you know what Ifeel. "

"I think I do. "

"You know what I feel about Englishmen who brand themselves as half menand marked merchandise by selling themselves and their houses and theirblood to foreign women who can buy them. You know how savage I have beenat the mere thought of it. And how I have sworn----"

"Yes, I know what you have sworn, " said Mr. Penzance. 

It struck him that Mount Dunstan shook and tossed his head rather like abull about to charge an enemy. 

"You know how I have felt myself perfectly within my rights when Iblackguarded such men and sneered at such women--taking it for grantedthat each was merchandise of his or her kind and beneath contempt. I amnot a foul-mouthed man, but I have used gross words and rough ones todescribe them. "

"I have heard you. "

Mount Dunstan threw back his head with a big, harsh laugh. He came outof the shadow and stood still. 

"Well, " he said, "I am in love--as much in love as any lunatic everwas--with the daughter of Reuben S. Vanderpoel. There you are--and there_I_ am!"

"It has seemed to me, " Penzance answered, "that it was almostinevitable. "

"My condition is such that it seems to ME that it would be inevitable inthe case of any man. When I see another man look at her my blood racesthrough my veins with an awful fear and a wicked heat. That will showyou the point I have reached. " He walked over to the mantelpiece andlaid his pipe down with a hand Penzance saw was unsteady. "In turningover the pages of the volume of Life, " he said, "I have come upon theBook of Revelations. "

"That is true, " Penzance said. 

"Until one has come upon it one is an inchoate fool, " Mount Dunstan wenton. "And afterwards one is--for a time at least--a sort of madman ravingto one's self, either in or out of a straitjacket--as the case may be. Iam wearing the jacket--worse luck! Do you know anything of the state ofa man who cannot utter the most ordinary words to a woman without beingconscious that he is making mad love to her? This afternoon I foundmyself telling Miss Vanderpoel the story of Red Godwyn and Alys of theSea-Blue Eyes. I did not make a single statement having any connectionwith myself, but throughout I was calling on her to think of herself andof me as of those two. I saw her in my own arms, with the tears of Alyson her lashes. I was making mad love, though she was unconscious of mydoing it. "

"How do you know she was unconscious?" remarked Mr. Penzance. "You are avery strong man. "

Mount Dunstan's short laugh was even a little awful, because it meant somuch. He let his forehead drop a moment on to his arms as they rested onthe mantelpiece. 

"Oh, my God!" he said. But the next instant his head lifted itself. "Itis the mystery of the world--this thing. A tidal wave gathering itselfmountain high and crashing down upon one's helplessness might be aseasily defied. It is supposed to disperse, I believe. That has been saidso often that there must be truth in it. In twenty or thirty or fortyyears one is told one will have got over it. But one must live throughthe years--one must LIVE through them--and the chief feature of one'smadness is that one is convinced that they will last forever. "

"Go on, " said Mr. Penzance, because he had paused and stood biting hislip. "Say all that you feel inclined to say. It is the best thing youcan do. I have never gone through this myself, but I have seen and knownthe amazingness of it for many years. I have seen it come and go. "

"Can you imagine, " Mount Dunstan said, "that the most damnable thoughtof all--when a man is passing through it--is the possibility of itsGOING? Anything else rather than the knowledge that years could changeor death could end it! Eternity seems only to offer space for it. Oneknows--but one does not believe. It does something to one's brain. "

"No scientist, howsoever profound, has ever discovered what, " the vicarmused aloud. 

"The Book of Revelations has shown to me how--how MAGNIFICENT life mightbe!" Mount Dunstan clenched and unclenched his hands, his eyes flashing. "Magnificent--that is the word. To go to her on equal ground to take herhands and speak one's passion as one would--as her eyes answered. Oh, one would know! To bring her home to this place--having made it as itonce was--to live with her here--to be WITH her as the sun rose and setand the seasons changed--with the joy of life filling each of them. SHEis the joy of Life--the very heart of it. You see where I am--you see!"

"Yes, " Penzance answered. He saw, and bowed his head, and Mount Dunstanknew he wished him to continue. 

"Sometimes--of late--it has been too much for me and I have given freerein to my fancy--knowing that there could never be more than fancy. I was doing it this afternoon as I watched her move about among thepeople. And Mary Lithcom began to talk about her. " He smiled a grimsmile. "Perhaps it was an intervention of the gods to drag me down frommy impious heights. She was quite unconscious that she was drivinghome facts like nails--the facts that every man who wanted money wantedReuben S. Vanderpoel's daughter--and that the young lady, not beingdull, was not unaware of the obvious truth! And that men with prizesto offer were ready to offer them in a proper manner. Also that she wasonly a brilliant bird of passage, who, in a few months, would be caughtin the dazzling net of the great world. And that even Lord Westholtand Dunholm Castle were not quite what she might expect. Lady Mary wassincerely interested. She drove it home in her ardour. She told me toLOOK at her--to LOOK at her mouth and chin and eyelashes--and to makenote of what she stood for in a crowd of ordinary people. I could havelaughed aloud with rage and self-mockery. "

Mr. Penzance was resting his forehead on his hand, his elbow on hischair's arm. 

"This is profound unhappiness, " he said. "It is profound unhappiness. "

Mount Dunstan answered by a brusque gesture. 

"But it will pass away, " went on Penzance, "and not as you fear itmust, " in answer to another gesture, fiercely impatient. "Not that way. Some day--or night--you will stand here together, and you will tell herall you have told me. I KNOW it will be so. "

"What!" Mount Dunstan cried out. But the words had been spoken with suchabsolute conviction that he felt himself become pale. 

It was with the same conviction that Penzance went on. 

"I have spent my quiet life in thinking of the forces for which we findno explanation--of the causes of which we only see the effects. Long agoin looking at you in one of my pondering moments I said to myself thatYOU were of the Primeval Force which cannot lose its way--which sweepsa clear pathway for itself as it moves--and which cannot be held back. I said to you just now that because you are a strong man you cannot besure that a woman you are--even in spite of yourself--making mad loveto, is unconscious that you are doing it. You do not know what yourstrength lies in. I do not, the woman does not, but we must all feelit, whether we comprehend it or no. You said of this fine creature, sometime since, that she was Life, and you have just said again something ofthe same kind. It is quite true. She is Life, and the joy of it. You aretwo strong forces, and you are drawing together. "

He rose from his chair, and going to Mount Dunstan put his hand on hisshoulder, his fine old face singularly rapt and glowing. 

"She is drawing you and you are drawing her, and each is too strong torelease the other. I believe that to be true. Both bodies and souls doit. They are not separate things. They move on their way as the starsdo--they move on their way. "

As he spoke, Mount Dunstan's eyes looked into his fixedly. Then theyturned aside and looked down upon the mantel against which he wasleaning. He aimlessly picked up his pipe and laid it down again. He waspaler than before, but he said no single word. 

"You think your reasons for holding aloof from her are the reasons of aman. " Mr. Penzance's voice sounded to him remote. "They are the reasonsof a man's pride--but that is not the strongest thing in the world. Itonly imagines it is. You think that you cannot go to her as a luckierman could. You think nothing shall force you to speak. Ask yourselfwhy. It is because you believe that to show your heart would be to placeyourself in the humiliating position of a man who might seem to her andto the world to be a base fellow. "

"An impudent, pushing, base fellow, " thrust in Mount Dunstan fiercely. "One of a vulgar lot. A thing fancying even its beggary worth buying. What has a man--whose very name is hung with tattered ugliness--tooffer?"

Penzance's hand was still on his shoulder and his look at him was long. 

"His very pride, " he said at last, "his very obstinacy and haughty, stubborn determination. Those broken because the other feeling is thestronger and overcomes him utterly. "

A flush leaped to Mount Dunstan's forehead. He set both elbows on themantel and let his forehead fall on his clenched fists. And the savageBriton rose in him. 

"No!" he said passionately. "By God, no!"

"You say that, " said the older man, "because you have not yet reachedthe end of your tether. Unhappy as you are, you are not unhappyenough. Of the two, you love yourself the more--your pride and yourstubbornness. "

"Yes, " between his teeth. "I suppose I retain yet a sort of respect--andaffection--for my pride. May God leave it to me!"

Penzance felt himself curiously exalted; he knew himself unreasoninglypassing through an oddly unpractical, uplifted moment, in whoseimpelling he singularly believed. 

"You are drawing her and she is drawing you, " he said. "Perhaps you dreweach other across seas. You will stand here together and you will tellher of this--on this very spot. "

Mount Dunstan changed his position and laughed roughly, as if to rousehimself. He threw out his arm in a big, uneasy gesture, taking in theroom. 

"Oh, come, " he said. "You talk like a seer. Look about you. Look! I amto bring her here!"

"If it is the primeval thing she will not care. Why should she?"

"She! Bring a life like hers to this! Or perhaps you mean that her ownwealth might make her surroundings becoming--that a man would endurethat?"

"If it is the primeval thing, YOU would not care. You would haveforgotten that you two had ever lived an hour apart. "

He spoke with a deep, moved gravity--almost as if he were speaking ofthe first Titan building of the earth. Mount Dunstan staring at hisdelicate, insistent, elderly face, tried to laugh again--and failedbecause the effort seemed actually irreverent. It was a singularhypnotic moment, indeed. He himself was hypnotised. A flashlight ofnew vision blazed before him and left him dumb. He took up his pipehurriedly, and with still unsteady fingers began to refill it. When itwas filled he lighted it, and then without a word of answer left thehearth and began to tramp up and down the room again--out of the dimlight into the shadows, back out of the shadows and into the dim lightagain, his brow working and his teeth holding hard his amber mouthpiece. 

The morning awakening of a normal healthy human creature should be ajoyous thing. After the soul's long hours of release from the burden ofthe body, its long hours spent--one can only say in awe at the mysteryof it, "away, away"--in flight, perhaps, on broad, tireless wings, beating softly in fair, far skies, breathing pure life, to be broughtback to renew the strength of each dawning day; after these hours ofquiescence of limb and nerve and brain, the morning life returningshould unseal for the body clear eyes of peace at least. In time tocome this will be so, when the soul's wings are stronger, the body moreattuned to infinite law and the race a greater power--but as yet itoften seems as though the winged thing came back a lagging and reluctantrebel against its fate and the chain which draws it back a prisoner toits toil. 

It had seemed so often to Mount Dunstan--oftener than not. Youthshould not know such awakening, he was well aware; but he had known itsometimes even when he had been a child, and since his return from hisill-starred struggle in America, the dull and reluctant facing of theday had become a habit. Yet on the morning after his talk with hisfriend--the curious, uplifted, unpractical talk which had seemed tohypnotise him--he knew when he opened his eyes to the light that he hadawakened as a man should awake--with an unreasoning sense of pleasurein the life and health of his own body, as he stretched mighty limbs, strong after the night's rest, and feeling that there was work to bedone. It was all unreasoning--there was no more to be done than on thoseother days which he had wakened to with bitterness, because they seemeduseless and empty of any worth--but this morning the mere light of thesun was of use, the rustle of the small breeze in the leaves, thesoft floating past of the white clouds, the mere fact that the greatblind-faced, stately house was his own, that he could tramp far overlands which were his heritage, unfed though they might be, and that thevery rustics who would pass him in the lanes were, so to speak, his ownpeople: that he had name, life, even the common thing of hunger for hismorning food--it was all of use. 

An alluring picture--of a certain deep, clear bathing pool in the parkrose before him. It had not called to him for many a day, and now he sawits dark blueness gleam between flags and green rushes in its encirclingthickness of shrubs and trees. 

He sprang from his bed, and in a few minutes was striding across thegrass of the park, his towels over his arm, his head thrown back as hedrank in the freshness of the morning-scented air. It was scented withdew and grass and the breath of waking trees and growing things; earlytwitters and thrills were to be heard here and there, insisting onmorning joyfulness; rabbits frisked about among the fine-grassedhummocks of their warren and, as he passed, scuttled back into theirholes, with a whisking of short white tails, at which he laughed withfriendly amusement. Cropping stags lifted their antlered heads, andfawns with dappled sides and immense lustrous eyes gazed at him withoutactual fear, even while they sidled closer to their mothers. A skylarkspringing suddenly from the grass a few yards from his feet made himstop short once and stand looking upward and listening. Who could passby a skylark at five o'clock on a summer's morning--the little, heavenlylight-heart circling and wheeling, showering down diamonds, showeringdown pearls, from its tiny pulsating, trilling throat?

"Do you know why they sing like that? It is because all but the joy ofthings has been kept hidden from them. They knew nothing but life andflight and mating, and the gold of the sun. So they sing. " That she hadonce said. 

He listened until the jewelled rain seemed to have fallen into his soul. Then he went on his way smiling as he knew he had never smiled in hislife before. He knew it because he realised that he had never beforefelt the same vigorous, light normality of spirit, the same sense ofbeing as other men. It was as though something had swept a great clearspace about him, and having room for air he breathed deep and was gladof the commonest gifts of being. 

The bathing pool had been the greatest pleasure of his uncared-forboyhood. No one knew which long passed away Mount Dunstan had made it. The oldest villager had told him that it had "allus ben there, " even inhis father's time. Since he himself had known it he had seen that it waskept at its best. 

Its dark blue depths reflected in their pellucid clearness the waterplants growing at its edge and the enclosing shrubs and trees. The turfbordering it was velvet-thick and green, and a few flag-steps led downto the water. Birds came there to drink and bathe and preen and dresstheir feathers. He knew there were often nests in the bushes--sometimesthe nests of nightingales who filled the soft darkness or moonlight ofearly June with the wonderfulness of nesting song. Sometimes a strayingfawn poked in a tender nose, and after drinking delicately stole away, as if it knew itself a trespasser. 

To undress and plunge headlong into the dark sapphire water was arapturous thing. He swam swiftly and slowly by turns, he floated, looking upward at heaven's blue, listening to birds' song and inhalingall the fragrance of the early day. Strength grew in him and life pulsedas the water lapped his limbs. He found himself thinking with pleasureof a long walk he intended to take to see a farmer he must talk to abouthis hop gardens; he found himself thinking with pleasure of other thingsas simple and common to everyday life--such things as he ordinarilyfaced merely because he must, since he could not afford an experiencedbailiff. He was his own bailiff, his own steward, merely, he had oftenthought, an unsuccessful farmer of half-starved lands. But this morningneither he nor they seemed so starved, and--for no reason--there was afuture of some sort. 

He emerged from his pool glowing, the turf feeling like velvet beneathhis feet, a fine light in his eyes. 

"Yes, " he said, throwing out his arms in a lordly stretch of physicalwell-being, "it might be a magnificent thing--mere strong living. THISis magnificent. "

CHAPTER XXXVI

BY THE ROADSIDE EVERYWHERE

His breakfast and the talk over it with Penzance seemed good things. Itsuddenly had become worth while to discuss the approaching hop harvestand the yearly influx of the hop pickers from London. Yesterday thesubject had appeared discouraging enough. The great hop gardens of theestate had been in times past its most prolific source of agriculturalrevenue and the boast and wonder of the hop-growing county. The neglectand scant food of the lean years had cost them their reputation. Eachseason they had needed smaller bands of "hoppers, " and their standardhad been lowered. It had been his habit to think of them gloomily, asof hopeless and irretrievable loss. Because this morning, for a remotereason, the pulse of life beat strong in him he was taking a new view. Might not study of the subject, constant attention and the applicationof all available resource to one end produce appreciable results? Theidea presented itself in the form of a thing worth thinking of. 

"It would provide an outlook and give one work to do, " he put it to hiscompanion. "To have a roof over one's head, a sound body, and work todo, is not so bad. Such things form the whole of G. Selden's cheerfulaim. His spirit is alight within me. I will walk over and talk toBolter. "

Bolter was a farmer whose struggle to make ends meet was almost too muchfor him. Holdings whose owners, either through neglect or lack of money, have failed to do their duty as landlords in the matter of repairs offarmhouses, outbuildings, fences, and other things, gradually fall intopoor hands. Resourceful and prosperous farmers do not care to hold landsunder unprosperous landlords. There were farms lying vacant on the MountDunstan estate, there were others whose tenants were uncertain rentpayers or slipshod workers or dishonest in small ways. Waste or saleof the fertiliser which should have been given to the soil as its due, neglect in the case of things whose decay meant depreciation of propertyand expense to the landlord, were dishonesties. But Mount Dunstan knewthat if he turned out Thorn and Fittle, whom no watching could whollyfrustrate in their tricks, Under Mount Farm and Oakfield Rise wouldstand empty for many a year. But for his poverty Bolter would have beena good tenant enough. He was in trouble now because, though his hopspromised well, he faced difficulties in the matter of "pickers. " Lastyear he had not been able to pay satisfactory prices in return forlabour, and as a result the prospect of securing good workers was anunpromising one. 

The hordes of men, women, and children who flock year after year tothe hop-growing districts know each other. They learn also which maybe called the good neighbourhoods and which the bad; the gardens whoseholders are considered satisfactory as masters, and those who areundesirable. They know by experience or report where the best "huts" areprovided, where tents are supplied, and where one must get along as onecan. 

Generally the regular flocks are under a "captain, " who gathers hisfollowers each season, manages them and looks after their interests andtheir employers'. In some cases the same captain brings his regiment tothe same gardens year after year, and ends by counting himself as of thesoil and almost of the family of his employer. Each hard, thick-foggedwinter they fight through in their East End courts and streets, theylook forward to the open-air weeks spent between long, narrow greengroves of tall garlanded poles, whose wreathings hang thick with freshand pungent-scented hop clusters. Children play "'oppin" in dingy roomsand alleys, and talk to each other of days when the sun shone hot andbirds were singing and flowers smelling sweet in the hedgerows; ofothers when the rain streamed down and made mud of the soft earth, andyet there was pleasure in the gipsying life, and high cheer in the fireof sticks built in the field by some bold spirit, who hung over it atin kettle to boil for tea. They never forgot the gentry they had caughtsight of riding or driving by on the road, the parson who came to talk, and the occasional groups of ladies from the "great house" who came intothe gardens to walk about and look at the bins and ask queer questionsin their gentry-sounding voices. They never knew anything, and theyalways seemed to be entertained. Sometimes there were enterprising, laughing ones, who asked to be shown how to strip the hops into thebins, and after being shown played at the work for a little while, taking off their gloves and showing white fingers with rings on. Theyalways looked as if they had just been washed, and as if all of theirclothes were fresh from the tub, and when anyone stood near them itwas observable that they smelt nice. Generally they gave pennies to thechildren before they left the garden, and sometimes shillings to thewomen. The hop picking was, in fact, a wonderful blend of work andholiday combined. 

Mount Dunstan had liked the "hopping" from his first memories of it. Hecould recall his sensations of welcoming a renewal of interesting thingswhen, season after season, he had begun to mark the early stragglers onthe road. The stragglers were not of the class gathered under captains. They were derelicts--tramps who spent their summers on the highways andtheir winters in such workhouses as would take them in; tinkers, whodiffer from the tramps only because sometimes they owned a rickety cartfull of strange household goods and drunken tenth-hand perambulatorspiled with dirty bundles and babies, these last propelled by robust orworn-out, slatternly women, who sat by the small roadside fire stirringthe battered pot or tending the battered kettle, when resting time hadcome and food must be cooked. Gipsies there were who had cooking firesalso, and hobbled horses cropping the grass. Now and then appeared agrand one, who was rumoured to be a Lee and therefore royal, and whocame and lived regally in a gaily painted caravan. During the latesummer weeks one began to see slouching figures tramping along the highroad at intervals. These were men who were old, men who were middle-agedand some who were young, all of them more or less dust-grimed, weather-beaten, or ragged. Occasionally one was to be seen in heavybeery slumber under the hedgerow, or lying on the grass smoking lazily, or with painful thrift cobbling up a hole in a garment. Such as thesewere drifting in early that they might be on the ground when pickerswere wanted. They were the forerunners of the regular army. 

On his walk to West Ways, the farm Bolter lived on, Mount Dunstan passedtwo or three of these strays. They were the usual flotsam and jetsam, but on the roadside near a hop garden he came upon a group of an aspectso unusual that it attracted his attention. Its unusualness consisted inits air of exceeding bustling cheerfulness. It was a domestic group ofthe most luckless type, and ragged, dirty, and worn by an evidently longtramp, might well have been expected to look forlorn, discouraged, andout of spirits. A slouching father of five children, one plainly buta few weeks old, and slung in a dirty shawl at its mother's breast, anunhealthy looking slattern mother, two ancient perambulators, one piledwith dingy bundles and cooking utensils, the seven-year-old eldestgirl unpacking things and keeping an eye at the same time on the twoyoungest, who were neither of them old enough to be steady on theirfeet, the six-year-old gleefully aiding the slouching father to buildthe wayside fire. The mother sat upon the grass nursing her baby andstaring about her with an expression at once stupefied and illuminatedby some temporary bliss. Even the slouching father was grinning, as ifgood luck had befallen him, and the two youngest were tumbling aboutwith squeals of good cheer. This was not the humour in which such agroup usually dropped wearily on the grass at the wayside to eat itsmeagre and uninviting meal and rest its dragging limbs. As he drew near, Mount Dunstan saw that at the woman's side there stood a basket full offood and a can full of milk. 

Ordinarily he would have passed on, but, perhaps because of the humanglow the morning had brought him, he stopped and spoke. 

"Have you come for the hopping?" he asked. 

The man touched his forehead, apparently not conscious that the grin wasyet on his face. 

"Yes, sir, " he answered. 

"How far have you walked?"

"A good fifty miles since we started, sir. It took us a good bit. We waspretty done up when we stopped here. But we've 'ad a wonderful piece ofgood luck. " And his grin broadened immensely. 

"I am glad to hear that, " said Mount Dunstan. The good luck was plainlyof a nature to have excited them greatly. Chance good luck did nothappen to people like themselves. They were in the state of mind whichin their class can only be relieved by talk. The woman broke in, herweak mouth and chin quite unsteady. 

"Seems like it can't be true, sir, " she said. "I'd only just come outof the Union--after this one, " signifying the new baby at her breast. "Iwasn't fit to drag along day after day. We 'ad to stop 'ere 'cos I wasnear fainting away. "

"She looked fair white when she sat down, " put in the man. "Like she wasgoin' off. "

"And that very minute, " said the woman, "a young lady came by on'orseback, an' the minute she sees me she stops her 'orse an' getsdown. "

"I never seen nothing like the quick way she done it, " said the husband. "Sharp, like she was a soldier under order. Down an' give the bridle tothe groom an' comes over. "

"And kneels down, " the woman took him up, "right by me an' says, 'What'sthe matter? What can I do?' an' finds out in two minutes an' sends tothe farm for some brandy an' all this basketful of stuff, " jerking herhead towards the treasure at her side. "An' gives 'IM, " with anotherjerk towards her mate, "money enough to 'elp us along till I'm fairon my feet. That quick it was--that quick, " passing her hand overher forehead, "as if it wasn't for the basket, " with a nervous, half-hysteric giggle, "I wouldn't believe but what it was a dream--Iwouldn't. "

"She was a very kind young lady, " said Mount Dunstan, "and you were inluck. "

He gave a few coppers to the children and strode on his way. The glowwas hot in his heart, and he held his head high. 

"She has gone by, " he said. "She has gone by. "

He knew he should find her at West Ways Farm, and he did so. Slim andstraight as a young birch tree, and elate with her ride in the morningair, she stood silhouetted in her black habit against the ancientwhitewashed brick porch as she talked to Bolter. 

"I have been drinking a glass of milk and asking questions about hops, "she said, giving him her hand bare of glove. "Until this year I havenever seen a hop garden or a hop picker. "

After the exchange of a few words Bolter respectfully melted away andleft them together. 

"It was such a wonderful day that I wanted to be out under the sky fora long time--to ride a long way, " she explained. "I have been looking athop gardens as I rode. I have watched them all the summer--from the timewhen there was only a little thing with two or three pale green leaveslooking imploringly all the way up to the top of each immensely tallhop pole, from its place in the earth at the bottom of it--as if it wassaying over and over again, under its breath, 'Can I get up there? CanI get up? Can I do it in time? Can I do it in time?' Yes, that waswhat they were saying, the little bold things. I have watched them eversince, putting out tendrils and taking hold of the poles and pulling andclimbing like little acrobats. And curling round and unfolding leavesand more leaves, until at last they threw them out as if they werebeginning to boast that they could climb up into the blue of the skyif the summer were long enough. And now, look at them!" her hand wavedtowards the great gardens. "Forests of them, cool green pathways andavenues with leaf canopies over them. "

"You have seen it all, " he said. "You do see things, don't you? A fewhundred yards down the road I passed something you had seen. I knew itwas you who had seen it, though the poor wretches had not heard yourname. "

She hesitated a moment, then stooped down and took up in her hand a bitof pebbled earth from the pathway. There was storm in the blue ofher eyes as she held it out for him to look at as it lay on the barerose-flesh of her palm. 

"See, " she said, "see, it is like that--what we give. It is like that. "And she tossed the earth away. 

"It does not seem like that to those others. "

"No, thank God, it does not. But to one's self it is the mere luxury ofself-indulgence, and the realisation of it sometimes tempts one tobe even a trifle morbid. Don't you see, " a sudden thrill in her voicestartled him, "they are on the roadside everywhere all over the world. "

"Yes. All over the world. "

"Once when I was a child of ten I read a magazine article about thesuffering millions and the monstrously rich, who were obviously to blamefor every starved sob and cry. It almost drove me out of my childishsenses. I went to my father and threw myself into his arms in a violentfit of crying. I clung to him and sobbed out, 'Let us give it all away;let us give it all away and be like other people!'"

"What did he say?"

"He said we could never be quite like other people. We had a certainload to carry along the highway. It was the thing the whole world wantedand which we ourselves wanted as much as the rest, and we could notsanely throw it away. It was my first lesson in political economy andI abhorred it. I was a passionate child and beat furiously against thestone walls enclosing present suffering. It was horrible to know thatthey could not be torn down. I cried out, 'When I see anyone who ismiserable by the roadside I shall stop and give him everything hewants--everything!' I was ten years old, and thought it could be done. "

"But you stop by the roadside even now. "

"Yes. That one can do. "

"You are two strong creatures and you draw each other, " Penzance hadsaid. "Perhaps you drew each other across seas. Who knows?"

Coming to West Ways on a chance errand he had, as it were, foundher awaiting him on the threshold. On her part she had certainly notanticipated seeing him there, but--when one rides far afield in thesun there are roads towards which one turns as if answering a summoningcall, and as her horse had obeyed a certain touch of the rein at acertain point her cheek had felt momentarily hot. 

Until later, when the "picking" had fairly begun, the kilns would not beat work; but there was some interest even now in going over the groundfor the first time. 

"I have never been inside an oast house, " she said; "Bolter is going toshow me his, and explain technicalities. "

"May I come with you?" he asked. 

There was a change in him. Something had lighted in his eyes since theday before, when he had told her his story of Red Godwyn. She wonderedwhat it was. They went together over the place, escorted by Bolter. Theylooked into the great circular ovens, on whose floors the hops would belaid for drying, they mounted ladder-like steps to the upper room where, when dried, the same hops would lie in soft, light piles, until pushedwith wooden shovels into the long "pokes" to be pressed and packedinto a solid marketable mass. Bolter was allowed to explain thetechnicalities, but it was plain that Mount Dunstan was familiar withall of them, and it was he who, with a sentence here and there, gave herthe colour of things. 

"When it is being done there is nearly always outside a touch of thesharp sweetness of early autumn, " he said "The sun slanting through thelittle window falls on the pale yellow heaps, and there is a pungentscent of hops in the air which is rather intoxicating. "

"I am coming later to see the entire process, " she answered. 

It was a mere matter of seeing common things together and exchangingcommon speech concerning them, but each was so strongly conscious ofthe other that no sentence could seem wholly impersonal. There aretimes when the whole world is personal to a mood whose intensity seems areason for all things. Words are of small moment when the mere sound ofa voice makes an unreasonable joy. 

"There was that touch of sharp autumn sweetness in the air yesterdaymorning, " she said. "And the chaplets of briony berries that look as ifthey had been thrown over the hedges are beginning to change to scarlethere and there. The wild rose-haws are reddening, and so are theclusters of berries on the thorn trees and bushes. "

"There are millions of them, " Mount Dunstan said, "and in a few weeks'time they will look like bunches of crimson coral. When the sun shineson them they will be wonderful to see. "

What was there in such speeches as these to draw any two nearer andnearer to each other as they walked side by side--to fill the morningair with an intensity of life, to seem to cause the world to drop awayand become as nothing? As they had been isolated during their waltz inthe crowded ballroom at Dunholm Castle, so they were isolated now. Whenthey stood in the narrow green groves of the hop garden, talking simplyof the placing of the bins and the stripping and measuring of the vines, there might have been no human thing within a hundred miles--within athousand. For the first time his height and strength conveyed to her animpression of physical beauty. His walk and bearing gave her pleasure. When he turned his red-brown eyes upon her suddenly she was consciousthat she liked their colour, their shape, the power of the look in them. On his part, he--for the twentieth time--found himself newly moved bythe dower nature had bestowed on her. Had the world ever held before awoman creature so much to be longed for?--abnormal wealth, New York andFifth Avenue notwithstanding, a man could only think of folding armsround her and whispering in her lovely ear--follies, oaths, prayers, gratitude. 

And yet as they went about together there was growing in BettyVanderpoel's mind a certain realisation. It grew in spite of therecognition of the change in him--the new thing lighted in his eyes. Whatsoever he felt--if he felt anything--he would never allow himselfspeech. How could he? In his place she could not speak herself. Becausehe was the strong thing which drew her thoughts, he would not come toany woman only to cast at her feet a burden which, in the nature ofthings, she must take up. And suddenly she comprehended that the mereobstinate Briton in him--even apart from greater things--had an immenseattraction for her. As she liked now the red-brown colour of hiseyes and saw beauty in his rugged features, so she liked his Britishstubbornness and the pride which would not be beaten. 

"It is the unconquerable thing, which leads them in their battles andmakes them bear any horror rather than give in. They have taken half theworld with it; they are like bulldogs and lions, " she thought. "And--andI am glorying in it. "

"Do you know, " said Mount Dunstan, "that sometimes you suddenly flingout the most magnificent flag of colour--as if some splendid flame ofthought had sent up a blaze?"

"I hope it is not a habit, " she answered. "When one has a splendid flareof thought one should be modest about it. "

What was there worth recording in the whole hour they spent together?Outwardly there had only been a chance meeting and a mere passing by. But each left something with the other and each learned something; andthe record made was deep. 

At last she was on her horse again, on the road outside the white gate. 

"This morning has been so much to the good, " he said. "I had thoughtthat perhaps we might scarcely meet again this year. I shall becomeabsorbed in hops and you will no doubt go away. You will make visits orgo to the Riviera--or to New York for the winter?"

"I do not know yet. But at least I shall stay to watch the thorn treesload themselves with coral. " To herself she was saying: "He means tokeep away. I shall not see him. "

As she rode off Mount Dunstan stood for a few moments, not moving fromhis place. At a short distance from the farmhouse gate a side laneopened upon the highway, and as she cantered in its direction a horsemanturned in from it--a man who was young and well dressed and who sat wella spirited animal. He came out upon the road almost face to face withMiss Vanderpoel, and from where he stood Mount Dunstan could see hisdelighted smile as he lifted his hat in salute. It was Lord Westholt, and what more natural than that after an exchange of greetings the twoshould ride together on their way! For nearly three miles their homewardroad would be the same. 

But in a breath's space Mount Dunstan realised a certain truth--asimple, elemental thing. All the exaltation of the morning swooped andfell as a bird seems to swoop and fall through space. It was allover and done with, and he understood it. His normal awakening in themorning, the physical and mental elation of the first clear hours, thespring of his foot as he had trod the road, had all had but one meaning. In some occult way the hypnotic talk of the night before had formeditself into a reality, fantastic and unreasoning as it had been. Someinsistent inner consciousness had seized upon and believed it in spiteof him and had set all his waking being in tune to it. That was theexplanation of his undue spirits and hope. If Penzance had spoken atruth he would have had a natural, sane right to feel all this and more. But the truth was that he, in his guise--was one of those who are "onthe roadside everywhere--all over the world. " Poetically figurative asthe thing sounded, it was prosaic fact. 

So, still hearing the distant sounds of the hoofs beating in cheerfuldiminuendo on the roadway, he turned about and went back to talk toBolter. 

CHAPTER XXXVII

CLOSED CORRIDORS

To spend one's days perforce in an enormous house alone is a thinglikely to play unholy tricks with a man's mind and lead it to gloomyworkings. To know the existence of a hundred or so of closed doorsshut on the darkness of unoccupied rooms; to be conscious of flightsof unmounted stairs, of stretches of untrodden corridors, of unendingwalls, from which the pictured eyes of long dead men and women stare, as if seeing things which human eyes behold not--is an eerie andunwholesome thing. Mount Dunstan slept in a large four-post bed in achamber in which he might have died or been murdered a score of timeswithout being able to communicate with the remote servants' quartersbelow stairs, where lay the one man and one woman who attended him. When he came late to his room and prepared for sleep by the light of twoflickering candles the silence of the dead in tombs was about him; butit was only a more profound and insistent thing than the silence of theday, because it was the silence of the night, which is a presence. Heused to tell himself with secret smiles at the fact that at certaintimes the fantasy was half believable--that there were things whichwalked about softly at night--things which did not want to be dead. He himself had picked them out from among the pictures in thegallery--pretty, light, petulant women; adventurous-eyed, full-blooded, eager men. His theory was that they hated their stone coffins, andfought their way back through the grey mists to try to talk and makelove and to be seen of warm things which were alive. But it was not tobe done, because they had no bodies and no voices, and when they beatupon closed doors they would not open. Still they came back--cameback. And sometimes there was a rustle and a sweep through the air in apassage, or a creak, or a sense of waiting which was almost a sound. 

"Perhaps some of them have gone when they have been as I am, " he hadsaid one black night, when he had sat in his room staring at the floor. "If a man was dragged out when he had not LIVED a day, he would comeback I should come back if--God! A man COULD not be dragged away--likeTHIS!"

And to sit alone and think of it was an awful and a lonely thing--alonely thing. 

But loneliness was nothing new, only that in these months his hadstrangely intensified itself. This, though he was not aware of it, wasbecause the soul and body which were the completing parts of him werewithin reach--and without it. When he went down to breakfast he satsingly at his table, round which twenty people might have laughed andtalked. Between the dining-room and the library he spent his days whenhe was not out of doors. Since he could not afford servants, the manyother rooms must be kept closed. It was a ghastly and melancholy thingto make, as he must sometimes, a sort of precautionary visit to thestate apartments. He was the last Mount Dunstan, and he would never seethem opened again for use, but so long as he lived under the roof hemight by prevision check, in a measure, the too rapid encroachmentsof decay. To have a leak stopped here, a nail driven or a support putthere, seemed decent things to do. 

"Whom am I doing it for?" he said to Mr. Penzance. "I am doing itfor myself--because I cannot help it. The place seems to me like somegorgeous old warrior come to the end of his days It has stood the war ofthings for century after century--the war of things. It is going now Iam all that is left to it. It is all I have. So I patch it up when I canafford it, with a crutch or a splint and a bandage. "

Late in the afternoon of the day on which Miss Vanderpoel rode away fromWest Ways with Lord Westholt, a stealthy and darkly purple cloud rose, lifting its ominous bulk against a chrysoprase and pink horizon. Itwas the kind of cloud which speaks of but one thing to those who watchclouds, or even casually consider them. So Lady Anstruthers felt somesurprise when she saw Sir Nigel mount his horse before the stone stepsand ride away, as it were, into the very heart of the coming storm. 

"Nigel will be caught in the rain, " she said to her sister. "I wonderwhy he goes out now. It would be better to wait until to-morrow. "

But Sir Nigel did not think so. He had calculated matters with somenicety. He was not exactly on such terms with Mount Dunstan as wouldmake a casual call seem an entirely natural thing, and he wished to dropin upon him for a casual call and in an unpremeditated manner. Hemeant to reach the Mount about the time the storm broke, underwhich circumstance nothing could bear more lightly an air of beingunpremeditated than to take refuge in a chance passing. 

Mount Dunstan was in the library. He had sat smoking his pipe while hewatched the purple cloud roll up and spread itself, blotting out thechrysoprase and pink and blue, and when the branches of the trees beganto toss about he had looked on with pleasure as the rush of big raindrops came down and pelted things. It was a fine storm, and there weresome imposing claps of thunder and jagged flashes of lightning. As onesplendid rattle shook the air he was surprised to hear a summons at thegreat hall door. Who on earth could be turning up at this time? His manReeve announced the arrival a few moments later, and it was Sir NigelAnstruthers. He had, he explained, been riding through the village whenthe deluge descended, and it had occurred to him to turn in at thepark gates and ask a temporary shelter. Mount Dunstan received him withsufficient courtesy. His appearance was not a thing to rejoice over, butit could be endured. Whisky and soda and a smoke would serve to pass thehour, if the storm lasted so long. 

Conversation was not the easiest thing in the world under thecircumstances, but Sir Nigel led the way steadily after he had taken hisseat and accepted the hospitalities offered. What a place it was--this!He had been struck for the hundredth time with the impressiveness ofthe mass of it, the sweep of the park and the splendid grouping of thetimber, as he had ridden up the avenue. There was no other place like itin the county. Was there another like it in England?

"Not in its case, I hope, " Mount Dunstan said. 

There were a few seconds of silence. The rain poured down in splashingsheets and was swept in rattling gusts against the window panes. 

"What the place needs is--an heiress, " Anstruthers observed in the toneof a practical man. "I believe I have heard that your views of thingsare such that she should preferably NOT be an American. "

Mount Dunstan did not smile, though he slightly showed his teeth. 

"When I am driven to the wall, " he answered, "I may not be fastidious asto nationality. "

Nigel Anstruthers' manner was not a bad one. He chose that tone ofcasual openness which, while it does not wholly commit itself, may beregarded as suggestive of the amiable half confidence of speeches madeas "man to man. "

"My own opportunity of studying the genus American heiress within my owngates is a first-class one. I find that it knows what it wants and thatits intention is to get it. " A short laugh broke from him as he flickedthe ash from his cigar on to the small bronze receptacle at his elbow. "It is not many years since it would have been difficult for a girl tobe frank enough to say, 'When I marry I shall ask something in exchangefor what I have to give. '"

"There are not many who have as much to give, " said Mount Dunstancoolly. 

"True, " with a slight shrug. "You are thinking that men are glad enoughto take a girl like that--even one who has not a shape like Diana's andeyes like the sea. Yes, by George, " softly, and narrowing his lids, "sheIS a handsome creature. "

Mount Dunstan did not attempt to refute the statement, and Anstrutherslaughed low again. 

"It is an asset she knows the value of quite clearly. That is theinteresting part of it. She has inherited the far-seeing commercialmind. She does not object to admitting it. She educated herself indelightful cold blood that she might be prepared for the largest prizeappearing upon the horizon. She held things in view when she was achild at school, and obviously attacked her French, German, and Italianconjugations with a twelve-year-old eye on the future. "

Mount Dunstan leaning back carelessly in his chair, laughed--as itseemed--with him. Internally he was saying that the man was a liar whomight always be trusted to lie, but he knew with shamed fury thatthe lies were doing something to his soul--rolling dark vapours overit--stinging him, dragging away props, and making him feel they had beenfoolish things to lean on. This can always be done with a man in lovewho has slight foundation for hope. For some mysterious and occultreason civilisation has elected to treat the strange and great passionas if it were an unholy and indecent thing, whose dominion over himproper social training prevents any man from admitting openly. Inpassing through its cruelest phases he must bear himself as if he wereimmune, and this being the custom, he may be called upon to endure muchwithout the relief of striking out with manly blows. An enemy guessinghis case and possessing the infernal gift whose joy is to dishearten anddo hurt with courteous despitefulness, may plant a poisoned arrow hereand there with neatness and fine touch, while his bound victim can, withdecency, neither start, nor utter brave howls, nor guard himself, butmust sit still and listen, hospitably supplying smoke and drink andbeing careful not to make an ass of himself. 

Therefore Mount Dunstan pushed the cigars nearer to his visitor andwaved his hand hospitably towards the whisky and soda. There was noreason, in fact, why Anstruthers--or any one indeed, but Penzance, should suspect that he had become somewhat mad in secret. The man's talkwas marked merely by the lightly disparaging malice which was rarely tobe missed from any speech of his which touched on others. Yet it mighthave been a thing arranged beforehand, to suggest adroitly either liesor truth which would make a man see every sickeningly good reason forfeeling that in this contest he did not count for a man at all. 

"It has all been pretty obvious, " said Sir Nigel. "There is a sort ofcynicism in the openness of the siege. My impression is that almostevery youngster who has met her has taken a shot. Tommy Alanbyscrambling up from his knees in one of the rose-gardens was a satisfyingsight. His much-talked-of-passion for Jane Lithcom was temporarily inabeyance. "

The rain swirled in a torrent against the window, and casually glancingoutside at the tossing gardens he went on. 

"She is enjoying herself. Why not? She has the spirit of the huntress. I don't think she talks nonsense about friendship to the captives of herbow and spear. She knows she can always get what she wants. A girl likethat MUST have an arrogance of mind. And she is not a young saint. Sheis one of the women born with THE LOOK in her eyes. I own I should notlike to be in the place of any primeval poor brute who really went madover her--and counted her millions as so much dirt. "

Mount Dunstan answered with a shrug of his big shoulders:

"Apparently he would seem as remote from the reason of to-day as the menwho lived on the land when Hengist and Horsa came--or when Caesar landedat Deal. "

"He would seem as remote to her, " with a shrug also. "I should not liketo contend that his point of view would not interest her or that shewould particularly discourage him. Her eyes would call him--withoutmalice or intention, no doubt, but your early Briton ceorl or earl wouldbe as well understood by her. Your New York beauty who has lived in themarket place knows principally the prices of things. "

He was not ill pleased with himself. He was putting it well and gettingrather even with her. If this fellow with his shut mouth had a sore spothidden anywhere he was giving him "to think. " And he would find himselfthinking, while, whatsoever he thought, he would be obliged to continueto keep his ugly mouth shut. The great idea was to say things WITHOUTsaying them, to set your hearer's mind to saying them for you. 

"What strikes one most is a sort of commercial brilliance in her, "taking up his thread again after a smilingly reflective pause. "It quiteexhilarates one by its novelty. There's spice in it. We English have nota look-in when we are dealing with Americans, and yet France calls usa nation of shopkeepers. My impression is that their women take littleinventories of every house they enter, of every man they meet. I heardher once speaking to my wife about this place, as if she had lived init. She spoke of the closed windows and the state of the gardens--ofbroken fountains and fallen arches. She evidently deplored thedeterioration of things which represented capital. She has inventoriedDunholm, no doubt. That will give Westholt a chance. But she will donothing until after her next year's season in London--that I'd swear. I look forward to next year. It will be worth watching. She has beentraining my wife. A sister who has married an Englishman and has atleast spent some years of her life in England has a certain establishedair. When she is presented one knows she will be a sensation. Afterthat----" he hesitated a moment, smiling not too pleasantly. 

"After that, " said Mount Dunstan, "the Deluge. "

"Exactly. The Deluge which usually sweeps girls off their feet--but itwill not sweep her off hers. She will stand quite firm in the flood andlose sight of nothing of importance which floats past. "

Mount Dunstan took him up. He was sick of hearing the fellow's voice. 

"There will be a good many things, " he said; "there will be greatpersonages and small ones, pomps and vanities, glittering things andheavy ones. "

"When she sees what she wants, " said Anstruthers, "she will hold outher hand, knowing it will come to her. The things which drown will notdisturb her. I once made the blunder of suggesting that she might needprotection against the importunate--as if she had been an English girl. It was an idiotic thing to do. "

"Because?" Mount Dunstan for the moment had lost his head. Anstruthershad maddeningly paused. 

"She answered that if it became necessary she might perhaps be able toprotect herself. She was as cool and frank as a boy. No air pince aboutit--merely consciousness of being able to put things in their rightplaces. Made a mere male relative feel like a fool. "

"When ARE things in their right places?" To his credit be it spoken, Mount Dunstan managed to say it as if in the mere putting together ofidle words. What man likes to be reminded of his right place! No manwants to be put in his right place. There is always another place whichseems more desirable. 

"She knows--if we others do not. I suppose my right place is atStornham, conducting myself as the brother-in-law of a fair Americanshould. I suppose yours is here--shut up among your closed corridors andlocked doors. There must be a lot of them in a house like this. Don'tyou sometimes feel it too large for you?"

"Always, " answered Mount Dunstan. 

The fact that he added nothing else and met a rapid side glance withunmoving red-brown eyes gazing out from under rugged brows, perhapsirritated Anstruthers. He had been rather enjoying himself, but he hadnot enjoyed himself enough. There was no denying that his plaything hadnot openly flinched. Plainly he was not good at flinching. Anstrutherswondered how far a man might go. He tried again. 

"She likes the place, though she has a natural disdain for itscondition. That is practical American. Things which are going to piecesbecause money is not spent upon them--mere money, of which all thepeople who count for anything have so much--are inevitably ratherdisdained. They are 'out of it. ' But she likes the estate. " As hewatched Mount Dunstan he felt sure he had got it at last--the rightthing. "If you were a duke with fifty thousand a year, " with adistinctly nasty, amicably humorous, faint laugh, "she would--by theLord, I believe, she would take it over--and you with it. "

Mount Dunstan got up. In his rough walking tweeds he lookedover-big--and heavy--and perilous. For two seconds Nigel Anstrutherswould not have been surprised if he had without warning slapped hisface, or knocked him over, or whirled him out of his chair and kickedhim. He would not have liked it, but--for two seconds--it would havebeen no surprise. In fact, he instinctively braced his not toofirm muscles. But nothing of the sort occurred. During the twoseconds--perhaps three--Mount Dunstan stood still and looked down athim. The brief space at an end, he walked over to the hearth and stoodwith his back to the big fireplace. 

"You don't like her, " he said, and his manner was that of a man dealingwith a matter of fact. "Why do you talk about her?"

He had got away again--quite away. 

An ugly flush shot over Anstruthers' face. There was one more thingto say--whether it was idiotic to say it or not. Things can always bedenied afterwards, should denial appear necessary--and for the momenthis special devil possessed him. 

"I do not like her!" And his mouth twisted. "Do I not? I am not an oldwoman. I am a man--like others. I chance to like her--too much. "

There was a short silence. Mount Dunstan broke it. 

"Then, " he remarked, "you had better emigrate to some country witha climate which suits you. I should say that England--for thepresent--does not. "

"I shall stay where I am, " answered Anstruthers, with a slighthoarseness of voice, which made it necessary for him to clear histhroat. "I shall stay where she is. I will have that satisfaction, at least. She does not mind. I am only a racketty, middle-agedbrother-in-law, and she can take care of herself. As I told you, she hasthe spirit of the huntress. "

"Look here, " said Mount Dunstan, quite without haste, and with an ironcivility. "I am going to take the liberty of suggesting something. Ifthis thing is true, it would be as well not to talk about it. "

"As well for me--or for her?" and there was a serene significance in thequery. 

Mount Dunstan thought a few seconds. 

"I confess, " he said slowly, and he planted his fine blow betweenthe eyes well and with directness. "I confess that it would not haveoccurred to me to ask you to do anything or refrain from doing it forher sake. "

"Thank you. Perhaps you are right. One learns that one must protectone's self. I shall not talk--neither will you. I know that. I was afool to let it out. The storm is over. I must ride home. " He rose fromhis seat and stood smiling. "It would smash up things nicely if the newbeauty's appearance in the great world were preceded by chatter of theunseemly affection of some adorer of ill repute. Unfairly enough it isalways the woman who is hurt. "

"Unless, " said Mount Dunstan civilly, "there should arise the poor, primeval brute, in his neolithic wrath, to seize on the man to blame, and break every bone and sinew in his damned body. "

"The newspapers would enjoy that more than she would, " answeredSir Nigel. "She does not like the newspapers. They are too readyto disparage the multi-millionaire, and cackle about members of hisfamily. "

The unhidden hatred which still professed to hide itself in the depthsof their pupils, as they regarded each other, had its birth in a passionas elemental as the quakings of the earth, or the rage of two lions ina desert, lashing their flanks in the blazing sun. It was well that atthis moment they should part ways. 

Sir Nigel's horse being brought, he went on the way which was his. 

"It was a mistake to say what I did, " he said before going. "I ought tohave held my tongue. But I am under the same roof with her. At any rate, that is a privilege no other man shares with me. "

He rode off smartly, his horse's hoofs splashing in the rain pools leftin the avenue after the storm. He was not so sure after all that hehad made a mistake, and for the moment he was not in the mood to carewhether he had made one or not. His agreeable smile showed itself as hethought of the obstinate, proud brute he had left behind, sitting aloneamong his shut doors and closed corridors. They had not shaken handseither at meeting or parting. Queer thing it was--the kind of enmity aman could feel for another when he was upset by a woman. It was amusingenough that it should be she who was upsetting him after all theseyears--impudent little Betty, with the ferocious manner. 

CHAPTER XXXVIII

AT SHANDY'S

On a late-summer evening in New York the atmosphere surrounding acertain corner table at Shandy's cheap restaurant in Fourteenth Streetwas stirred by a sense of excitement. 

The corner table in question was the favourite meeting place of a groupof young men of the G. Selden type, who usually took possession of it atdinner time--having decided that Shandy's supplied more decent foodfor fifty cents, or even for twenty-five, than was to be found at otherplaces of its order. Shandy's was "about all right, " they said to eachother, and patronised it accordingly, three or four of them generallydining together, with a friendly and adroit manipulation of "portions"and "half portions" which enabled them to add variety to their bill offare. 

The street outside was lighted, the tide of passers-by was less full andmore leisurely in its movements than it was during the seething, workinghours of daylight, but the electric cars swung past each other withwhiz and clang of bell almost unceasingly, their sound being swelled, atshort intervals, by the roar and rumbling rattle of the trains dashingby on the elevated railroad. This, however, to the frequenters ofShandy's, was the usual accompaniment of every-day New York life and wasregarded as a rather cheerful sort of thing. 

This evening the four claimants of the favourite corner table had mettogether earlier than usual. Jem Belter, who "hammered" a typewriter atSchwab's Brewery, Tom Wetherbee, who was "in a downtown office, " BertJohnson, who was "out for the Delkoff, " and Nick Baumgarten, who havingfor some time "beaten" certain streets as assistant salesman for thesame illustrious machine, had been recently elevated to a "territory" ofhis own, and was therefore in high spirits. 

"Say!" he said. "Let's give him a fine dinner. We can make it betweenus. Beefsteak and mushrooms, and potatoes hashed brown. He likes them. Good old G. S. I shall be right glad to see him. Hope foreign travel hasnot given him the swell head. "

"Don't believe it's hurt him a bit. His letter didn't sound like it. Little Georgie ain't a fool, " said Jem Belter. 

Tom Wetherbee was looking over the letter referred to. It had beenwritten to the four conjointly, towards the termination of Selden'svisit to Mr. Penzance. The young man was not an ardent or fluentcorrespondent; but Tom Wetherbee was chuckling as he read the epistle. 

"Say, boys, " he said, "this big thing he's keeping back to tell us whenhe sees us is all right, but what takes me is old George paying a visitto a parson. He ain't no Young Men's Christian Association. "

Bert Johnson leaned forward, and looked at the address on the letterpaper. 

"Mount Dunstan Vicarage, " he read aloud. "That looks pretty swell, doesn't it?" with a laugh. "Say, fellows, you know Jepson at the office, the chap that prides himself on reading such a lot? He said it remindedhim of the names of places in English novels. That Johnny's the biggestsnob you ever set your tooth into. When I told him about the lord fellowthat owns the castle, and that George seemed to have seen him, he nearlyfell over himself. Never had any use for George before, but just youwatch him make up to him when he sees him next. "

People were dropping in and taking seats at the tables. They were all ofone class. Young men who lived in hall bedrooms. Young women who workedin shops or offices, a couple here and there, who, living far uptown, had come to Shandy's to dinner, that they might go to cheap seats insome theatre afterwards. In the latter case, the girls wore their besthats, had bright eyes, and cheeks lightly flushed by their sense offestivity. Two or three were very pretty in their thin summer dressesand flowered or feathered head gear, tilted at picturesque angles overtheir thick hair. When each one entered the eyes of the young men at thecorner table followed her with curiosity and interest, but the glancesat her escort were always of a disparaging nature. 

"There's a beaut!" said Nick Baumgarten. "Get onto that pink stuffon her hat, will you. She done it because it's just the colour of hercheeks. "

They all looked, and the girl was aware of it, and began to laugh andtalk coquettishly to the young man who was her companion. 

"I wonder where she got Clarence?" said Jem Belter in sarcastic allusionto her escort. "The things those lookers have fastened on to them getsME. "

"If it was one of US, now, " said Bert Johnson. Upon which they brokeinto simultaneous good-natured laughter. 

"It's queer, isn't it, " young Baumgarten put in, "how a fellow alwaysfeels sore when he sees another fellow with a peach like that? It's juststraight human nature, I guess. "

The door swung open to admit a newcomer, at the sight of whom Jem Belterexclaimed joyously: "Good old Georgie! Here he is, fellows! Get on tohis glad rags. "

"Glad rags" is supposed to buoyantly describe such attire as, by itsfreshness or elegance of style, is rendered a suitable adornment forfestive occasions or loftier leisure moments. "Glad rags" may meanevening dress, when a young gentleman's wardrobe can aspire to splendourso marked, but it also applies to one's best and latest-purchased garb, in contradistinction to the less ornamental habiliments worn every day, and designated as "office clothes. "

G. Selden's economies had not enabled him to give himself into the handsof a Bond Street tailor, but a careful study of cut and material, asspread before the eye in elegant coloured illustrations in the windowsof respectable shops in less ambitious quarters, had resulted in thepurchase of a well-made suit of smart English cut. He had a nice youngfigure, and looked extremely neat and tremendously new and clean, somuch so, indeed, that several persons glanced at him a little admiringlyas he was met half way to the corner table by his friends. 

"Hello, old chap! Glad to see you. What sort of a voyage? How did youleave the royal family? Glad to get back?"

They all greeted him at once, shaking hands and slapping him on theback, as they hustled him gleefully back to the corner table and madehim sit down. 

"Say, garsong, " said Nick Baumgarten to their favourite waiter, who cameat once in answer to his summons, "let's have a porterhouse steak, halfthe size of this table, and with plenty of mushrooms and potatoes hashedbrown. Here's Mr. Selden just returned from visiting at Windsor Castle, and if we don't treat him well, he'll look down on us. "

G. Selden grinned. "How have you been getting on, Sam?" he said, noddingcheerfully to the man. They were old and tried friends. Sam knew allabout the days when a fellow could not come into Shandy's at all, ormust satisfy his strong young hunger with a bowl of soup, or coffee anda roll. Sam did his best for them in the matter of the size of portions, and they did their good-natured utmost for him in the affair of thepooled tip. 

"Been getting on as well as can be expected, " Sam grinned back. "Hopeyou had a fine time, Mr. Selden?"

"Fine! I should smile! Fine wasn't in it, " answered Selden. "But I'mlooking forward to a Shandy porterhouse steak, all the same. "

"Did they give you a better one in the Strawnd?" asked Baumgarten, inwhat he believed to be a correct Cockney accent. 

"You bet they didn't, " said Selden. "Shandy's takes a lot of beating. "That last is English. 

The people at the other tables cast involuntary glances at them. Theireager, hearty young pleasure in the festivity of the occasion was ahealthy thing to see. As they sat round the corner table, they producedthe effect of gathering close about G. Selden. They concentrated theircombined attention upon him, Belter and Johnson leaning forward on theirfolded arms, to watch him as he talked. 

"Billy Page came back in August, looking pretty bum, " Nick Baumgartenbegan. "He'd been painting gay Paree brick red, and he'd spent moremoney than he'd meant to, and that wasn't half enough. Landed deadbroke. He said he'd had a great time, but he'd come home with rather adark brown taste in his mouth, that he'd like to get rid of. "

"He thought you were a fool to go off cycling into the country, " put inWetherbee, "but I told him I guessed that was where he was 'way off. Ibelieved you'd had the best time of the two of you. "

"Boys, " said Selden, "I had the time of my life. " He said it almostsolemnly, and laid his hand on the table. "It was like one of thoseyarns Bert tells us. Half the time I didn't believe it, and half thetime I was ashamed of myself to think it was all happening to me andnone of your fellows were in it. "

"Oh, well, " said Jem Belter, "luck chases some fellows, anyhow. Look atNick, there. "

"Well, " Selden summed the whole thing up, "I just FELL into it whereit was so deep that I had to strike out all I knew how to keep fromdrowning. "

"Tell us the whole thing, " Nick Baumgarten put in; "from beginning toend. Your letter didn't give anything away. "

"A letter would have spoiled it. I can't write letters anyhow. I wantedto wait till I got right here with you fellows round where I couldanswer questions. First off, " with the deliberation befitting such anopening, "I've sold machines enough to pay my expenses, and leave someover. "

"You have? Gee whiz! Say, give us your prescription. Glad I know you, Georgy!"

"And who do you suppose bought the first three?" At this point, itwas he who leaned forward upon the table--his climax being a thing toconcentrate upon. "Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughter--Miss Bettina! And, boys, she gave me a letter to Reuben S. , himself, and here it is. "

He produced a flat leather pocketbook and took an envelope from an innerflap, laying it before them on the tablecloth. His knowledge that theywould not have believed him if he had not brought his proof was foundedon everyday facts. They would not have doubted his veracity, butthe possibility of such delirious good fortune. What they would havebelieved would have been that he was playing a hilarious joke onthem. Jokes of this kind, but not of this proportion, were commonentertainments. 

Their first impulse had been towards an outburst of laughter, but evenbefore he produced his letter a certain truthful seriousness in his lookhad startled them. When he laid the envelope down each man caught hisbreath. It could not be denied that Jem Belter turned pale with emotion. Jem had never been one of the lucky ones. 

"She let me read it, " said G. Selden, taking the letter from itsenvelope with great care. "And I said to her: 'Miss Vanderpoel, wouldyou let me just show that to the boys the first night I go to Shandy's?'I knew she'd tell me if it wasn't all right to do it. She'd know I'dwant to be told. And she just laughed and said: 'I don't mind at all. Ilike "the boys. " Here is a message to them. "Good luck to you all. "'"

"She said that?" from Nick Baumgarten. 

"Yes, she did, and she meant it. Look at this. "

This was the letter. It was quite short, and written in a clear, definite hand. 

"DEAR FATHER: This will be brought to you by Mr. G. Selden, of whom Ihave written to you. Please be good to him. 

"Affectionately, "BETTY. "

Each young man read it in turn. None of them said anything just atfirst. A kind of awe had descended upon them--not in the least awe ofVanderpoel, who, with other multi-millionaires, were served up each weekwith cheerful neighbourly comment or equally neighbourly disrespect, inhuge Sunday papers read throughout the land--but awe of the unearthlyluck which had fallen without warning to good old G. S. , who lived likethe rest of them in a hall bedroom on ten per, earned by tramping thestreets for the Delkoff. 

"That girl, " said G. Selden gravely, "that girl is a winner fromWinnersville. I take off my hat to her. If it's the scheme that somepeople's got to have millions, and others have got to sell Delkoffs, that girl's one of those that's entitled to the millions. It's all rightshe should have 'em. There's no kick coming from me. "

Nick Baumgarten was the first to resume wholly normal condition of mind. 

"Well, I guess after you've told us about her there'll be no kickcoming from any of us. Of course there's something about you that royalfamilies cry for, and they won't be happy till they get. All of us boysknows that. But what we want to find out is how you worked it so thatthey saw the kind of pearl-studded hairpin you were. "

"Worked it!" Selden answered. "I didn't work it. I've got a good bit ofnerve, but I never should have had enough to invent what happened--justHAPPENED. I broke my leg falling off my bike, and fell right intoa whole bunch of them--earls and countesses and viscounts andVanderpoels. And it was Miss Vanderpoel who saw me first lying on theground. And I was in Stornham Court where Lady Anstruthers lives--andshe used to be Miss Rosalie Vanderpoel. "

"Boys, " said Bert Johnson, with friendly disgust, "he's been up to hisneck in 'em. "

"Cheer up. The worst is yet to come, " chaffed Tom Wetherbee. 

Never had such a dinner taken place at the corner table, or, in fact, at any other table at Shandy's. Sam brought beefsteaks, which wereprincely, mushrooms, and hashed brown potatoes in portions whosegenerosity reached the heart. Sam was on good terms with Shandy'scarver, and had worked upon his nobler feelings. Steins of lager beerwere ventured upon. There was hearty satisfying of fine hungers. Two ofthe party had eaten nothing but one "Quick Lunch" throughout the day, one of them because he was short of time, the other for economy'ssake, because he was short of money. The meal was a splendid thing. Thetelling of the story could not be wholly checked by the eating of food. It advanced between mouthfuls, questions being asked and details givenin answers. Shandy's became more crowded, as the hour advanced. Peopleall over the room cast interested looks at the party at the cornertable, enjoying itself so hugely. Groups sitting at the tables nearestto it found themselves excited by the things they heard. 

"That young fellow in the new suit has just come back from Europe, " saida man to his wife and daughter. "He seems to have had a good time. "

"Papa, " the daughter leaned forward, and spoke in a low voice, "I heardhim say 'Lord Mount Dunstan said Lady Anstruthers and Miss Vanderpoelwere at the garden party. ' Who do you suppose he is?"

"Well, he's a nice young fellow, and he has English clothes on, but hedoesn't look like one of the Four Hundred. Will you have pie or vanillaice cream, Bessy?"

Bessy--who chose vanilla ice cream--lost all knowledge of its flavourin her absorption in the conversation at the next table, which she couldnot have avoided hearing, even if she had wished. 

"She bent over the bed and laughed--just like any other nice girl--andshe said, 'You are at Stornham Court, which belongs to Sir NigelAnstruthers. Lady Anstruthers is my sister. I am Miss Vanderpoel. ' And, boys, she used to come and talk to me every day. "

"George, " said Nick Baumgarten, "you take about seventy-five bottles ofWarner's Safe Cure, and rub yourself all over with St. Jacob's Oil. Lucklike that ain't HEALTHY!"

. . . . . 

Mr. Vanderpoel, sitting in his study, wore the interestedly grave lookof a man thinking of absorbing things. He had just given orders that ayoung man who would call in the course of the evening should be broughtto him at once, and he was incidentally considering this young man, ashe reflected upon matters recalled to his mind by his impendingarrival. They were matters he had thought of with gradually increasingseriousness for some months, and they had, at first, been the result ofthe letters from Stornham, which each "steamer day" brought. They hadbeen of immense interest to him--these letters. He would have found themabsorbing as a study, even if he had not deeply loved Betty. He read inthem things she did not state in words, and they set him thinking. 

He was not suspected by men like himself of concealing an imaginationbeneath the trained steadiness of his exterior, but he possessed morethan the world knew, and it singularly combined itself with powers oflogical deduction. 

If he had been with his daughter, he would have seen, day by day, whereher thoughts were leading her, and in what direction she was developing, but, at a distance of three thousand miles, he found himself askingquestions, and endeavouring to reach conclusions. His affection forBetty was the central emotion of his existence. He had never toldhimself that he had outgrown the kind and pretty creature he had marriedin his early youth, and certainly his tender care for her and pleasurein her simple goodness had never wavered, but Betty had given him acompanionship which had counted greatly in the sum of his happiness. Because imagination was not suspected in him, no one knew what she stoodfor in his life. He had no son; he stood at the head of a greathouse, so to speak--the American parallel of what a great house is innon-republican countries. The power of it counted for great things, notin America alone, but throughout the world. As international intimaciesincreased, the influence of such houses might end in aiding in themaking of history. Enormous constantly increasing wealth and hugefinancial schemes could not confine their influence, but must reach far. The man whose hand held the lever controlling them was doing well whenhe thought of them gravely. Such a man had to do with more than his ownmere life and living. This man had confronted many problems as the yearshad passed. He had seen men like himself die, leaving behind them theforce they had controlled, and he had seen this force--controlled nolonger--let loose upon the world, sometimes a power of evil, sometimesscattering itself aimlessly into nothingness and folly, which wroughtharm. He was not an ambitious man, but--perhaps because he was notonly a man of thought, but a Vanderpoel of the blood of the firstReuben--these were things he did not contemplate without restlessness. When Rosy had gone away and seemed lost to them, he had been glad whenhe had seen Betty growing, day by day, into a strong thing. Femininethough she was, she sometimes suggested to him the son who might havebeen his, but was not. As the closeness of their companionship increasedwith her years, his admiration for her grew with his love. Power left inher hands must work for the advancement of things, and would not be idlydisseminated--if no antagonistic influence wrought against her. He hadfound himself reflecting that, after all was said, the marriage of sucha girl had a sort of parallel in that of some young royal creature, whose union might make or mar things, which must be considered. The manwho must inevitably strongly colour her whole being, and vitally markher life, would, in a sense, lay his hand upon the lever also. If hebrought sorrow and disorder with him, the lever would not move steadily. Fortunes such as his grow rapidly, and he was a richer man by millionsthan he had been when Rosalie had married Nigel Anstruthers. The memoryof that marriage had been a painful thing to him, even before hehad known the whole truth of its results. The man had been a commonadventurer and scoundrel, despite the facts of good birth and the air ofdecent breeding. If a man who was as much a scoundrel, but cleverer--itwould be necessary that he should be much cleverer--made the best ofhimself to Betty----! It was folly to think one could guess what awoman--or a man, either, for that matter--would love. He knew Betty, butno man knows the thing which comes, as it were, in the dark and claimsits own--whether for good or evil. He had lived long enough to seebeautiful, strong-spirited creatures do strange things, follow strangegods, swept away into seas of pain by strange waves. 

"Even Betty, " he had said to himself, now and then. "Even my Betty. GoodGod--who knows!"

Because of this, he had read each letter with keen eyes. They were longletters, full of detail and colour, because she knew he enjoyed them. She had a delightful touch. He sometimes felt as if they walked theEnglish lanes together. His intimacy with her neighbours, and herneighbourhood, was one of his relaxations. He found himself thinking ofold Doby and Mrs. Welden, as a sort of soporific measure, when he layawake at night. She had sent photographs of Stornham, of Dunholm Castle, and of Dole, and had even found an old engraving of Lady Alanby in heryouth. Her evident liking for the Dunholms had pleased him. They werepeople whose dignity and admirableness were part of general knowledge. Lord Westholt was plainly a young man of many attractions. If the twowere drawn to each other--and what more natural--all would be well. He wondered if it would be Westholt. But his love quickened a sagacitywhich needed no stimulus. He said to himself in time that, though sheliked and admired Westholt, she went no farther. That others paid courtto her he could guess without being told. He had seen the effect she hadproduced when she had been at home, and also an unexpected letter to hiswife from Milly Bowen had revealed many things. Milly, having noted Mrs. Vanderpoel's eager anxiety to hear direct news of Lady Anstruthers, wasnot the person to let fall from her hand a useful thread of connection. She had written quite at length, managing adroitly to convey all thatshe had seen, and all that she had heard. She had been making a visitwithin driving distance of Stornham, and had had the pleasure of meetingboth Lady Anstruthers and Miss Vanderpoel at various parties. She was sosure that Mrs. Vanderpoel would like to hear how well Lady Anstrutherswas looking, that she ventured to write. Betty's effect upon the countywas made quite clear, as also was the interested expectation of herappearance in town next season. Mr. Vanderpoel, perhaps, gathered morefrom the letter than his wife did. In her mind, relieved happiness andconsternation were mingled. 

"Do you think, Reuben, that Betty will marry that Lord Westholt?" sherather faltered. "He seems very nice, but I would rather she married anAmerican. I should feel as if I had no girls at all, if they both livedin England. "

"Lady Bowen gives him a good character, " her husband said, smiling. "Butif anything untoward happens, Annie, you shall have a house of your ownhalf way between Dunholm Castle and Stornham Court. "

When he had begun to decide that Lord Westholt did not seem to be theman Fate was veering towards, he not unnaturally cast a mental eye oversuch other persons as the letters mentioned. At exactly what period histhought first dwelt a shade anxiously on Mount Dunstan he could not havetold, but he at length became conscious that it so dwelt. He had begunby feeling an interest in his story, and had asked questions about him, because a situation such as his suggested query to a man of affairs. Thus, it had been natural that the letters should speak of him. What shehad written had recalled to him certain rumours of the disgracefulold scandal. Yes, they had been a bad lot. He arranged to put acasual-sounding question or so to certain persons who knew Englishsociety well. What he gathered was not encouraging. The presentLord Mount Dunstan was considered rather a surly brute, and lived amysterious sort of life which might cover many things. It was bad blood, and people were naturally shy of it. Of course, the man was a pauper, and his place a barrack falling to ruin. There had been something rathershady in his going to America or Australia a few years ago. 

Good looking? Well, so few people had seen him. The lady, who wasspeaking, had heard that he was one of those big, rather lumpy men, andhad an ill-tempered expression. She always gave a wide berth to a manwho looked nasty-tempered. One or two other persons who had spoken ofhim had conveyed to Mr. Vanderpoel about the same amount of vaguelyunpromising information. The episode of G. Selden had been interestingenough, with its suggestions of picturesque contrasts and combinations. Betty's touch had made the junior salesman attracting. It was a goodtype this, of a young fellow who, battling with the discouragements ofa hard life, still did not lose his amazing good cheer and patience, andfound healthy sleep and honest waking, even in the hall bedroom. He hadconsented to Betty's request that he would see him, partly because hewas inclined to like what he had heard, and partly for a reason whichBetty did not suspect. By extraordinary chance G. Selden had seen MountDunstan and his surroundings at close range. Mr. Vanderpoel had likedwhat he had gathered of Mount Dunstan's attitude towards a personalityso singularly exotic to himself. Crude, uneducated, and slangy, thejunior salesman was not in any degree a fool. To an American father witha daughter like Betty, the summing-up of a normal, nice-natured, commonyoung denizen of the United States, fresh from contact with theeffete, might be subtly instructive, and well worth hearing, if it wasunconsciously expressed. Mr. Vanderpoel thought he knew how, afterhe had overcome his visitor's first awkwardness--if he chanced to beself-conscious--he could lead him to talk. What he hoped to do was tomake him forget himself and begin to talk to him as he had talked toBetty, to ingenuously reveal impressions and points of view. Young menof his clean, rudimentary type were very definite about the things theyliked and disliked, and could be trusted to reveal admiration, or lackof it, without absolute intention or actual statement. Being elementaland undismayed, they saw things cleared of the mists of social prejudiceand modification. Yes, he felt he should be glad to hear of Lord MountDunstan and the Mount Dunstan estate from G. Selden in a happy moment ofunawareness. 

Why was it that it happened to be Mount Dunstan he was desirous to hearof? Well, the absolute reason for that he could not have explained, either. He had asked himself questions on the subject more than once. There was no well-founded reason, perhaps. If Betty's letters had spokenof Mount Dunstan and his home, they had also described Lord Westholtand Dunholm Castle. Of these two men she had certainly spoken more fullythan of others. Of Mount Dunstan she had had more to relate through theincident of G. Selden. He smiled as he realised the importance of thefigure of G. Selden. It was Selden and his broken leg the two men hadridden over from Mount Dunstan to visit. But for Selden, Betty might nothave met Mount Dunstan again. He was reason enough for all she had said. And yet----! Perhaps, between Betty and himself there existed the thingwhich impresses and communicates without words. Perhaps, becausetheir affection was unusual, they realised each other's emotions. Thehalf-defined anxiety he felt now was not a new thing, but he confessedto himself that it had been spurred a little by the letter the laststeamer had brought him. It was NOT Lord Westholt, it definitelyappeared. He had asked her to be his wife, and she had declined hisproposal. 

"I could not have LIKED a man any more without being in love with him, "she wrote. "I LIKE him more than I can say--so much, indeed, that Ifeel a little depressed by my certainty that I do not love him. "

If she had loved him, the whole matter would have been simplified. Ifthe other man had drawn her, the thing would not be simple. Her fatherforesaw all the complications--and he did not want complications forBetty. Yet emotions were perverse and irresistible things, and thestronger the creature swayed by them, the more enormous their power. But, as he sat in his easy chair and thought over it all, theone feeling predominant in his mind was that nothing mattered butBetty--nothing really mattered but Betty. 

In the meantime G. Selden was walking up Fifth Avenue, at once touchedand exhilarated by the stir about him and his sense of home-coming. Itwas pretty good to be in little old New York again. The hurried pace ofthe life about him stimulated his young blood. There were no street carsin Fifth Avenue, but there were carriages, waggons, carts, motors, allpantingly hurried, and fretting and struggling when the crowded stateof the thoroughfare held them back. The beautifully dressed women inthe carriages wore no light air of being at leisure. It was evident thatthey were going to keep engagements, to do things, to achieve objects. 

"Something doing. Something doing, " was his cheerful self-congratulatorythought. He had spent his life in the midst of it, he liked it, and itwelcomed him back. 

The appointment he was on his way to keep thrilled him into an upliftedmood. Once or twice a half-nervous chuckle broke from him as he tried torealise that he had been given the chance which a year ago had seemedso impossible that its mere incredibleness had made it a natural subjectfor jokes. He was going to call on Reuben S. Vanderpoel, and he wasgoing because Reuben S. Had made an appointment with him. 

He wore his London suit of clothes and he felt that he looked prettydecent. He could only do his best in the matter of bearing. He alwaysthought that, so long as a fellow didn't get "chesty" and kept his headfrom swelling, he was all right. Of course he had never been in one ofthese swell Fifth Avenue houses, and he felt a bit nervous--but MissVanderpoel would have told her father what sort of fellow he was, andher father was likely to be something like herself. The house, which hadbeen built since Lady Anstruthers' marriage, was well "up-town, " and wasbig and imposing. When a manservant opened the front door, the squarehall looked very splendid to Selden. It was full of light, and of richfurniture, which was like the stuff he had seen in one or two specialshop windows in Fifth Avenue--places where they sold magnificentgilded or carven coffers and vases, pieces of tapestry and marvellousembroideries, antiquities from foreign palaces. Though it was quitedifferent, it was as swell in its way as the house at Mount Dunstan, and there were gleams of pictures on the walls that looked fine, and nomistake. 

He was expected. The man led him across the hall to Mr. Vanderpoel'sroom. After he had announced his name he closed the door quietly andwent away. Mr. Vanderpoel rose from an armchair to come forward to meethis visitor. He was tall and straight--Betty had inherited her slenderheight from him. His well-balanced face suggested the relationshipbetween them. He had a steady mouth, and eyes which looked as if theysaw much and far. 

"I am glad to see you, Mr. Selden, " he said, shaking hands withhim. "You have seen my daughters, and can tell me how they are. MissVanderpoel has written to me of you several times. "

He asked him to sit down, and as he took his chair Selden felt that hehad been right in telling himself that Reuben S. Vanderpoel would besomehow like his girl. She was a girl, and he was an elderly man ofbusiness, but they were like each other. There was the same kind ofstraight way of doing things, and the same straight-seeing look in bothof them. 

It was queer how natural things seemed, when they really happened to afellow. Here he was sitting in a big leather chair and opposite to himin its fellow sat Reuben S. Vanderpoel, looking at him with friendlyeyes. And it seemed all right, too--not as if he had managed to "buttin, " and would find himself politely fired out directly. He might havebeen one of the Four Hundred making a call. Reuben S. Knew how to makea man feel easy, and no mistake. This G. Selden observed at once, thoughhe had, in fact, no knowledge of the practical tact which dealt withhim. He found himself answering questions about Lady Anstruthers andher sister, which led to the opening up of other subjects. He did notrealise that he began to express ingenuous opinions and describe things. His listener's interest led him on, a question here, a rather pleasedlaugh there, were encouraging. He had enjoyed himself so much during hisstay in England, and had felt his experiences so greatly to be rejoicedover, that they were easy to talk of at any time--in fact, it was even atrifle difficult not to talk of them--but, stimulated by the look whichrested on him, by the deft word and ready smile, words flowed readilyand without the restraint of self-consciousness. 

"When you think that all of it sort of began with a robin, it's queerenough, " he said. "But for that robin I shouldn't be here, sir, " with aboyish laugh. "And he was an English robin--a little fellow not half thesize of the kind that hops about Central Park. "

"Let me hear about that, " said Mr. Vanderpoel. 

It was a good story, and he told it well, though in his own juniorsalesman phrasing. He began with his bicycle ride into the greencountry, his spin over the fine roads, his rest under the hedge duringthe shower, and then the song of the robin perched among the fresh wetleafage, his feathers puffed out, his red young satin-glossed breastpulsating and swelling. His words were colloquial enough, but theycalled up the picture. 

"Everything sort of glittering with the sunshine on the wet drops, andthings smelling good, like they do after rain--leaves, and grass, andgood earth. I tell you it made a fellow feel as if the whole world washis brother. And when Mr. Rob. Lit on that twig and swelled his redbreast as if he knew the whole thing was his, and began to let themnotes out, calling for his lady friend to come and go halves with him, Ijust had to laugh and speak to him, and that was when Lord Mount Dunstanheard me and jumped over the hedge. He'd been listening, too. "

The expression Reuben S. Vanderpoel wore made it an agreeable thing totalk--to go on. He evidently cared to hear. So Selden did his best, and enjoyed himself in doing it. His style made for realism and broughtthings clearly before one. The big-built man in the rough and shabbyshooting clothes, his way when he dropped into the grass to sit besidethe stranger and talk, certain meanings in his words which conveyed toVanderpoel what had not been conveyed to G. Selden. Yes, the mancarried a heaviness about with him and hated the burden. Selden quiteunconsciously brought him out strongly. 

"I don't know whether I'm the kind of fellow who is always makingbreaks, " he said, with his boy's laugh again, "but if I am, I never madea worse one than when I asked him straight if he was out of a job, andon the tramp. It showed what a nice fellow he was that he didn't get hotabout it. Some fellows would. He only laughed--sort of short--and saidhis job had been more than he could handle, and he was afraid he wasdown and out. "

Mr. Vanderpoel was conscious that so far he was somewhat attracted bythis central figure. G. Selden was also proving satisfactory in thematter of revealing his excellently simple views of persons and things. 

"The only time he got mad was when I wouldn't believe him when he toldme who he was. I was a bit hot in the collar myself. I'd felt sorry forhim, because I thought he was a chap like myself, and he was up againstit. I know what that is, and I'd wanted to jolly him along a bit. Whenhe said his name was Mount Dunstan, and the place belonged to him, I guessed he thought he was making a joke. So I got on my wheel andstarted off, and then he got mad for keeps. He said he wasn't such adamned fool as he looked, and what he'd said was true, and I could goand be hanged. "

Reuben S. Vanderpoel laughed. He liked that. It sounded like decentBritish hot temper, which he had often found accompanied honest Britishdecencies. 

He liked other things, as the story proceeded. The picture of the hugehouse with the shut windows, made him slightly restless. The concealedimagination, combined with the financier's resentment of dormantinterests, disturbed him. That which had attracted Selden in theReverend Lewis Penzance strongly attracted himself. Also, a man was agood deal to be judged by his friends. The man who lived alone in themidst of stately desolateness and held as his chief intimate a high-bredand gentle-minded scholar of ripe years, gave, in doing this, certainevidence which did not tell against him. The whole situation meantsomething a splendid, vivid-minded young creature might be movedby--might be allured by, even despite herself. 

There was something fantastic in the odd linking of incidents--Selden'schance view of Betty as she rode by, his next day's sudden resolve toturn back and go to Stornham, his accident, all that followed seemed, ifone were fanciful--part of a scheme prearranged

"When I came to myself, " G. Selden said, "I felt like that fellow in theShakespeare play that they dress up and put to bed in the palace whenhe's drunk. I thought I'd gone off my head. And then Miss Vanderpoelcame. " He paused a moment and looked down on the carpet, thinking. "Geewhiz! It WAS queer, " he said. 

Betty Vanderpoel's father could almost hear her voice as the rest wastold. He knew how her laugh had sounded, and what her presence musthave been to the young fellow. His delightful, human, always satisfyingBetty!

Through this odd trick of fortune, Mount Dunstan had begun to see her. Since, through the unfair endowment of Nature--that it was not whollyfair he had often told himself--she was all the things that desire couldyearn for, there were many chances that when a man saw her he must longto see her again, and there were the same chances that such an one asMount Dunstan might long also, and, if Fate was against him, long witha bitter strength. Selden was not aware that he had spoken more fully ofMount Dunstan and his place than of other things. That this had been thecase, had been because Mr. Vanderpoel had intended it should be so. Hehad subtly drawn out and encouraged a detailed account of the timespent at Mount Dunstan vicarage. It was easily encouraged. Selden'saffectionate admiration for the vicar led him on to enthusiasm. Thequiet house and garden, the old books, the afternoon tea under thecopper beech, and the long talks of old things, which had been so new tothe young New Yorker, had plainly made a mark upon his life, not likelyto be erased even by the rush of after years. 

"The way he knew history was what got me, " he said. "And the way you gotinterested in it, when he talked. It wasn't just HISTORY, like you learnat school, and forget, and never see the use of, anyhow. It was thingsabout men, just like yourself--hustling for a living in their way, justas we're hustling in Broadway. Most of it was fighting, and there aremounds scattered about that are the remains of their forts and camps. Roman camps, some of them. He took me to see them. He had a little oldpony chaise we trundled about in, and he'd draw up and we'd sit andtalk. 'There were men here on this very spot, ' he'd say, 'lookingout for attack, eating, drinking, cooking their food, polishing theirweapons, laughing, and shouting--MEN--Selden, fifty-five years beforeChrist was born--and sometimes the New Testament times seem to us so faraway that they are half a dream. ' That was the kind of thing he'd say, and I'd sometimes feel as if I heard the Romans shouting. The countryabout there was full of queer places, and both he and Lord Dunstan knewmore about them than I know about Twenty-third Street. "

"You saw Lord Mount Dunstan often?" Mr. Vanderpoel suggested. 

"Every day, sir. And the more I saw him, the more I got to likehim. He's all right. But it's hard luck to be fixed as he is--that'sstone-cold truth. What's a man to do? The money he ought to have to keepup his place was spent before he was born. His father and his eldestbrother were a bum lot, and his grandfather and great-grandfatherwere fools. He can't sell the place, and he wouldn't if he could. Mr. Penzance was so fond of him that sometimes he'd say things. But, "hastily, "perhaps I'm talking too much. "

"You happen to be talking about questions I have been greatly interestedin. I have thought a good deal at times of the position of the holdersof large estates they cannot afford to keep up. This special instance isa case in point. "

G. Selden felt himself in luck again. Reuben S. , quite evidently, foundhis subject worthy of undivided attention. Selden had not heartily likedLord Mount Dunstan, and lived in the atmosphere surrounding him, lookingabout him with sharp young New York eyes, without learning a good deal. 

He had seen the practical hardship of the situation, and laid it bare. 

"What Mr. Penzance says is that he's like the men that built thingsin the beginning--fought for them--fought Romans and Saxons andNormans--perhaps the whole lot at different times. I used to like toget Mr. Penzance to tell stories about the Mount Dunstans. They weresplendid. It must be pretty fine to look back about a thousand years andknow your folks have been something. All the same its pretty fierce tohave to stand alone at the end of it, not able to help yourself, becausesome of your relations were crazy fools. I don't wonder he feels mad. "

"Does he?" Mr. Vanderpoel inquired. 

"He's straight, " said G. Selden sympathetically. "He's all right. Butonly money can help him, and he's got none, so he has to stand and stareat things falling to pieces. And--well, I tell you, Mr. Vanderpoel, heLOVES that place--he's crazy about it. And he's proud--I don't mean he'sgot the swell-head, because he hasn't--but he's just proud. Now, forinstance, he hasn't any use for men like himself that marry just formoney. He's seen a lot of it, and it's made him sick. He's not thatkind. "

He had been asked and had answered a good many questions before he wentaway, but each had dropped into the talk so incidentally that he hadnot recognised them as queries. He did not know that Lord Mount Dunstanstood out a clearly defined figure in Mr. Vanderpoel's mind, a figure tobe reflected upon, and one not without its attraction. 

"Miss Vanderpoel tells me, " Mr. Vanderpoel said, when the interview wasdrawing to a close, "that you are an agent for the Delkoff typewriter. "

G. Selden flushed slightly. 

"Yes, sir, " he answered, "but I didn't----"

"I hear that three machines are in use on the Stornham estate, and thatthey have proved satisfactory. "

"It's a good machine, " said G. Selden, his flush a little deeper. 

Mr. Vanderpoel smiled. 

"You are a business-like young man, " he said, "and I have no doubt youhave a catalogue in your pocket. "

G. Selden was a business-like young man. He gave Mr. Vanderpoel oneserious look, and the catalogue was drawn forth. 

"It wouldn't be business, sir, for me to be caught out without it, " hesaid. "I shouldn't leave it behind if I went to a funeral. A man's gotto run no risks. "

"I should like to look at it. "

The thing had happened. It was not a dream. Reuben S. Vanderpoel, clothed and in his right mind, had, without pressure being exerted uponhim, expressed his desire to look at the catalogue--to examine it--tohave it explained to him at length. 

He listened attentively, while G. Selden did his best. He asked aquestion now and then, or made a comment. His manner was that of athoroughly composed man of business, but he was remembering what Bettyhad told him of the "ten per, " and a number of other things. He sawthe flush come and go under the still boyish skin, he observed that G. Selden's hand was not wholly steady, though he was making an effort notto seem excited. But he was excited. This actually meant--this thing sounimportant to multi-millionaires--that he was having his "chance, " andhis young fortunes were, perhaps, in the balance. 

"Yes, " said Reuben S. , when he had finished, "it seems a good, up-to-date machine. "

"It's the best on the market, " said G. Selden, "out and out, the best. "

"I understand you are only junior salesman?"

"Yes, sir. Ten per and five dollars on every machine I sell. If I had aterritory, I should get ten. "

"Then, " reflectively, "the first thing is to get a territory. "

"Perhaps I shall get one in time, if I keep at it, " said Seldencourageously. 

"It is a good machine. I like it, " said Mr. Vanderpoel. "I can see agood many places where it could be used. Perhaps, if you make it knownat your office that when you are given a good territory, I shallgive preference to the Delkoff over other typewriting machines, itmight--eh?"

A light broke out upon G. Selden's countenance--a light radiant andmagnificent. He caught his breath. A desire to shout--to yell--to whoop, as when in the society of "the boys, " was barely conquered in time. 

"Mr. Vanderpoel, " he said, standing up, "I--Mr. Vanderpoel--sir--I feelas if I was having a pipe dream. I'm not, am I?"

"No, " answered Mr. Vanderpoel, "you are not. I like you, Mr. Selden. Mydaughter liked you. I do not mean to lose sight of you. We will begin, however, with the territory, and the Delkoff. I don't think there willbe any difficulty about it. "

. . . . . 

Ten minutes later G. Selden was walking down Fifth Avenue, wonderingif there was any chance of his being arrested by a policeman upon thecharge that he was reeling, instead of walking steadily. He hoped heshould get back to the hall bedroom safely. Nick Baumgarten and JemBolter both "roomed" in the house with him. He could tell them both. It was Jem who had made up the yarn about one of them saving Reuben S. Vanderpoel's life. There had been no life-saving, but the thing had cometrue. 

"But, if it hadn't been for Lord Mount Dunstan, " he said, thinking itover excitedly, "I should never have seen Miss Vanderpoel, and, if ithadn't been for Miss Vanderpoel, I should never have got next to ReubenS. In my life. Both sides of the Atlantic Ocean got busy to do a goodturn to Little Willie. Hully gee!"

In his study Mr. Vanderpoel was rereading Betty's letters. He felt thathe had gained a certain knowledge of Lord Mount Dunstan. 

CHAPTER XXXIX

ON THE MARSHES

THE marshes stretched mellow in the autumn sun, sheep wandered about, nibbling contentedly, or lay down to rest in groups, the sky reflectingitself in the narrow dykes gave a blue colour to the water, a scent ofthe sea was in the air as one breathed it, flocks of plover rose, nowand then, crying softly. Betty, walking with her dog, had passed a heronstanding at the edge of a pool. 

From her first discovery of them, she had been attracted by the marsheswith their English suggestion of the Roman Campagna, their broad expanseof level land spread out to the sun and wind, the thousands of whitesheep dotted or clustered as far as eye could reach, the hues of themarsh grass and the plants growing thick at the borders of the stripsof water. Its beauty was all its own and curiously aloof from thesoftly-wooded, undulating world about it. Driving or walking along thehigh road--the road the Romans had built to London town long centuriesago--on either side of one were meadows, farms, scattered cottages, andhop gardens, but beyond and below stretched the marsh land, golden andgrey, and always alluring one by its silence. 

"I never pass it without wanting to go to it--to take solitary walksover it, to be one of the spots on it as the sheep are. It seems as if, lying there under the blue sky or the low grey clouds with all the worldheld at bay by mere space and stillness, they must feel something weknow nothing of. I want to go and find out what it is. "

This she had once said to Mount Dunstan. 

So she had fallen into the habit of walking there with her dog at herside as her sole companion, for having need for time and space forthought, she had found them in the silence and aloofness. 

Life had been a vivid and pleasurable thing to her, as far as she couldlook back upon it. She began to realise that she must have been veryhappy, because she had never found herself desiring existence other thansuch as had come to her day by day. Except for her passionate childishregret at Rosy's marriage, she had experienced no painful feeling. In fact, she had faced no hurt in her life, and certainly had beenconfronted by no limitations. Arguing that girls in their teens usuallyfall in love, her father had occasionally wondered that she passedthrough no little episodes of sentiment, but the fact was that herinterests had been larger and more numerous than the interests of girlsgenerally are, and her affectionate intimacy with himself had left nosuch small vacant spaces as are frequently filled by unimportant youngemotions. Because she was a logical creature, and had watched life andthose living it with clear and interested eyes, she had not been blindto the path which had marked itself before her during the summer'sgrowth and waning. She had not, at first, perhaps, known exactly whenthings began to change for her--when the clarity of her mind began to bedisturbed. She had thought in the beginning--as people have a habitof doing--that an instance--a problem--a situation had attracted herattention because it was absorbing enough to think over. Her view of thematter had been that as the same thing would have interested her father, it had interested herself. But from the morning when she had beenconscious of the sudden fury roused in her by Nigel Anstruthers' uglysneer at Mount Dunstan, she had better understood the thing which hadcome upon her. Day by day it had increased and gathered power, and sherealised with a certain sense of impatience that she had not in anydegree understood it when she had seen and wondered at its effect onother women. Each day had been like a wave encroaching farther upon theshore she stood upon. At the outset a certain ignoble pride--she knew itignoble--filled her with rebellion. She had seen so much of this kindof situation, and had heard so much of the general comment. People hadlearned how to sneer because experience had taught them. If she gavethem cause, why should they not sneer at her as at things? She recalledwhat she had herself thought of such things--the folly of them, theobviousness--the almost deserved disaster. She had arrogated to herselfjudgment of women--and men--who might, yes, who might have stood upontheir strip of sand, as she stood, with the waves creeping in, each onehigher, stronger, and more engulfing than the last. There might havebeen those among them who also had knowledge of that sudden deadlyjoy at the sight of one face, at the drop of one voice. When that wavesubmerged one's pulsing being, what had the world to do with one--howcould one hear and think of what its speech might be? Its voiceclamoured too far off. 

As she walked across the marsh she was thinking this first phase over. She had reached a new one, and at first she looked back with a faint, even rather hard, smile. She walked straight ahead, her mastiff, Roland, padding along heavily close at her side. How still and wide and goldenit was; how the cry of plover and lifting trill of skylark assured onethat one was wholly encircled by solitude and space which were moreenclosing than any walls! She was going to the mounds to which Mr. Penzance had trundled G. Selden in the pony chaise, when he had givenhim the marvellous hour which had brought Roman camp and Roman legionsto life again. Up on the largest hillock one could sit enthroned, resting chin in hand and looking out under level lids at the unstirring, softly-living loveliness of the marsh-land world. So she was presentlyseated, with her heavy-limbed Roland at her feet. She had come here totry to put things clearly to herself, to plan with such reason as shecould control. She had begun to be unhappy, she had begun--with someunfairness--to look back upon the Betty Vanderpoel of the past asan unwittingly self-sufficient young woman, to find herself suddenlyentangled by things, even to know a touch of desperateness. 

"Not to take a remnant from the ducal bargain counter, " she was sayingmentally. That was why her smile was a little hard. What if the remnantfrom the ducal bargain counter had prejudices of his own?

"If he were passionately--passionately in love with me, " she said, withred staining her cheeks, "he would not come--he would not come--he wouldnot come. And, because of that, he is more to me--MORE! And more he willbecome every day--and the more strongly he will hold me. And there westand. "

Roland lifted his fine head from his paws, and, holding it erect on astiff, strong neck, stared at her in obvious inquiry. She put out herhand and tenderly patted him. 

"He will have none of me, " she said. "He will have none of me. " And shefaintly smiled, but the next instant shook her head a little haughtily, and, having done so, looked down with an altered expression upon thecloth of her skirt, because she had shaken upon it, from the extravagantlashes, two clear drops. 

It was not the result of chance that she had seen nothing of him forweeks. She had not attempted to persuade herself of that. Twice he haddeclined an invitation to Stornham, and once he had ridden past heron the road when he might have stopped to exchange greetings, or haveridden on by her side. He did not mean to seem to desire, ever solightly, to be counted as in the lists. Whether he was drawn by anyliking for her or not, it was plain he had determined on this. 

If she were to go away now, they would never meet again. Their ways inthis world would part forever. She would not know how long it took tobreak him utterly--if such a man could be broken. If no magic changetook place in his fortunes--and what change could come?--the decayabout him would spread day by day. Stone walls last a long time, so thehouse would stand while every beauty and stateliness within it fell intoruin. Gardens would become wildernesses, terraces and fountains crumbleand be overgrown, walls that were to-day leaning would fall with time. The years would pass, and his youth with them; he would gradually changeinto an old man while he watched the things he loved with passion dieslowly and hard. How strange it was that lives should touch and pass onthe ocean of Time, and nothing should result--nothing at all! When shewent on her way, it would be as if a ship loaded with every aid of foodand treasure had passed a boat in which a strong man tossed, starving todeath, and had not even run up a flag. 

"But one cannot run up a flag, " she said, stroking Roland. "One cannot. There we stand. "

To her recognition of this deadlock of Fate, there had been adding thegrowing disturbance caused by yet another thing which was increasinglytroubling, increasingly difficult to face. 

Gradually, and at first with wonderful naturalness of bearing, NigelAnstruthers had managed to create for himself a singular place in hereveryday life. It had begun with a certain personalness in his attitude, a personalness which was a thing to dislike, but almost impossibleopenly to resent. Certainly, as a self-invited guest in his house, shecould scarcely protest against the amiability of his demeanour and hisexterior courtesy and attentiveness of manner in his conduct towardsher. She had tried to sweep away the objectionable quality in hisbearing, by frankness, by indifference, by entire lack of response, butshe had remained conscious of its increasing as a spider's web mightincrease as the spider spun it quietly over one, throwing out threadsso impalpable that one could not brush them away because they were tooslight to be seen. She was aware that in the first years of his marriedlife he had alternately resented the scarcity of the invitations sentthem and rudely refused such as were received. Since he had returnedto find her at Stornham, he had insisted that no invitations should bedeclined, and had escorted his wife and herself wherever they went. Whatcould have been conventionally more proper--what more improper than thathe should have persistently have remained at home? And yet there came atime when, as they three drove together at night in the closed carriage, Betty was conscious that, as he sat opposite to her in the dark, when hespoke, when he touched her in arranging the robe over her, or openingor shutting the window, he subtly, but persistently, conveyed that thepersonalness of his voice, look, and physical nearness was a sort ofhideous confidence between them which they were cleverly concealing fromRosalie and the outside world. 

When she rode about the country, he had a way of appearing at someturning and making himself her companion, riding too closely at herside, and assuming a noticeable air of being engaged in meaninglyconfidential talk. Once, when he had been leaning towards her with anaudaciously tender manner, they had been passed by the Dunholm carriage, and Lady Dunholm and the friend driving with her had evidently tried notto look surprised. Lady Alanby, meeting them in the same way at anothertime, had put up her glasses and stared in open disapproval. She mightadmire a strikingly handsome American girl, but her favour would notlast through any such vulgar silliness as flirtations with disgracefulbrothers-in-law. When Betty strolled about the park or the lanes, shemuch too often encountered Sir Nigel strolling also, and knew that hedid not mean to allow her to rid herself of him. In public, he made apoint of keeping observably close to her, of hovering in her vicinityand looking on at all she did with eyes she rebelled against findingfixed on her each time she was obliged to turn in his direction. He hada fashion of coming to her side and speaking in a dropped voice, whichexcluded others, as a favoured lover might. She had seen both men andwomen glance at her in half-embarrassment at their sudden sense offinding themselves slightly de trop. She had said aloud to him on onesuch occasion--and she had said it with smiling casualness for thebenefit of Lady Alanby, to whom she had been talking:

"Don't alarm me by dropping your voice, Nigel. I am easilyfrightened--and Lady Alanby will think we are conspirators. "

For an instant he was taken by surprise. He had been pleased to believethat there was no way in which she could defend herself, unless shewould condescend to something stupidly like a scene. He flushed and drewhimself up. 

"I beg your pardon, my dear Betty, " he said, and walked away withthe manner of an offended adorer, leaving her to realise an odiouslyunpleasant truth--which is that there are incidents only made moreinexplicable by an effort to explain. She saw also that he wasquite aware of this, and that his offended departure was a brilliantinspiration, and had left her, as it were, in the lurch. To have said toLady Alanby: "My brother-in-law, in whose house I am merely staying formy sister's sake, is trying to lead you to believe that I allow him tomake love to me, " would have suggested either folly or insanity on herown part. As it was--after a glance at Sir Nigel's stiffly retreatingback--Lady Alanby merely looked away with a wholly uninvitingexpression. 

When Betty spoke to him afterwards, haughtily and with determination, helaughed. 

"My dearest girl, " he said, "if I watch you with interest and drop myvoice when I get a chance to speak to you, I only do what every otherman does, and I do it because you are an alluring young woman--which noone is more perfectly aware of than yourself. Your pretence that you donot know you are alluring is the most captivating thing about you. Andwhat do you think of doing if I continue to offend you? Do you proposeto desert us--to leave poor Rosalie to sink back again into the bundleof old clothes she was when you came? For Heaven's sake, don't do that!"

All that his words suggested took form before her vividly. How well heunderstood what he was saying. But she answered him bravely. 

"No. I do not mean to do that. "

He watched her for a few seconds. There was curiosity in his eyes. 

"Don't make the mistake of imagining that I will let my wife go with youto America, " he said next. "She is as far off from that as she was whenI brought her to Stornham. I have told her so. A man cannot tie his wifeto the bedpost in these days, but he can make her efforts to leave himso decidedly unpleasant that decent women prefer to stay at home andtake what is coming. I have seen that often enough 'to bank on it, ' if Imay quote your American friends. "

"Do you remember my once saying, " Betty remarked, "that when a woman hasbeen PROPERLY ill-treated the time comes when nothing matters--nothingbut release from the life she loathes?"

"Yes, " he answered. "And to you nothing would matter but--excusemy saying it--your own damnable, headstrong pride. But Rosalie isdifferent. Everything matters to her. And you will find it so, my deargirl. "

And that this was at least half true was brought home to her by the factthat late the same night Rosy came to her white with crying. 

"It is not your fault, Betty, " she said. "Don't think that I think it isyour fault, but he has been in my room in one of those humours when heseems like a devil. He thinks you will go back to America and try totake me with you. But, Betty, you must not think about me. It will bebetter for you to go. I have seen you again. I have had you for--for atime. You will be safer at home with father and mother. "

Betty laid a hand on her shoulder and looked at her fixedly. 

"What is it, Rosy?" she said. "What is it he does to you--that makesyou like this?"

"I don't know--but that he makes me feel that there is nothing butevil and lies in the world and nothing can help one against them. Those things he says about everyone--men and women--things one can'trepeat--make me sick. And when I try to deny them, he laughs. "

"Does he say things about me?" Betty inquired, very quietly, andsuddenly Rosalie threw her arms round her. 

"Betty, darling, " she cried, "go home--go home. You must not stay here. "

"When I go, you will go with me, " Betty answered. "I am not going backto mother without you. "

She made a collection of many facts before their interview was at anend, and they parted for the night. Among the first was that Nigel hadprepared for certain possibilities as wise holders of a fortress preparefor siege. A rather long sitting alone over whisky and soda had, withoutmaking him loquacious, heated his blood in such a manner as led him tobe less subtle than usual. Drink did not make him drunk, but malignant, and when a man is in the malignant mood, he forgets his cleverness. Sohe revealed more than he absolutely intended. It was to be gathered thathe did not mean to permit his wife to leave him, even for a visit; hewould not allow himself to be made ridiculous by such a thing. A manwho could not control his wife was a fool and deserved to be alaughing-stock. As Ughtred and his future inheritance seemed to havebecome of interest to his grandfather, and were to be well nursed andtaken care of, his intention was that the boy should remain under hisown supervision. He could amuse himself well enough at Stornham, nowthat it had been put in order, if it was kept up properly and he filledit with people who did not bore him. There were people who did not borehim--plenty of them. Rosalie would stay where she was and receive hisguests. If she imagined that the little episode of Ffolliott had beenentirely dormant, she was mistaken. He knew where the man was, andexactly how serious it would be to him if scandal was stirred up. He hadbeen at some trouble to find out. The fellow had recently had the luckto fall into a very fine living. It had been bestowed on him by the oldDuke of Broadmorlands, who was the most strait-laced old boy in England. He had become so in his disgust at the light behaviour of the wife hehad divorced in his early manhood. Nigel cackled gently as he detailedthat, by an agreeable coincidence, it happened that her Grace hadsuddenly become filled with pious fervour--roused thereto by agood-looking locum tenens--result, painful discoveries--the pairbeing now rumoured to be keeping a lodging-house together somewhere inAustralia. A word to good old Broadmorlands would produce the effectof a lighted match on a barrel of gunpowder. It would be the end ofFfolliott. Neither would it be a good introduction to Betty's firstseason in London, neither would it be enjoyed by her mother, whom heremembered as a woman with primitive views of domestic rectitude. He smiled the awful smile as he took out of his pocket the envelopecontaining the words his wife had written to Mr. Ffolliott, "Do not cometo the house. Meet me at Bartyon Wood. " It did not take much to convincepeople, if one managed things with decent forethought. The Brents, forinstance, were fond neither of her nor of Betty, and they had neverforgotten the questionable conduct of their locum tenens. Then, suddenly, he had changed his manner and had sat down, laughing, anddrawn Rosalie to his knee and kissed her--yes, he had kissed herand told her not to look like a little fool or act like one. Nothingunpleasant would happen if she behaved herself. Betty had improved hergreatly, and she had grown young and pretty again. She looked quite likea child sometimes, now that her bones were covered and she dressed well. If she wanted to please him she could put her arms round his neck andkiss him, as he had kissed her. 

"That is what has made you look white, " said Betty. 

"Yes. There is something about him that sometimes makes you feel asif the very blood in your veins turned white, " answered Rosy--in a lowvoice, which the next moment rose. "Don't you see--don't you see, "she broke out, "that to displease him would be like murdering Mr. Ffolliott--like murdering his mother and mine--and like murderingUghtred, because he would be killed by the shame of things--and by beingtaken from me. We have loved each other so much--so much. Don't yousee?"

"I see all that rises up before you, " Betty said, "and I understand yourfeeling that you cannot save yourself by bringing ruin upon an innocentman who helped you. I realise that one must have time to think it over. But, Rosy, " a sudden ring in her voice, "I tell you there is a wayout--there is a way out! The end of the misery is coming--and it willnot be what he thinks. "

"You always believe----" began Rosy. 

"I know, " answered Betty. "I know there are some things so bad that theycannot go on. They kill themselves through their own evil. I KNOW! IKNOW! That is all. "

CHAPTER LX

"DON'T GO ON WITH THIS"

Of these things, as of others, she had come to her solitude to think. She looked out over the marshes scarcely seeing the wandering or restingsheep, scarcely hearing the crying plover, because so much seemedto confront her, and she must look it all well in the face. She hadfulfilled the promise she had made to herself as a child. She had comein search of Rosy, she had found her as simple and loving of heart asshe had ever been. The most painful discoveries she had made hadbeen concealed from her mother until their aspect was modified. Mrs. Vanderpoel need now feel no shock at the sight of the restored Rosy. Lady Anstruthers had been still young enough to respond both physicallyand mentally to love, companionship, agreeable luxuries, and stimulatinginterests. But for Nigel's antagonism there was now no reason whyshe should not be taken home for a visit to her family, and herlong-yearned-for New York, no reason why her father and mother shouldnot come to Stornham, and thus establish the customary social relationsbetween their daughter's home and their own. That this seemed out of thequestion was owing to the fact that at the outset of his married lifeSir Nigel had allowed himself to commit errors in tactics. A perverseegotism, not wholly normal in its rancour, had led him into deeds whichhe had begun to suspect of having cost him too much, even before Bettyherself had pointed out to him their unbusinesslike indiscretion. He haddone things he could not undo, and now, to his mind, his only resourcewas to treat them boldly as having been the proper results of decisionfounded on sound judgment, which he had no desire to excuse. Asufficiently arrogant loftiness of bearing would, he hoped, carry himthrough the matter. This Betty herself had guessed, but she had notrealised that this loftiness of attitude was in danger of losing someof its effectiveness through his being increasingly stung and spurredby circumstances and feelings connected with herself, which were atonce exasperating and at times almost overpowering. When, in his mingleddislike and admiration, he had begun to study his sister-in-law, andthe half-amused weaving of the small plots which would make thingssufficiently unpleasant to be used as factors in her removal from thescene, if necessary, he had not calculated, ever so remotely, on thechance of that madness besetting him which usually besets men onlyin their youth. He had imagined no other results to himself than asubtly-exciting private entertainment, such as would give spice to thedullness of virtuous life in the country. But, despite himself and hisintentions, he had found the situation alter. His first uncertainty ofhimself had arisen at the Dunholm ball, when he had suddenly realisedthat he was detesting men who, being young and free, were at liberty topay gallant court to the new beauty. 

Perhaps the most disturbing thing to him had been his consciousness ofhis sudden leap of antagonism towards Mount Dunstan, who, despite hisobvious lack of chance, somehow especially roused in him the rage ofwarring male instinct. There had been admissions he had been forced, at length, to make to himself. You could not, it appeared, live in thehouse with a splendid creature like this one--with her brilliant eyes, her beauty of line and movement before you every hour, her bloom, herproud fineness holding themselves wholly in their own keeping--withoutthere being the devil to pay. Lately he had sometimes gone hot and coldin realising that, having once told himself that he might choose todecide to get rid of her, he now knew that the mere thought of hersailing away of her own choice was maddening to him. There WAS the devilto pay! It sometimes brought back to him that hideous shakiness of nervewhich had been a feature of his illness when he had been on the Rivierawith Teresita. 

Of all this Betty only knew the outward signs which, taken at theirexterior significance, were detestable enough, and drove her hard as shementally dwelt on them in connection with other things. How easy, if shestood alone, to defy his evil insolence to do its worst, and leaving theplace at an hour's notice, to sail away to protection, or, if she choseto remain in England, to surround herself with a bodyguard of the peoplein whose eyes his disrepute relegated a man such as Nigel Anstruthersto powerless nonentity. Alone, she could have smiled and turned her backupon him. But she was here to take care of Rosy. She occupied a positionsomething like that of a woman who remains with a man and enduresoutrage because she cannot leave her child. That thought, in itself, brought Ughtred to her mind. There was Ughtred to be considered aswell as his mother. Ughtred's love for and faith in her were deep andpassionate things. He fed on her tenderness for him, and had grownstronger because he spent hours of each day talking, reading, anddriving with her. The simple truth was that neither she nor Rosaliecould desert Ughtred, and so long as Nigel managed cleverly enough, thelaw would give the boy to his father. 

"You are obliged to prove things, you know, in a court of law, " he hadsaid, as if with casual amiability, on a certain occasion. "Provingthings is the devil. People lose their tempers and rush into rows whichend in lawsuits, and then find they can prove nothing. If I were avillain, " slightly showing his teeth in an agreeable smile--"insteadof a man of blameless life, I should go in only for that branch of myprofession which could be exercised without leaving stupid evidencebehind. "

Since his return to Stornham the outward decorum of his own conduct hadentertained him and he had kept it up with an increasing appreciation ofits usefulness in the present situation. Whatsoever happened in the end, it was the part of discretion to present to the rural world about him anappearance of upright behaviour. He had even found it amusing to go tochurch and also to occasionally make amiable calls at the vicarage. Itwas not difficult, at such times, to refer delicately to his regret thatdomestic discomfort had led him into the error of remaining much awayfrom Stornham. He knew that he had been even rather touching in hisexpression of interest in the future of his son, and the necessity ofthe boy's being protected from uncontrolled hysteric influences. And, inthe years of Rosalie's unprotected wretchedness, he had taken excellentcare that no "stupid evidence" should be exposed to view. 

Of all this Betty was thinking and summing up definitely, point afterpoint. Where was the wise and practical course of defence? The mostunthinkable thing was that one could find one's self in a position inwhich action seemed inhibited. What could one do? To send for her fatherwould surely end the matter--but at what cost to Rosy, to Ughtred, toFfolliott, before whom the fair path to dignified security had so newlyopened itself? What would be the effect of sudden confusion, anguish, and public humiliation upon Rosalie's carefully rebuilt health andstrength--upon her mother's new hope and happiness? At moments it seemedas if almost all that had been done might be undone. She was beset bysuch a moment now, and felt for the time, at least, like a creature tiedhand and foot while in full strength. 

Certainly she was not prepared for the event which happened. Rolandstiffened his ears, and, beginning a rumbling growl, ended it suddenly, realising it an unnecessary precaution. 

He knew the man walking up the incline of the mound from the side behindthem. So did Betty know him. It was Sir Nigel looking rather gloweringand pale and walking slowly. He had discovered where she had meant totake refuge, and had probably ridden to some point where he could leavehis horse and follow her at the expense of taking a short cut whichsaved walking. 

As he climbed the mound to join her, Betty rose to her feet. 

"My dear girl, " he said, "don't get up as if you meant to go away. Ithas cost me some exertion to find you. "

"It will not cost you any exertion to lose me, " was her light answer. "IAM going away. "

He had reached her, and stood still before her with scarcely a yard'sdistance between them. He was slightly out of breath and even a triflelivid. He leaned on his stick and his look at her combined leaping badtemper with something deeper. 

"Look here!" he broke out, "why do you make such a point of treating melike the devil?"

Betty felt her heart give a hastened beat, not of fear, but ofrepulsion. This was the mood and manner which subjugated Rosalie. He hadso raised his voice that two men in the distance, who might be eitherlabourers or sportsmen, hearing its high tone, glanced curiously towardsthem. 

"Why do you ask me a question which is totally absurd?" she said. 

"It is not absurd, " he answered. "I am speaking of facts, and I intendto come to some understanding about them. "

For reply, after meeting his look a few seconds, she simply turned herback and began to walk away. He followed and overtook her. 

"I shall go with you, and I shall say what I want to say, " he persisted. "If you hasten your pace I shall hasten mine. I cannot exactly see yourunning away from me across the marsh, screaming. You wouldn't care tobe rescued by those men over there who are watching us. I should explainmyself to them in terms neither you nor Rosalie would enjoy. There! Iknew Rosalie's name would pull you up. Good God! I wish I were a weakfool with a magnificent creature protecting me at all risks. "

If she had not had blood and fire in her veins, she might have foundit easy to answer calmly. But she had both, and both leaped and beatfuriously for a few seconds. It was only human that it should be so. Butshe was more than a passionate girl of high and trenchant spirit, andshe had learned, even in the days at the French school, what he hadnever been able to learn in his life--self-control. She held herself inas she would have held in a horse of too great fire and action. Shewas actually able to look--as the first Reuben Vanderpoel would havelooked--at her capital of resource. But it meant taut holding of thereins. 

"Will you tell me, " she said, stopping, "what it is you want?"

"I want to talk to you. I want to tell you truths you would ratherbe told here than on the high road, where people are passing--or atStornham, where the servants would overhear and Rosalie be thrown intohysterics. You will NOT run screaming across the marsh, because I shouldrun screaming after you, and we should both look silly. Here is a ratherscraggy tree. Will you sit on the mound near it--for Rosalie's sake?"

"I will not sit down, " replied Betty, "but I will listen, because it isnot a bad idea that I should understand you. But to begin with, I willtell you something. " She stopped beneath the tree and stood with herback against its trunk. "I pick up things by noticing people closely, and I have realised that all your life you have counted upon gettingyour own way because you saw that people--especially women--have ahorror of public scenes, and will submit to almost anything to avoidthem. That is true very often, but not always. "

Her eyes, which were well opened, were quite the blue of steel, andrested directly upon him. "I, for instance, would let you make a scenewith me anywhere you chose--in Bond Street--in Piccadilly--on the stepsof Buckingham Palace, as I was getting out of my carriage to attend adrawing-room--and you would gain nothing you wanted by it--nothing. Youmay place entire confidence in that statement. "

He stared back at her, momentarily half-magnetised, and then broke forthinto a harsh half-laugh. 

"You are so damned handsome that nothing else matters. I'm hanged if itdoes!" and the words were an exclamation. He drew still nearer to her, speaking with a sort of savagery. "Cannot you see that you could dowhat you pleased with me? You are too magnificent a thing for a man towithstand. I have lost my head and gone to the devil through you. Thatis what I came to say. "

In the few seconds of silence that followed, his breath came quicklyagain and he was even paler than before. 

"You came to me to say THAT?" asked Betty. 

"Yes--to say it before you drove me to other things. "

Her gaze was for a moment even slightly wondering. He presented thecurious picture of a cynical man of the world, for the time being ruledand impelled only by the most primitive instincts. To a clear-headedmodern young woman of the most powerful class, he--her sister'shusband--was making threatening love as if he were a savage chief andshe a savage beauty of his tribe. All that concerned him was that heshould speak and she should hear--that he should show her he was thestronger of the two. 

"Are you QUITE mad?" she said. 

"Not quite, " he answered; "only three parts--but I am beyond my owncontrol. That is the best proof of what has happened to me. You are anarrogant piece and you would defy me if you stood alone, but you don't, and, by the Lord! I have reached a point where I will make use of everylever I can lay my hand on--yourself, Rosalie, Ughtred, Ffolliott--thewhole lot of you!"

The thing which was hardest upon her was her knowledge of her ownstrength--of what she might have allowed herself of flaming words andinstant action--but for the memory of Rosy's ghastly little face, asit had looked when she cried out, "You must not think of me. Betty, gohome--go home!" She held the white desperation of it before her mentalvision and answered him even with a certain interested deliberateness. 

"Do you know, " she inquired, "that you are talking to me as though youwere the villain in the melodrama?"

"There is an advantage in that, " he answered, with an unholy smile. "Ifyou repeat what I say, people will only think that you are indulgingin hysterical exaggeration. They don't believe in the existence ofmelodrama in these days. "

The cynical, absolute knowledge of this revealed so much that nerve wasrequired to face it with steadiness. 

"True, " she commented. "Now I think I understand. "

"No, you don't, " he burst forth. "You have spent your life standing on agolden pedestal, being kowtowed to, and you imagine yourself immune fromdifficulties because you think you can pay your way out of anything. Butyou will find that you cannot pay your way out of this--or rather youcannot pay Rosalie's way out of it. "

"I shall not try. Go on, " said the girl. "What I do not understand, youmust explain to me. Don't leave anything unsaid. "

"Good God, what a woman you are!" he cried out bitterly. He had neverseen such beauty in his life as he saw in her as she stood with herstraight young body flat against the tree. It was not a matter of deepcolour of eye, or high spirit of profile--but of something which burnedhim. Still as she was, she looked like a flame. She made him feel oldand body-worn, and all the more senselessly furious. 

"I believe you hate me, " he raged. "And I may thank my wife for that. "Then he lost himself entirely. "Why cannot you behave well to me? If youwill behave well to me, Rosalie shall go her own way. If you evenlooked at me as you look at other men--but you do not. There is alwayssomething under your lashes which watches me as if I were a wild beastyou were studying. Don't fancy yourself a dompteuse. I am not your man. I swear to you that you don't know what you are dealing with. I swearto you that if you play this game with me I will drag you two down if Idrag myself with you. I have nothing much to lose. You and your sisterhave everything. "

"Go on, " Betty said briefly. 

"Go on! Yes, I will go on. Rosalie and Ffolliott I hold in the hollowof my hand. As for you--do you know that people are beginning to discussyou? Gossip is easily stirred in the country, where people are so boredthat they chatter in self-defence. I have been considered a bad lot. Ihave become curiously attached to my sister-in-law. I am seen hangingabout her, hanging over her as we ride or walk alone together. AnAmerican young woman is not like an English girl--she is used to seeingthe marriage ceremony juggled with. There's a trifle of prejudiceagainst such young women when they are too rich and too handsome. Don'tlook at me like that!" he burst forth, with maddened sharpness, "I won'thave it!"

The girl was regarding him with the expression he most resented--thereflection of a normal person watching an abnormal one, and studying hisabnormality. 

"Do you know that you are raving?" she said, with quietcuriosity--"raving?"

Suddenly he sat down on the low mound near him, and as he touched hisforehead with his handkerchief, she saw that his hand actually shook. 

"Yes, " he answered, panting, "but 'ware my ravings! They mean what theysay. "

"You do yourself an injury when you give way to them"--steadily, evenwith a touch of slow significance--"a physical injury. I have noticedthat more than once. "

He sprang to his feet again. Every drop of blood left his face. Fora second he looked as if he would strike her. His arm actually flungitself out--and fell. 

"You devil!" he gasped. "You count on that? You she-devil!"

She left her tree and stood before him. 

"Listen to me, " she said. "You intimate that you have been layingmelodramatic plots against me which will injure my good name. Thatis rubbish. Let us leave it at that. You threaten that you will breakRosy's heart and take her child from her, you say also that you willwound and hurt my mother to her death and do your worst to ruin anhonest man----"

"And, by God, I will!" he raged. "And you cannot stop me, if----"

"I do not know whether I can stop you or not, though you may be sureI will try, " she interrupted him, "but that is not what I was going tosay. " She drew a step nearer, and there was something in the intensityof her look which fascinated and held him for a moment. She wascuriously grave. "Nigel, I believe in certain things you do not believein. I believe black thoughts breed black ills to those who think them. It is not a new idea. There is an old Oriental proverb which says, 'Curses, like chickens, come home to roost. ' I believe also thatthe worst--the very worst CANNOT be done to those who thinksteadily--steadily--only of the best. To you that is merely superstitionto be laughed at. That is a matter of opinion. But--don't go on withthis thing--DON'T GO ON WITH IT. Stop and think it over. "

He stared at her furiously--tried to laugh outright, and failed becausethe look in her eyes was so odd in its strength and stillness. 

"You think you can lay some weird spell upon me, " he jeeredsardonically. 

"No, I don't, " she answered. "I could not if I would. It is no affair ofmine. It is your affair only--and there is nothing weird about it. Don'tgo on, I tell you. Think better of it. "

She turned about without further speech, and walked away from him withlight swiftness over the marsh. Oddly enough, he did not even attempt tofollow her. He felt a little weak--perhaps because a certain thing shehad said had brought back to him a familiar touch of the horrors. Shehad the eyes of a falcon under the odd, soft shade of the extraordinarylashes. She had seen what he thought no one but himself had realised. Having watched her retreating figure for a few seconds, he sat down--assuddenly as before--on the mound near the tree. 

"Oh, damn her!" he said, his damp forehead on his hands. "Damn the wholeuniverse!"

. . . . . 

When Betty and Roland reached Stornham, the wicker-work pony chaise fromthe vicarage stood before the stone entrance steps. The drawing-roomdoor was open, and Mrs. Brent was standing near it saying some lastwords to Lady Anstruthers before leaving the house, after a visitevidently made with an object. This Betty gathered from the solemnity ofher manner. 

"Betty, " said Lady Anstruthers, catching sight of her, "do come in for amoment. "

When Betty entered, both her sister and Mrs. Brent looked at herquestioningly. 

"You look a little pale and tired, Miss Vanderpoel, " Mrs. Brent said, rather as if in haste to be the first to speak. "I hope you are not atall unwell. We need all our strength just now. I have brought the mostpainful news. Malignant typhoid fever has broken out among the hoppickers on the Mount Dunstan estate. Some poor creature was evidentlysickening for it when he came from London. Three people died lastnight. "

CHAPTER XLI

SHE WOULD DO SOMETHING

Sir Nigel's face was not a good thing to see when he appeared at thedinner table in the evening. As he took his seat the two footmen glancedquickly at each other, and the butler at the sideboard furtively thrustout his underlip. Not a man or woman in the household but had learnedthe signal denoting the moment when no service would please, no wordor movement be unobjectionable. Lady Anstruthers' face unconsciouslyassumed its propitiatory expression, and she glanced at her sister morethan once when Betty was unaware that she did so. 

Until the soup had been removed, Sir Nigel scarcely spoke, merely makingcurt replies to any casual remark. This was one of his simple and mostengaging methods of at once enjoying an ill-humour and making his wifefeel that she was in some way to blame for it. 

"Mount Dunstan is in a deucedly unpleasant position, " he condescended atlast. "I should not care to stand in his shoes. "

He had not returned to the Court until late in the afternoon, but havingheard in the village the rumour of the outbreak of fever, he had madeinquiries and gathered detail. 

"You are thinking of the outbreak of typhoid among the hop pickers?"said Lady Anstruthers. "Mrs. Brent thinks it threatens to be veryserious. "

"An epidemic, without a doubt, " he answered. "In a wretched unsanitaryplace like Dunstan village, the wretches will die like flies. "

"What will be done?" inquired Betty. 

He gave her one of the unpleasant personal glances and laughedderisively. 

"Done? The county authorities, who call themselves 'guardians, ' will befrightened to death and will potter about and fuss like old women, andprofess to examine and protect and lay restrictions, but everyone willmanage to keep at a discreet distance, and the thing will run riot anddo its worst. As far as one can see, there seems no reason why the wholeplace should not be swept away. No doubt Mount Dunstan has wisely takento his heels already. "

"I think that, on the contrary, there would be much doubt of that, "Betty said. "He would stay and do what he could. "

Sir Nigel shrugged his shoulders. 

"Would he? I think you'll find he would not. "

"Mrs. Brent tells me, " Rosalie broke in somewhat hurriedly, "that thehuts for the hoppers are in the worst possible condition. They are sodilapidated that the rain pours into them. There is no proper shelterfor the people who are ill, and Lord Mount Dunstan cannot afford to takecare of them. "

"But he WILL--he WILL, " broke forth Betty. Her head lifted itself andshe spoke almost as if through her small, shut teeth. A wave of intensebelief--high, proud, and obstinate, swept through her. It was a feelingso strong and vibrant that she felt as if Mount Dunstan himself must bereached and upborne by it--as if he himself must hear her. 

Rosalie looked at her half-startled, and, for the moment held fascinatedby the sudden force rising in her and by the splendid spark of lightunder her lids. She was reminded of the fierce little Betty of long ago, with her delicate, indomitable small face and the spirit which even atnine years old had somehow seemed so strong and straitly keen of sightthat one had known it might always be trusted. Actually, in one way, shehad not changed. She saw the truth of things. The next instant, however, inadvertently glancing towards her husband, she caught her breathquickly. Across his heavy-featured face had shot the sudden gleam of anew expression. It was as if he had at the moment recognised somethingwhich filled him with a rush of fury he himself was not prepared for. That he did not wish it to be seen she knew by his manner. There wasa brief silence in which it passed away. He spoke after it, withdisagreeable precision. 

"He has had an enormous effect on you--that man, " he said to Betty. 

He spoke clearly so that she might have the pleasure of being certainthat the menservants heard. They were close to the table, handingfruit--professing to be automatons, eyes down, faces expressing nothing, but as quick of hearing as it is said that blind men are. He knew thatif he had been in her place and a thing as insultingly significanthad been said to him, he should promptly have hurled the nearestobject--plate, wineglass, or decanter--in the face of the speaker. He knew, too, that women cannot hurl projectiles without looking likeviragos and fools. The weakly-feminine might burst into tears or into asilly rage and leave the table. There was a distinct breath's spaceof pause, and Betty, cutting a cluster from a bunch of hothouse grapespresented by the footman at her side, answered as clearly as he hadspoken himself. 

"He is strong enough to produce an effect on anyone, " she said. "I thinkyou feel that yourself. He is a man who will not be beaten in the end. Fortune will give him some good thing. "

"He is a fellow who knows well enough on which hand of him good thingslie, " he said. "He will take all that offers itself. "

"Why not?" Betty said impartially. 

"There must be no riding or driving in the neighbourhood of the place, "he said next. "I will have no risks run. " He turned and addressed thebutler. "Jennings, tell the servants that those are my orders. "

He sat over his wine but a short time that evening, and when he joinedhis wife and sister-in-law in the drawing-room he went at once to Betty. In fact, he was in the condition when a man cannot keep away froma woman, but must invent some reason for reaching her whether it isfatuous or plausible. 

"What I said to Jennings was an order to you as well as to the peoplebelow stairs. I know you are particularly fond of riding in thedirection of Mount Dunstan. You are in my care so long as you are in myhouse. "

"Orders are not necessary, " Betty replied. "The day is past when onerushed to smooth pillows and give the wrong medicine when one's friendswere ill. If one is not a properly-trained nurse, it is wiser not torisk being very much in the way. "

He spoke over her shoulder, dropping his voice, though Lady Anstrutherssat apart, appearing to read. 

"Don't think I am fool enough not to understand. You have yourself undermagnificent control, but a woman passionately in love cannot keep acertain look out of her eyes. "

He was standing on the hearth. Betty swung herself lightly round, facinghim squarely. Her full look was splendid. 

"If it is there--let it stay, " she said. "I would not keep it out of myeyes if I could, and, you are right, I could not if I would--if it isthere. If it is--let it stay. "

The daring, throbbing, human truth of her made his brain whirl. To a manyoung and clean and fit to count as in the lists, to have heard her saythe thing of a rival would have been hard enough, but base, degenerate, and of the world behind her day, to hear it while frenzied for her, wasintolerable. And it was Mount Dunstan she bore herself so highly for. Whether melodrama is out of date or not there are, occasionally, somefine melodramatic touches in the enmities of to-day. 

"You think you will reach him, " he persisted. "You think you will helphim in some way. You will not let the thing alone. "

"Excuse my mentioning that whatsoever I take the liberty of doing willencroach on no right of yours, " she said. 

But, alone in her room, after she went upstairs, the face reflectingitself in the mirror was pale and its black brows were drawn together. 

She sat down at the dressing-table, and, seeing the paled face, drew theblack brows closer, confronting a complicating truth. 

"If I were free to take Rosalie and Ughtred home to-morrow, " shethought, "I could not bear to go. I should suffer too much. "

She was suffering now. The strong longing in her heart was likea physical pain. No word or look of this one man had givenher proof that his thoughts turned to her, and yet it wasintolerable--intolerable--that in his hour of stress and need they wereas wholly apart as if worlds rolled between them. At any dire moment itwas mere nature that she should give herself in help and support. If, onthe night at sea, when they had first spoken to each other, the shiphad gone down, she knew that they two, strangers though they were, wouldhave worked side by side among the frantic people, and have been amongthe last to take to the boats. How did she know? Only because, he beinghe, and she being she, it must have been so in accordance with thelaws ruling entities. And now he stood facing a calamity almost asterrible--and she with full hands sat still. 

She had seen the hop pickers' huts and had recognised their condition. Mere brick sheds in which the pickers slept upon bundles of hay or strawin their best days; in their decay they did not even provide shelter. Infine weather the hop gatherers slept well enough in them, cooking theirfood in gypsy-fashion in the open. When the rain descended, it mustrun down walls and drip through the holes in the roofs in streams whichwould soak clothes and bedding. The worst that Nigel and Mrs. Brent hadimplied was true. Illness of any order, under such circumstances, wouldhave small chance of recovery, but malignant typhoid without shelter, without proper nourishment or nursing, had not one chance in amillion. And he--this one man--stood alone in the midst of thetragedy--responsible and helpless. He would feel himself responsibleas she herself would, if she were in his place. She was conscious thatsuddenly the event of the afternoon--the interview upon the marshes, hadreceded until it had become an almost unmeaning incident. What did thedegenerate, melodramatic folly matter----!

She had restlessly left her chair before the dressing-table, and waswalking to and fro. She paused and stood looking down at the carpet, though she scarcely saw it. 

"Nothing matters but one thing--one person, " she owned to herselfaloud. "I suppose it is always like this. Rosy, Ughtred, even father andmother--everyone seems less near than they were. It is too strong--toostrong. It is----" the words dropped slowly from her lips, "thestrongest thing--in the world. "

She lifted her face and threw out her hands, a lovely young half-sadsmile curling the deep corners of her mouth. "Sometimes one feels sodisdained, " she said--"so disdained with all one's power. Perhaps I aman unwanted thing. "

But even in this case there were aids one might make an effort to give. She went to her writing-table and sat thinking for some time. Afterwardsshe began to write letters. Three or four were addressed to London--onewas to Mr. Penzance. 

. . . . . 

Mount Dunstan and his vicar were walking through the village to thevicarage. They had been to the hop pickers' huts to see the peoplewho were ill of the fever. Both of them noticed that cottage doors andwindows were shut, and that here and there alarmed faces looked out frombehind latticed panes. 

"They are in a panic of fear, " Mount Dunstan said, "and by way ofsafeguard they shut out every breath of air and stifle indoors. Something must be done. "

Catching the eye of a woman who was peering over her short white dimityblind, he beckoned to her authoritatively. She came to the door andhesitated there, curtsying nervously. 

Mount Dunstan spoke to her across the hedge. 

"You need not come out to me, Mrs. Binner. You may stay where you are, "he said. "Are you obeying the orders given by the Guardians?"

"Yes, my lord. Yes, my lord, " with more curtsys. 

"Your health is very much in your own hands, " he added. 

"You must keep your cottage and your children cleaner than you have everkept them before, and you must use the disinfectant I sent you. Keepaway from the huts, and open your windows. If you don't open them, I shall come and do it for you. Bad air is infection itself. Do youunderstand?"

"Yes, my lord. Thank your lordship. "

"Go in and open your windows now, and tell your neighbours to do thesame. If anyone is ill let me know at once. The vicar and I will do ourbest for everyone. "

By that time curiosity had overcome fear, and other cottage doors hadopened. Mount Dunstan passed down the row and said a few words to eachwoman or man who looked out. Questions were asked anxiously and heanswered them. That he was personally unafraid was comfortingly plain, and the mere sight of him was, on the whole, an unexplainable support. 

"We heard said your lordship was going away, " put in a stout motherwith a heavy child on her arm, a slight testiness scarcely concealedby respectful good-manners. She was a matron with a temper, and that aMount Dunstan should avoid responsibilities seemed highly credible. 

"I shall stay where I am, " Mount Dunstan answered. "My place is here. "

They believed him, Mount Dunstan though he was. It could not be saidthat they were fond of him, but gradually it had been borne in upon themthat his word was to be relied on, though his manner was unalluring andthey knew he was too poor to do his duty by them or his estate. Ashe walked away with the vicar, windows were opened, and in one or twountidy cottages a sudden flourishing of mops and brooms began. 

There was dark trouble in Mount Dunstan's face. In the huts they hadleft two men stiff on their straw, and two women and a child in a stateof collapse. Added to these were others stricken helpless. A number ofworkers in the hop gardens, on realising the danger threatening them, had gathered together bundles and children, and, leaving the harvestbehind, had gone on the tramp again. Those who remained were the weakeror less cautious, or were held by some tie to those who were alreadyill of the fever. The village doctor was an old man who had spent hisblameless life in bringing little cottagers into the world, attendingtheir measles and whooping coughs, and their father's and grandfather'srheumatics. He had never faced a village crisis in the course of hisseventy-five years, and was aghast and flurried with fright. His methodsremained those of his youth, and were marked chiefly by a readinessto prescribe calomel in any emergency. A younger and stronger man wasneeded, as well as a man of more modern training. But even the mostbrilliant practitioner of the hour could not have provided shelter andnourishment, and without them his skill would have counted as nothing. For three weeks there had been no rain, which was a condition of thebarometer not likely to last. Already grey clouds were gathering andobscuring the blueness of the sky. 

The vicar glanced upwards anxiously. 

"When it comes, " he said, "there will be a downpour, and a persistentone. "

"Yes, " Mount Dunstan answered. 

He had lain awake thinking throughout the night. How was a man to sleep!It was as Betty Vanderpoel had known it would be. He, who--beggar thoughhe might be--was the lord of the land, was the man to face the strait ofthese poor workers on the land, as his own. Some action must be taken. What action? As he walked by his friend's side from the huts where thedead men lay it revealed itself that he saw his way. 

They were going to the vicarage to consult a medical book, but on theway there they passed a part of the park where, through a break in thetimber the huge, white, blind-faced house stood on view. Mount Dunstanlaid his hand on Mr. Penzance's shoulder and stopped him, "Look there!" he said. "THERE are weather-tight rooms enough. "

A startled expression showed itself on the vicar's face. 

"For what?" he exclaimed

"For a hospital, " brusquely "I can give them one thing, atleast--shelter. "

"It is a very remarkable thing to think of doing, " Mr. Penzance said. 

"It is not so remarkable as that labourers on my land should die at mygate because I cannot give them decent roofs to cover them. There is aroof that will shield them from the weather. They shall be brought tothe Mount. "

The vicar was silent a moment, and a flush of sympathy warmed his face. 

"You are quite right, Fergus, " he said, "entirely right. "

"Let us go to your study and plan how it shall be done, " Mount Dunstansaid. 

As they walked towards the vicarage, he went on talking. 

"When I lie awake at night, there is one thread which always windsitself through my thoughts whatsoever they are. I don't find that I candisentangle it. It connects itself with Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughter. You would know that without my telling you. If you had ever struggledwith an insane passion----"

"It is not insane, I repeat, " put in Penzance unflinchingly. 

"Thank you--whether you are right or wrong, " answered Mount Dunstan, striding by his side. "When I am awake, she is as much a part of myexistence as my breath itself. When I think things over, I find that Iam asking myself if her thoughts would be like mine. She is a creatureof action. Last night, as I lay awake, I said to myself, 'She would DOsomething. What would she do?' She would not be held back by fear ofcomment or convention. She would look about her for the utilisable, andshe would find it somewhere and use it. I began to sum up the villageresources and found nothing--until my thoughts led me to my own house. There it stood--empty and useless. If it were hers, and she stood in myplace, she would make it useful. So I decided. "

"You are quite right, " Mr. Penzance said again. 

They spent an hour in his library at the vicarage, arranging practicalmethods for transforming the great ballroom into a sort of hospitalward. It could be done by the removal of pieces of furniture from themany unused bedrooms. There was also the transportation of the patientsfrom the huts to be provided for. But, when all this was planned out, each found himself looking at the other with an unspoken thought in hismind. Mount Dunstan first expressed it. 

"As far as I can gather, the safety of typhoid fever patients dependsalmost entirely on scientific nursing, and the caution with which evenliquid nourishment is given. The woman whose husband died this morningtold me that he had seemed better in the night, and had asked forsomething to eat. She gave him a piece of bread and a slice of coldbacon, because he told her he fancied it. I could not explain to her, asshe sat sobbing over him, that she had probably killed him. When we havepatients in our ward, what shall we feed them on, and who will know howto nurse them? They do not know how to nurse each other, and the womenin the village would not run the risk of undertaking to help us. "

But, even before he had left the house, the problem was solved for them. The solving of it lay in the note Miss Vanderpoel had written the nightbefore at Stornham. 

When it was brought to him Mr. Penzance glanced up from certaincalculations he was making upon a sheet of note-paper. The accumulatingdifficulties made him look worn and tired. He opened the note and readit gravely, and then as gravely, though with a change of expression, handed it to Mount Dunstan. 

"Yes, she is a creature of action. She has heard and understood atonce, and she has done something. It is immensely practical--it isfine--it--it is lovable. "

"Do you mind my keeping it?" Mount Dunstan asked, after he had read it. 

"Keep it by all means, " the vicar answered. "It is worth keeping. "

But it was quite brief. She had heard of the outbreak of fever among thehop pickers, and asked to be allowed to give help to the people who weresuffering. They would need prompt aid. She chanced to know something ofthe requirements of such cases, and had written to London for certainsupplies which would be sent to them at once. She had also written fornurses, who would be needed above all else. Might she ask Mr. Penzanceto kindly call upon her for any further assistance required. 

"Tell her we are deeply grateful, " said Mount Dunstan, "and that she hasgiven us greater help than she knows. "

"Why not answer her note yourself?" Penzance suggested. 

Mount Dunstan shook his head. 

"No, " he said shortly. "No. "

CHAPTER XLII

IN THE BALLROOM

Though Dunstan village was cut off, by its misfortune, from its usualintercourse with its neighbours, in some mystic manner villages even attwenty miles' distance learned all it did and suffered, feared or hoped. It did not hope greatly, the rustic habit of mind tending towards adiscouraged outlook, and cherishing the drama of impending calamity. As far as Yangford and Marling inmates of cottages and farmhouses wereinclined to think it probable that Dunstan would be "swep away, "and rumours of spreading death and disaster were popular. Tread, theadvanced blacksmith at Stornham, having heard in his by-gone, betterdays of the Great Plague of London, was greatly in demand as a narratorof illuminating anecdotes at The Clock Inn. 

Among the parties gathered at the large houses Mount Dunstan himselfwas much talked of. If he had been a popular man, he might have becomea sort of hero; as he was not popular, he was merely a subject fordiscussion. The fever-stricken patients had been carried in carts tothe Mount and given beds in the ballroom, which had been made into atemporary ward. Nurses and supplies had been sent for from London, andtwo energetic young doctors had taken the place of old Dr. Fenwick, whohad been frightened and overworked into an attack of bronchitis whichconfined him to his bed. Where the money came from, which must be spentevery day under such circumstances, it was difficult to say. To thesimply conservative of mind, the idea of filling one's house with dirtyEast End hop pickers infected with typhoid seemed too radical. Surelyhe could have done something less extraordinary. Would everybodybe expected to turn their houses into hospitals in case of villageepidemics, now that he had established a precedent? But there werepeople who approved, and were warm in their sympathy with him. At thefirst dinner party where the matter was made the subject of argument, the beautiful Miss Vanderpoel, who was present, listened silently to thetalk with such brilliant eyes that Lord Dunholm, who was in an elderlyway her staunch admirer, spoke to her across the table:

"Tell us what YOU think of it, Miss Vanderpoel, " he suggested. 

She did not hesitate at all. 

"I like it, " she answered, in her clear, well-heard voice. "I like itbetter than anything I have ever heard. "

"So do I, " said old Lady Alanby shortly. "I should never have done itmyself--but I like it just as you do. "

"I knew you would, Lady Alanby, " said the girl. "And you, too, LordDunholm. "

"I like it so much that I shall write and ask if I cannot be ofassistance, " Lord Dunholm answered. 

Betty was glad to hear this. Only quickness of thought prevented herfrom the error of saying, "Thank you, " as if the matter were personal toherself. If Mount Dunstan was restive under the obviousness of the factthat help was so sorely needed, he might feel less so if her offer wasonly one among others. 

"It seems rather the duty of the neighbourhood to show some interest, "put in Lady Alanby. "I shall write to him myself. He is evidently ofa new order of Mount Dunstan. It's to be hoped he won't take the feverhimself, and die of it He ought to marry some handsome, well-behavedgirl, and re-found the family. "

Nigel Anstruthers spoke from his side of the table, leaning slightlyforward. 

"He won't if he does not take better care of himself. He passed meon the road two days ago, riding like a lunatic. He looks frightfullyill--yellow and drawn and lined. He has not lived the life to preparehim for settling down to a fight with typhoid fever. He would be donefor if he caught the infection. "

"I beg your pardon, " said Lord Dunholm, with quiet decision. "Unprejudiced inquiry proves that his life has been entirelyrespectable. As Lady Alanby says, he seems to be of a new order of MountDunstan. "

"No doubt you are right, " said Sir Nigel suavely. "He looked ill, notwithstanding. "

"As to looking ill, " remarked Lady Alanby to Lord Dunholm, who satnear her, "that man looks as if he was going to pieces pretty rapidlyhimself, and unprejudiced inquiry would not prove that his past hadnothing to do with it. "

Betty wondered if her brother-in-law were lying. It was generally safestto argue that he was. But the fever burned high at Mount Dunstan, andshe knew by instinct what its owner was giving of the strength of hisbody and brain. A young, unmarried woman cannot go about, however, making anxious inquiries concerning the welfare of a man who has made noadvance towards her. She must wait for the chance which brings news. 

. . . . . 

The fever, having ill-cared for and habitually ill fed bodies to workupon, wrought fiercely, despite the energy of the two young doctors andthe trained nurses. There were many dark hours in the ballroom ward, hours filled with groans and wild ravings. The floating Terpsichoreangoddesses upon the lofty ceiling gazed down with wondering eyes athaggard faces and plucking hands which sometimes, behind the screendrawn round their beds, ceased to look feverish, and grew paler andstiller, until they moved no more. But, at least, none had died throughwant of shelter and care. The supplies needed came from London each day. Lord Dunholm had sent a generous cheque to the aid of the sufferers, andso, also, had old Lady Alanby, but Miss Vanderpoel, consulting medicalauthorities and hospitals, learned exactly what was required, andnecessities were forwarded daily in their most easily utilisable form. 

"You generously told me to ask you for anything we found we required, "Mr. Penzance wrote to her in his note of thanks. "My dear and kindyoung lady, you leave nothing to ask for. Our doctors, who are youngand enthusiastic, are filled with delight in the completeness of theresources placed in their hands. "

She had, in fact, gone to London to consult an eminent physician, whowas an authority of world-wide reputation. Like the head of the legalfirm of Townlinson & Sheppard, he had experienced a new sensation inthe visit paid him by an indubitably modern young beauty, who wasted noword, and whose eyes, while he answered her amazingly clear questions, were as intelligently intent as those of an ardent and serious youngmedical student. What a surgical nurse she would have made! It seemedalmost a pity that she evidently belonged to a class the members ofwhich are rich enough to undertake the charge of entire epidemics, butwho do not usually give themselves to such work, especially when theyare young and astonishing in the matter of looks. 

In addition to the work they did in the ballroom ward, Mount Dunstanand the vicar found much to do among the villagers. Ignorance and alarmcombined to create dangers, even where they might not have been feared. Daily instruction and inspection of the cottages and their inmates wasrequired. The knowledge that they were under control and supervisionwas a support to the frightened people and prevented their lapsinginto careless habits. Also, there began to develop among them a secretdependence upon, and desire to please "his lordship, " as the existingcircumstances drew him nearer to them, and unconsciously they wereattracted and dominated by his strength. The strong man carries hispower with him, and, when Mount Dunstan entered a cottage and talked toits inmates, the anxious wife or surlily depressed husband was consciousof feeling a certain sense of security. It had been a queer enoughthing, this he had done--bundling the infected hoppers out of theirleaking huts and carrying them up to the Mount itself for shelterand care. At the most, gentlefolk generally gave soup or blankets orhospital tickets, and left the rest to luck, but, "gentry-way" or not, a man who did a thing like that would be likely to do other things, ifthey were needed, and gave folk a feeling of being safer than ordinarysoup and blankets and hospital tickets could make them. 

But "where did the money come from?" was asked during the first days. Beds and doctors, nurses and medicine, fine brandy and unlimited fowlsfor broth did not come up from London without being paid for. Poundsand pounds a day must be paid out to get the things that were delivered"regular" in hampers and boxes. The women talked to one another overtheir garden palings, the men argued together over their beer at thepublic house. Was he running into more debt? But even the village knewthat Mount Dunstan credit had been exhausted long ago, and there hadbeen no money at the Mount within the memory of man, so to speak. 

One morning the matron with the sharp temper found out the truth, though the outburst of gratitude to Mount Dunstan which resulted in herenlightenment, was entirely spontaneous and without intention. Her doubtof his Mount Dunstan blood had grown into a sturdy liking even for hisshort speech and his often drawn-down brows. 

"We've got more to thank your lordship for than common help, " she said. "God Almighty knows where we'd all ha' been but for what you've done. Those poor souls you've nursed and fed----"

"I've not done it, " he broke in promptly. "You're mistaken; I could nothave done it. How could I?"

"Well, " exclaimed the matron frankly, "we WAS wondering where thingscame from. "

"You might well wonder. Have any of you seen Lady Anstruthers' sister, Miss Vanderpoel, ride through the village? She used sometimes to ridethis way. If you saw her you will remember it. '

"The 'Merican young lady!" in ejaculatory delight. "My word, yes! Afine young woman with black hair? That rich, they say, as millions won'tcover it. "

"They won't, " grimly. "Lord Dunholm and Lady Alanby of Dole kindly sentcheques to help us, but the American young lady was first on the field. She sent both doctors and nurses, and has supplied us with food andmedicine every day. As you say, Mrs. Brown, God Almighty knows whatwould have become of us, but for what she has done. "

Mrs. Brown had listened with rather open mouth. She caught her breathheartily, as a sort of approving exclamation. 

"God bless her!" she broke out. "Girls isn't generally like that. Theirheads is too full of finery. God bless her, 'Merican or no 'Merican!That's what I say. "

Mount Dunstan's red-brown eyes looked as if she had pleased him. 

"That's what I say, too, " he answered. "God bless her!"

There was not a day which passed in which he did not involuntarily saythe words to himself again and again. She had been wrong when she hadsaid in her musings that they were as far apart as if worlds rolledbetween them. Something stronger than sight or speech drew themtogether. The thread which wove itself through his thoughts grewstronger and stronger. The first day her gifts arrived and he walkedabout the ballroom ward directing the placing of hospital cots andhospital aids and comforts, the spirit of her thought and intelligence, the individuality and cleverness of all her methods, brought her sovividly before him that it was almost as if she walked by his side, as if they spoke together, as if she said, "I have tried to think ofeverything. I want you to miss nothing. Have I helped you? Tell me ifthere is anything more. " The thing which moved and stirred him was hisknowledge that when he had thought of her she had also been thinkingof him, or of what deeply concerned him. When he had said to himself, tossing on his pillow, "What would she DO?" she had been planningin such a way as answered his question. Each morning, when the day'ssupplies arrived, it was as if he had received a message from her. 

As the people in the cottages felt the power of his temperament anddepended upon him, so, also, did the patients in the ballroom ward. Thefeeling had existed from the outset and increased daily. The doctors andnurses told one another that his passing through the room was like theadministering of a tonic. Patients who were weak and making no effort, were lifted upon the strong wave of his will and carried onward towardsthe shore of greater courage and strength. 

Young Doctor Thwaite met him when he came in one morning, and spoke in alow voice:

"There is a young man behind the screen there who is very low, " he said. "He had an internal haemorrhage towards morning, and has lost his pluck. He has a wife and three children. We have been doing our best for himwith hot-water bottles and stimulants, but he has not the courageto help us. You have an extraordinary effect on them all, Lord MountDunstan. When they are depressed, they always ask when you are comingin, and this man--Patton, his name is--has asked for you several times. Upon my word, I believe you might set him going again. "

Mount Dunstan walked to the bed, and, going behind the screen, stoodlooking down at the young fellow lying breathing pantingly. Hiseyes were closed as he laboured, and his pinched white nostrils drewthemselves in and puffed out at each breath. A nurse on the other sideof the cot had just surrounded him with fresh hot-water bottles. 

Suddenly the sunken eyelids flew open, and the eyes met Mount Dunstan'sin imploring anxiousness. 

"Here I am, Patton, " Mount Dunstan said. "You need not speak. "

But he must speak. Here was the strength his sinking soul had longedfor. 

"Cruel bad--goin' fast--m' lord, " he panted. 

Mount Dunstan made a sign to the nurse, who gave him a chair. He satdown close to the bed, and took the bloodless hand in his own. 

"No, " he said, "you are not going. You'll stay here. I will see tothat. "

The poor fellow smiled wanly. Vague yearnings had led him sometimes, inthe past, to wander into chapels or stop and listen to street preachers, and orthodox platitudes came back to him. 

"God's--will, " he trailed out. 

"It's nothing of the sort. It's God's will that you pull yourselftogether. A man with a wife and three children has no right to slipout. "

A yearning look flickered in the lad's eyes--he was scarcely more than alad, having married at seventeen, and had a child each year. 

"She's--a good--girl. "

"Keep that in your mind while you fight this out, " said Mount Dunstan. "Say it over to yourself each time you feel yourself letting go. Holdon to it. I am going to fight it out with you. I shall sit here and takecare of you all day--all night, if necessary. The doctor and the nursewill tell me what to do. Your hand is warmer already. Shut your eyes. "

He did not leave the bedside until the middle of the night. 

By that time the worst was over. He had acted throughout the hours underthe direction of nurse and doctor. No one but himself had touched thepatient. When Patton's eyes were open, they rested on him with a weirdgrowing belief. He begged his lordship to hold his hand, and was uneasywhen he laid it down. 

"Keeps--me--up, " he whispered. 

"He pours something into them--vigour--magnetic power--life. He's likea charged battery, " Dr. Thwaite said to his co-workers. "He sat down byPatton just in time. It sets one to thinking. "

Having saved Patton, he must save others. When a man or woman sank, orhad increased fever, they believed that he alone could give them help. In delirium patients cried out for him. He found himself doing hardwork, but he did not flinch from it. The adoration for him became asort of passion. Haggard faces lighted up into life at the sound of hisfootstep, and heavy heads turned longingly on their pillows as he passedby. In the winter days to come there would be many an hour's talk inEast End courts and alleys of the queer time when a score or more ofthem had lain in the great room with the dancing and floating goddesseslooking down at them from the high, painted ceiling, and the swell, whowas a lord, walking about among them, working for them as the nursesdid, and sitting by some of them through awful hours, sometimes holdingburning or slackening and chilling hands with a grip whose steadinessseemed to hold them back from the brink of the abyss they were slippinginto. The mere ignorantly childish desire to do his prowess credit andto play him fair saved more than one man and woman from going out withthe tide. 

"It is the first time in my life that I have fairly counted among men. It's the first time I have known human affection, other than yours, Penzance. They want me, these people; they are better for the sight ofme. It is a new experience, and it is good for a man's soul, " he said. 

CHAPTER XLIII

HIS CHANCE

Betty walked much alone upon the marshes with Roland at her side. Atintervals she heard from Mr. Penzance, but his notes were necessarilybrief, and at other times she could only rely upon report for newsof what was occurring at Mount Dunstan. Lord Mount Dunstan's almostmilitary supervision of and command over his villagers had certainlysaved them from the horrors of an uncontrollable epidemic; his decisionand energy had filled the alarmed Guardians with respect and thisrespect had begun to be shared by many other persons. A man as prompt inaction, and as faithful to such responsibilities as many men mighthave found plausible reasons enough for shirking, inevitably assumed acertain dignity of aspect, when all was said and done. Lord Dunholm wasmost clear in his expressions of opinion concerning him. Lady Alanbyof Dole made a practice of speaking of him in public frequently, alwayswith admiring approval, and in that final manner of hers, to whoseauthority her neighbours had so long submitted. It began to be acceptedas a fact that he was a new development of his race--as her ladyship hadput it, "A new order of Mount Dunstan. "

The story of his power over the stricken people, and of their passionateaffection and admiration for him, was one likely to spread far, and beimmensely popular. The drama of certain incidents appealed greatlyto the rustic mind, and by cottage firesides he was represented withrapturous awe, as raising men, women, and children from the dead, by themere miracle of touch. Mrs. Welden and old Doby revelled in thrilling, almost Biblical, versions of current anecdotes, when Betty paid hervisits to them. 

"It's like the Scripture, wot he done for that young man as the lastbreath had gone out of him, an' him lyin' stiffening fast. 'Young man, arise, ' he says. 'The Lord Almighty calls. You've got a young wife an'three children to take care of. Take up your bed an' walk. ' Not as hewanted him to carry his bed anywheres, but it was a manner of speaking. An' up the young man got. An' a sensible way, " said old Mrs. Weldenfrankly, "for the Lord to look at it--for I must say, miss, if I wasstruck down for it, though I s'pose it's only my sinful ignorance--thatthere's times when the Lord seems to think no more of sweepin' away asteady eighteen-shillin' a week, and p'raps seven in family, an' one atthe breast, an' another on the way--than if it was nothin'. But likelyenough, eighteen shillin' a week an' confinements does seem paltry tothe Maker of 'eaven an' earth. "

But, to the girl walking over the marshland, the humanness of the thingsshe heard gave to her the sense of nearness--of being almost withinsight and sound--which Mount Dunstan himself had felt, when each daywas filled with the result of her thought of the needs of the poor soulsthrown by fate into his hands. In these days, after listening to oldMrs. Welden's anecdotes, through which she gathered the simpler truthof things, Betty was able to construct for herself a less Scripturalversion of what she had heard. She was glad--glad in his sitting bya bedside and holding a hand which lay in his hot or cold, but alwaystrusting to something which his strong body and strong soul gave withoutstint. There would be no restraint there. Yes, he was kind--kind--kind--with the kindness a woman loves, and which she, of all women, lovedmost. Sometimes she would sit upon some mound, and, while her eyesseemed to rest on the yellowing marsh and its birds and pools, they sawother things, and their colour grew deep and dark as the marsh waterbetween the rushes. 

The time was pressing when a change in her life must come. Shefrequently asked herself if what she saw in Nigel Anstruthers' face wasthe normal thinking of a sane man, which he himself could control. Therehad been moments when she had seriously doubted it. He was haggard, aging and restless. Sometimes he--always as if by chance--followed heras she went from one room to another, and would seat himself and fixhis miserable eyes upon her for so long a time that it seemed he mustbe unconscious of what he was doing. Then he would appear suddenly torecollect himself and would start up with a muttered exclamation, andstalk out of the room. He spent long hours riding or driving alone aboutthe country or wandering wretchedly through the Park and gardens. Oncehe went up to town, and, after a few days' absence, came back lookingmore haggard than before, and wearing a hunted look in his eyes. He hadgone to see a physician, and, after having seen him, he had tried tolose himself in a plunge into deep and turbid enough waters; but hefound that he had even lost the taste of high flavours, for which hehad once had an epicurean palate. The effort had ended in his beingoverpowered again by his horrors--the horrors in which he found himselfstaring at that end of things when no pleasure had spice, no debaucherythe sting of life, and men, such as he, stood upon the shore of timeshuddering and naked souls, watching the great tide, bearing itstreasures, recede forever, and leave them to the cold and hideous dark. During one day of his stay in town he had seen Teresita, who had atfirst stared half frightened by the change she saw in him, and then hadtold him truths he could have wrung her neck for putting into words. 

"You look an old man, " she said, with the foreign accent he had oncefound deliciously amusing, but which now seemed to add a sting. "Andsomesing is eating you op. You are mad in lofe with some beautiful onewho will not look at you. I haf seen it in mans before. It is she whoeats you op--your evil thinkings of her. It serve you right. Your eyeslook mad. "

He himself, at times, suspected that they did, and cursed himselfbecause he could not keep cool. It was part of his horrors that he knewhis internal furies were worse than folly, and yet he could not restrainthem. The creeping suspicion that this was only the result of the simplefact that he had never tried to restrain any tendency of his own wasmaddening. His nervous system was a wreck. He drank a great deal ofwhisky to keep himself "straight" during the day, and he rose many timesduring his black waking hours in the night to drink more because heobstinately refused to give up the hope that, if he drank enough, itwould make him sleep. As through the thoughts of Mount Dunstan, who wasa clean and healthy human being, there ran one thread which would notdisentangle itself, so there ran through his unwholesome thinking athread which burned like fire. His secret ravings would not have beengood to hear. His passion was more than half hatred, and a desire forvengeance, for the chance to re-assert his own power, to prove himselfmaster, to get the better in one way or another of this arrogant youngoutsider and her high-handed pride. The condition of his mind was so farfrom normal that he failed to see that the things he said to himself, the plans he laid, were grotesque in their folly. The old crueldominance of the man over the woman thing, which had seemed the merenatural working of the law among men of his race in centuries past, wasawake in him, amid the limitations of modern days. 

"My God, " he said to himself more than once, "I would like to havehad her in my hands a few hundred years ago. Women were kept in theirplaces, then. "

He was even frenzied enough to think over what he would have done, ifsuch a thing had been--of her utter helplessness against that whichraged in him--of the grey thickness of the walls where he mighthave held and wrought his will upon her--insult, torment, death. Hisalcohol-excited brain ran riot--but, when it did its foolish worst, hewas baffled by one thing. 

"Damn her!" he found himself crying out. "If I had hung her up andcut her into strips she would have died staring at me with her bigeyes--without uttering a sound. "

There was a long reach between his imaginings and the time he livedin. America had not been discovered in those decent days, and now aman could not beat even his own wife, or spend her money, without beingmeddled with by fools. He was thinking of a New York young woman of thenineteenth century who could actually do as she hanged pleased, and whopleased to be damned high and mighty. For that reason in itself it wasincumbent upon a man to get even with her in one way or another. Highand mightiness was not the hardest thing to reach. It offered a goodaim. 

His temper when he returned to Stornham was of the order which in pastyears had set Rosalie and her child shuddering and had sent the servantsabout the house with pale or sullen faces. Betty's presence had theodd effect of restraining him, and he even told her so with sneeringresentment. 

"There would be the devil to pay if you were not here, " he said. "Youkeep me in order, by Jove! I can't work up steam properly when you watchme. "

He himself knew that it was likely that some change would take place. She would not stay at Stornham and she would not leave his wife andchild alone with him again. It would be like her to hold her tongueuntil she was ready with her infernal plans and could spring them onhim. Her letters to her father had probably prepared him for such actionas such a man would be likely to take. He could guess what it would be. They were free and easy enough in America in their dealings with themarriage tie. Their idea would doubtless be a divorce with custody ofthe child. He wondered a little that they had remained quiet so long. There had been American shrewdness in her coming boldly to Stornham tolook over the ground herself and actually set the place in order. It didnot present itself to his mind that what she had done had been no partof a scheme, but the mere result of her temperament and training. Hetold himself that it had been planned beforehand and carried out inhard-headed commercial American fashion as a matter of business. Thething which most enraged him was the implied cool, practical realisationof the fact that he, as inheritor of an entailed estate, was but ownerin charge, and not young enough to be regarded as an insurmountableobstacle to their plans. He could not undo the greater part of what hadbeen done, and they were calculating, he argued, that his would not belikely to be a long life, and if--if anything happened--Stornham wouldbe Ughtred's and the whole vulgar lot of them would come over and takepossession and swagger about the place as if they had been born on it. As to divorce or separation--if they took that line, he would at leastgive them a good run for their money. They would wish they had letsleeping dogs lie before the thing was over. The right kind of lawyercould bully Rosalie into saying anything he chose on the witness-stand. There was not much limit to the evidence a man could bring if he wasexperienced enough to be circumstantial, and knew whom he was dealingwith. The very fact that the little fool could be made to appear to havebeen so sly and sanctimonious would stir the gall of any jury of men. His own condoning the matter for the sake of his sensitive boy, deformedby his mother's unrestrained and violent hysteria before his birth, would go a long way. Let them get their divorce, they would have paidfor it, the whole lot of them, the beautiful Miss Vanderpoel andall. Such a story as the newspapers would revel in would not bea recommendation to Englishmen of unsmirched reputation. Then hisexultation would suddenly drop as his mental excitement produced itseffect of inevitable physical fatigue. Even if he made them pay forgetting their own way, what would happen to himself afterwards? Nomorbid vanity of self-bolstering could make the outlook anythingbut unpromising. If he had not had such diabolical luck in his fewinvestments he could have lived his own life. As it was, old Vanderpoelwould possibly condescend to make him some insufficient allowancebecause Rosalie would wish that it might be done, and he would beexpected to drag out to the end the kind of life a man pensioned by hiswife's relatives inevitably does. If he attempted to live in the countryhe should blow out his brains. When his depression was at its worst, hesaw himself aging and shabby, rambling about from one cheap Continentaltown to another, blackballed by good clubs, cold-shouldered even by theTeresitas, cut off from society by his limited means and the storieshis wife's friends would spread. He ground his teeth when he thoughtof Betty. Her splendid vitality had done something to life for him--hadgiven it savour. When he had come upon her in the avenue his blood hadstirred, even though it had been maliciously, and there had been spicein his very resentment of her presence. And she would go away. He wouldnot be likely to see her again if his wife broke with him; she would beswept out of his days. It was hideous to think of, and his rage wouldoverpower him and his nerves go to pieces again. 

"What are you going to do?" he broke forth suddenly one evening, whenhe found himself temporarily alone with her. "You are going to dosomething. I see it in your eyes. "

He had been for some time watching her from behind his newspaper, whileshe, with an unread book upon her lap, had, in fact, been thinkingdeeply and putting to herself serious questions. 

Her answer made him stir rather uncomfortably. 

"I am going to write to my father to ask him to come to England. "

So this was what she had been preparing to spring upon him. He laughedinsolently. 

"To ask him to come here?"

"With your permission. "

"With mine? Does an American father-in-law wait for permission?"

"Is there any practical reason why you should prefer that he should NOTcome?"

He left his seat and walked over to her. 

"Yes. Your sending for him is a declaration of war. "

"It need not be so. Why should it?"

"In this case I happen to be aware that it is. The choice is your own, Isuppose, " with ready bravado, "that you and he are prepared to face theconsequences. But is Rosalie, and is your mother?"

"My father is a business man and will know what can be done. He willknow what is worth doing, " she answered, without noticing hisquestion. "But, " she added the words slowly, "I have been making upmy mind--before I write to him--to say something to you--to ask you aquestion. "

He made a mock sentimental gesture. 

"To ask me to spare my wife, to 'remember that she is the mother of mychild'?"

She passed over that also. 

"To ask you if there is no possible way in which all this unhappinesscan be ended decently. "

"The only decent way of ending it would be that there should be nofurther interference. Let Rosalie supply the decency by showing me theconsideration due from a wife to her husband. The place has been put inorder. It was not for my benefit, and I have no money to keep it up. LetRosalie be provided with means to do it. "

As he spoke the words he realised that he had opened a way forembarrassing comment. He expected her to remind him that Rosalie had notcome to him without money. But she said nothing about the matter. Shenever said the things he expected to hear. 

"You do not want Rosalie for your wife, " she went on "but you couldtreat her courteously without loving her. You could allow her theprivileges other men's wives are allowed. You need not separate her fromher family. You could allow her father and mother to come to her andleave her free to go to them sometimes. Will you not agree to that? Willyou not let her live peaceably in her own simple way? She is very gentleand humble and would ask nothing more. "

"She is a fool!" he exclaimed furiously. "A fool! She will stay whereshe is and do as I tell her. "

"You knew what she was when you married her. She was simple and girlishand pretended to be nothing she was not. You chose to marry her and takeher from the people who loved her. You broke her spirit and her heart. You would have killed her if I had not come in time to prevent it. "

"I will kill her yet if you leave her, " his folly made him say. 

"You are talking like a feudal lord holding the power of life and deathin his hands, " she said. "Power like that is ancient history. You canhurt no one who has friends--without being punished. "

It was the old story. She filled him with the desire to shake or disturbher at any cost, and he did his utmost. If she was proposing to maketerms with him, he would show her whether he would accept them or not. He let her hear all he had said to himself in his worst moments--allthat he had argued concerning what she and her people would do, andwhat his own actions would be--all his intention to make them pay theuttermost farthing in humiliation if he could not frustrate them. His methods would be definite enough. He had not watched his wife andFfolliott for weeks to no end. He had known what he was dealing with. Hehad put other people upon the track and they would testify for him. Hepoured forth unspeakable statements and intimations, going, as usual, further than he had known he should go when he began. Under the spur ofexcitement his imagination served him well. At last he paused. 

"Well, " he put it to her, "what have you to say?"

"I?" with the remote intent curiosity growing in her eyes. "I havenothing to say. I am leaving you to say things. "

"You will, of course, try to deny----" he insisted. 

"No, I shall not. Why should I?"

"You may assume your air of magnificence, but I am dealing withuncomfortable factors. " He stopped in spite of himself, and then burstforth in a new order of rage. "You are trying some confounded experimenton me. What is it?"

She rose from her chair to go out of the room, and stood a momentholding her book half open in her hand. 

"Yes. I suppose it might be called an experiment, " was her answer. "Perhaps it was a mistake. I wanted to make quite sure of something. "

"Of what?"

"I did not want to leave anything undone. I did not want to believe thatany man could exist who had not one touch of decent feeling to redeemhim. It did not seem human. "

White dints showed themselves about his nostrils. 

"Well, you have found one, " he cried. "You have a lashing tongue, byGod, when you choose to let it go. But I could teach you a good manythings, my girl. And before I have done you will have learned most ofthem. "

But though he threw himself into a chair and laughed aloud as she lefthim, he knew that his arrogance and bullying were proving poor weapons, though they had done him good service all his life. And he knew, too, that it was mere simple truth that, as a result of the intellectual, ethical vagaries he scathingly derided--she had actually been giving hima sort of chance to retrieve himself, and that if he had been anothersort of man he might have taken it. 

CHAPTER XLIV

A FOOTSTEP

It was cold enough for fires in halls and bedrooms, and Lady Anstruthersoften sat over hers and watched the glowing bed of coals with a fixedthoughtfulness of look. She was so sitting when her sister went toher room to talk to her, and she looked up questioningly when the doorclosed and Betty came towards her. 

"You have come to tell me something, " she said. 

A slight shade of anxiousness showed itself in her eyes, and Betty satdown by her and took her hand. She had come because what she knew wasthat Rosalie must be prepared for any step taken, and the time hadarrived when she must not be allowed to remain in ignorance even ofthings it would be unpleasant to put into words. 

"Yes, " she answered. "I want to talk to you about something I havedecided to do. I think I must write to father and ask him to come tous. "

Rosalie turned white, but though her lips parted as if she were going tospeak, she said nothing. 

"Do not be frightened, " Betty said. "I believe it is the only thing todo. "

"I know! I know!"

Betty went on, holding the hand a little closer. "When I came hereyou were too weak physically to be able to face even the thought of astruggle. I saw that. I was afraid it must come in the end, but I knewthat at that time you could not bear it. It would have killed youand might have killed mother, if I had not waited; and until youwere stronger, I knew I must wait and reason coolly about you--abouteverything. "

"I used to guess--sometimes, " said Lady Anstruthers. 

"I can tell you about it now. You are not as you were then, " Betty said. "I did not know Nigel at first, and I felt I ought to see more of him. Iwanted to make sure that my child hatred of him did not make me unfair. I even tried to hope that when he came back and found the place in orderand things going well, he might recognise the wisdom of behaving withdecent kindness to you. If he had done that I knew father would haveprovided for you both, though he would not have left him the opportunityto do again what he did before. No business man would allow such a thingas that. But as time has gone by I have seen I was mistaken in hopingfor a respectable compromise. Even if he were given a free hand he wouldnot change. And now----" She hesitated, feeling it difficult to choosesuch words as would not be too unpleasant. How was she to tell Rosy ofthe ugly, morbid situation which made ordinary passiveness impossible. "Now there is a reason----" she began again. 

To her surprise and relief it was Rosalie who ended for her. She spokewith the painful courage which strong affection gives a weak thing. Herface was pale no longer, but slightly reddened, and she lifted the handwhich held hers and kissed it. 

"You shall not say it, " she interrupted her. "I will. There is a reasonnow why you cannot stay here--why you shall not stay here. That was whyI begged you to go. You must go, even if I stay behind alone. "

Never had the beautiful Miss Vanderpoel's eyes worn so fully their lookof being bluebells under water. That this timid creature should so standat bay to defend her was more moving than anything else could have been. 

"Thank you, Rosy--thank you, " she answered. "But you shall not be leftalone. You must go, too. There is no other way. Difficulties will bemade for us, but we must face them. Father will see the situation froma practical man's standpoint. Men know the things other men cannotdo. Women don't. Generally they know nothing about the law and can bebullied into feeling that it is dangerous and compromising to inquireinto it. Nigel has always seen that it was easy to manage women. Astrong business man who has more exact legal information than hehas himself will be a new factor to deal with. And he cannot makeobjectionable love to him. It is because he knows these things that hesays that my sending for father will be a declaration of war. "

"Did he say that?" a little breathlessly. 

"Yes, and I told him that it need not be so. But he would not listen. "

"And you are sure father will come?"

"I am sure. In a week or two he will be here. "

Lady Anstruthers' lips shook, her eyes lifted themselves to Betty's ina touchingly distressed appeal. Had her momentary courage fled beyondrecall? If so, that would be the worst coming to the worst, indeed. Yet it was not ordinary fear which expressed itself in her face, but adeeper piteousness, a sudden hopeless pain, baffling because it seemeda new emotion, or perhaps the upheaval of an old one long and carefullyhidden. 

"You will be brave?" Betty appealed to her. "You will not give way, Rosy?"

"Yes, I must be brave--I am not ill now. I must not fail you--I won't, Betty, but----"

She slipped upon the floor and dropped her face upon the girl's knee, sobbing. 

Betty bent over her, putting her arms round the heaving shoulders, and pleading with her to speak. Was there something more to be told, something she did not know?

"Yes, yes. Oh, I ought to have told you long ago--but I have always beenafraid and ashamed. It has made everything so much worse. I was afraidyou would not understand and would think me wicked--wicked. "

It was Betty who now lost a shade of colour. But she held the slimlittle body closer and kissed her sister's cheek. 

"What have you been afraid and ashamed to tell me? Do not be ashamed anymore. You must not hide anything, no matter what it is, Rosy. I shallunderstand. "

"I know I must not hide anything, now that all is over and father iscoming. It is--it is about Mr. Ffolliott. "

"Mr. Ffolliott?" repeated Betty quite softly. 

Lady Anstruthers' face, lifted with desperate effort, was like a weepingchild's. So much so in its tear-wet simpleness and utter lack of anyeffort at concealment, that after one quick look at it Betty's hastenedpulses ceased to beat at double-quick time. 

"Tell me, dear, " she almost whispered. 

"Mr. Ffolliott himself does not know--and I could not help it. He waskind to me when I was dying of unkindness. You don't know what it waslike to be drowning in loneliness and misery, and to see one good handstretched out to help you. Before he went away--oh, Betty, I know it wasawful because I was married!--I began to care for him very much, and Ihave cared for him ever since. I cannot stop myself caring, even thoughI am terrified. "

Betty kissed her again with a passion of tender pity. Poor little, simple Rosy, too! The tide had crept around her also, and had swepther off her feet, tossing her upon its surf like a wisp of seaweed andbearing her each day farther from firm shore. 

"Do not be terrified, " she said. "You need only be afraid if--if you hadtold him. "

"He will never know--never. Once in the middle of the night, " there wasanguish in the delicate face, pure anguish, "a strange loud cry wakenedme, and it was I myself who had cried out--because in my sleep it hadcome home to me that the years would go on and on, and at last some dayhe would die and go out of the world--and I should die and go out of theworld. And he would never know--even KNOW. "

Betty's clasp of her loosened and she sat very still, looking straightbefore her into some unseen place. 

"Yes, " she said involuntarily. "Yes, _I_ know--I know--I know. "

Lady Anstruthers fell back a little to gaze at her. 

"YOU know? YOU know?" she breathed. "Betty?"

But Betty at first did not speak. Her lovely eyes dwelt on the far-awayplace. 

"Betty, " whispered Rosy, "do you know what you have said?"

The lovely eyes turned slowly towards her, and the soft corners ofBetty's mouth deepened in a curious unsteadiness. 

"Yes. I did not intend to say it. But it is true. _I_ know--I know--Iknow. Do not ask me how. "

Rosalie flung her arms round her waist and for a moment hid her face. 

"YOU! YOU!" she murmured, but stopped herself almost as she uttered theexclamation. "I will not ask you, " she said when she spoke again. "Butnow I shall not be so ashamed. You are a beauty and wonderful, and I amnot; but if you KNOW, that makes us almost the same. You will understandwhy I broke down. It was because I could not bear to think of what willhappen. I shall be saved and taken home, but Nigel will wreak revenge onHIM. And I shall be the shame that is put upon him--only because he waskind--KIND. When father comes it will all begin. " She wrung her hands, becoming almost hysterical. 

"Hush, " said Betty. "Hush! A man like that CANNOT be hurt, even by a manlike Nigel. There is a way out--there IS. Oh, Rosy, we must BELIEVE it. "

She soothed and caressed her and led her on to relieving her longlocked-up misery by speech. It was easy to see the ways in which herfeeling had made her life harder to bear. She was as inexperienced as agirl, and had accused herself cruelly. When Nigel had tormented her withevil, carefully chosen taunts, she had felt half guilty and had colouredscarlet or turned pale, afraid to meet his sneeringly smiling face. Shehad tried to forget the kind voice, the kindly, understanding eyes, andhad blamed herself as a criminal because she could not. 

"I had nothing else to remember--but unhappiness--and it seemed as if Icould not help but remember HIM, " she said as simply as the Rosy whohad left New York at nineteen might have said it. "I was afraid to trustmyself to speak his name. When Nigel made insulting speeches I couldnot answer him, and he used to say that women who had adventures shouldtrain their faces not to betray them every time they were looked at. 

"Oh!" broke from Betty's lips, and she stood up on the hearth and threwout her hands. "I wish that for one day I might be a man--and yourbrother instead of your sister!"

"Why?"

Betty smiled strangely--a smile which was not amused--which was perhapsnot a smile at all. Her voice as she answered was at once low and tense. 

"Because, then I should know what to do. When a male creature cannot bereached through manhood or decency or shame, there is one way in whichhe can be punished. A man--a real man--should take him by his throatand lash him with a whip--while others look on--lash him until he howlsaloud like a dog. "

She had not expected to say it, but she had said it. Lady Anstrutherslooked at her fascinated, and then she covered her face with her hands, huddling herself in a heap as she knelt on the rug, looking singularlysmall and frail. 

"Betty, " she said presently, in a new, awful little voice, "I--I willtell you something. I never thought I should dare to tell anyone alive. I have shuddered at it myself. There have been days--awful, helplessdays, when I was sure there was no hope for me in all the world--whendeep down in my soul I understood what women felt when they MURDEREDpeople--crept to them in their wicked sleep and STRUCK them again--andagain--and again. Like that!" She sat up suddenly, as if she did notknow what she was doing, and uncovering her little ghastly face struckdownward three fierce times at nothingness--but as if it were notnothingness, and as if she held something in her hand. 

There was horror in it--Betty sprang at the hand and caught it. 

"No! no!" she cried out. "Poor little Rosy! Darling little Rosy! No! no!no!"

That instant Lady Anstruthers looked up at her shocked and awake. Shewas Rosy again, and clung to her, holding to her dress, piteous andpanting. 

"No! no!" she said. "When it came to me in the night--it was always inthe night--I used to get out of bed and pray that it might never, nevercome again, and that I might be forgiven--just forgiven. It was toohorrible that I should even UNDERSTAND it so well. " A woeful, wry littlesmile twisted her mouth. "I was not brave enough to have done it. Icould never have DONE it, Betty; but the thought was there--it wasthere! I used to think it had made a black mark on my soul. "

. . . . . 

The letter took long to write. It led a consecutive story up to thepoint where it culminated in a situation which presented itself as nolonger to be dealt with by means at hand. Parts of the story previousletters had related, though some of them it had not seemed absolutelynecessary to relate in detail. Now they must be made clear, and Bettymade them so. 

"Because you trusted me you made me trust myself, " was one of the thingsshe wrote. "For some time I felt that it was best to fight for my ownhand without troubling you. I hoped perhaps I might be able to leadthings to a decorous sort of issue. I saw that secretly Rosy hoped andprayed that it might be possible. She gave up expecting happiness beforeshe was twenty, and mere decent peace would have seemed heaven to her, if she could have been allowed sometimes to see those she loved andlonged for. Now that I must give up my hope--which was perhaps a ratherfoolish one--and now that I cannot remain at Stornham, she would haveno defence at all if she were left alone. Her condition would be morehopeless than before, because Nigel would never forget that we had triedto rescue her and had failed. If I were a man, or if I were very mucholder, I need not be actually driven away, but as it is I think that youmust come and take the matter into your own hands. "

She had remained in her sister's room until long after midnight, and bythe time the American letter was completed and sealed, a pale touch ofdawning light was showing itself. She rose, and going to the window drewthe blind up and looked out. The looking out made her open the window, and when she had done so she stood feeling the almost unearthlyfreshness of the morning about her. The mystery of the first faint lightwas almost unearthly, too. Trees and shrubs were beginning to take formand outline themselves against the still pallor of the dawn. Before longthe waking of the birds would begin--a brief chirping note here andthere breaking the silence and warning the world with faint insistencethat it had begun to live again and must bestir itself. She had got outof her bed sometimes on a summer morning to watch the beauty of it, tosee the flowers gradually reveal their colour to the eye, to hear thewarmly nesting things begin their joyous day. There were fewer birdsounds now, and the garden beds were autumnal. But how beautiful it allwas! How wonderful life in such a place might be if flowers and birdsand sweep of sward, and mass of stately, broad-branched trees, wereparts of the home one loved and which surely would in its own way loveone in return. But soon all this phase of life would be over. Rosalie, once safe at home, would look back, remembering the place with ashudder. As Ughtred grew older the passing of years would dim miserablechild memories, and when his inheritance fell to him he might return tosee it with happier eyes. She began to picture to herself Rosy's voyagein the ship which would carry her across the Atlantic to her motherand the scenes connected in her mind only with a girl's happiness. Whatsoever happened before it took place, the voyage would be made inthe end. And Rosalie would be like a creature in a dream--a heavenly, unbelievable dream. Betty could imagine how she would look wrapped upand sitting in her steamer chair, gazing out with rapturous eyes uponthe racing waves. 

"She will be happy, " she thought. "But I shall not. No, I shall not. "

She drew in the morning air and unconsciously turned towards the placewhere, across the rising and falling lands and behind the trees, sheknew the great white house stood far away, with watchers' lights showingdimly behind the line of ballroom windows. 

"I do not know how such a thing could be! I do not know how such a thingcould be!" she said. "It COULD not. " And she lifted a high head, noteven asking herself what remote sense in her being so obstinately defiedand threw down the glove to Fate. 

Sounds gain a curious distinctness and meaning in the hour of the breakof the dawn; in such an hour they seem even more significant than soundsheard in the dead of night. When she had gone to the window she hadfancied that she heard something in the corridor outside her door, butwhen she had listened there had been only silence. Now there was soundagain--that of a softly moved slippered foot. She went to the room'scentre and waited. Yes, certainly something had stirred in the passage. She went to the door itself. The dragging step had hesitated--stopped. Could it be Rosalie who had come to her for something. For one secondher impulse was to open the door herself; the next, she had changed hermind with a sense of shock. Someone had actually touched the handle andvery delicately turned it. It was not pleasant to stand looking at itand see it turn. She heard a low, evidently unintentionally utteredexclamation, and she turned away, and with no attempt at softeningthe sound of her footsteps walked across the room, hot with passionatedisgust. As well as if she had flung the door open, she knew whostood outside. It was Nigel Anstruthers, haggard and unseemly, withburned-out, sleepless eyes and bitten lip. 

Bad and mad as she had at last seen the situation to be, it was uglierand more desperate than she could well know. 

CHAPTER XLV

THE PASSING BELL

The following morning Sir Nigel did not appear at the breakfast table. He breakfasted in his own room, and it became known throughout thehousehold that he had suddenly decided to go away, and his man waspacking for the journey. What the journey or the reason for its beingtaken happened to be were things not explained to anyone but LadyAnstruthers, at the door of whose dressing room he appeared withoutwarning, just as she was leaving it. 

Rosalie started when she found herself confronting him. His eyes lookedhot and hollow with feverish sleeplessness. 

"You look ill, " she exclaimed involuntarily. "You look as if you had notslept. "

"Thank you. You always encourage a man. I am not in the habit ofsleeping much, " he answered. "I am going away for my health. It is aswell you should know. I am going to look up old Broadmorlands. I wantto know exactly where he is, in case it becomes necessary for me to seehim. I also require some trifling data connected with Ffolliott. Ifyour father is coming, it will be as well to be able to lay my hands onthings. You can explain to Betty. Good-morning. " He waited for no reply, but wheeled about and left her. 

Betty herself wore a changed face when she came down. A cloud had passedover her blooming, as clouds pass over a morning sky and dim it. Rosalieasked herself if she had not noticed something like this before. Shebegan to think she had. Yes, she was sure that at intervals there hadbeen moments when she had glanced at the brilliant face with an uneasyand yet half-unrealising sense of looking at a glowing light temporarilywaning. The feeling had been unrealisable, because it was not to beexplained. Betty was never ill, she was never low-spirited, shewas never out of humour or afraid of things--that was why it was sowonderful to live with her. But--yes, it was true--there had beendays when the strong, fine light of her had waned. Lady Anstruthers'comprehension of it arose now from her memory of the look she had seenthe night before in the eyes which suddenly had gazed straight beforeher, as into an unknown place. 

"Yes, I know--I know--I know!" And the tone in the girl's voice had beenone Rosy had not heard before. 

Slight wonder--if you KNEW--at any outward change which showed itself, though in your own most desperate despite. It would be so even withBetty, who, in her sister's eyes, was unlike any other creature. Butperhaps it would be better to make no comment. To make comment would bealmost like asking the question she had been forbidden to ask. 

While the servants were in the room during breakfast they talkedof common things, resorting even to the weather and the news of thevillage. Afterwards they passed into the morning room together, andBetty put her arm around Rosalie and kissed her. 

"Nigel has suddenly gone away, I hear, " she said. "Do you know where hehas gone?"

"He came to my dressing-room to tell me. " Betty felt the whole slim bodystiffen itself with a determination to seem calm. "He said he was goingto find out where the old Duke of Broadmorlands was staying at present. "

"There is some forethought in that, " was Betty's answer. "He is not onsuch terms with the Duke that he can expect to be received as a casualvisitor. It will require apt contrivance to arrange an interview. Iwonder if he will be able to accomplish it?"

"Yes, he will, " said Lady Anstruthers. "I think he can always contrivethings like that. " She hesitated a moment, and then added: "He said alsothat he wished to find out certain things about Mr. Ffolliott--'triflingdata, ' he called it--that he might be able to lay his hands on things iffather came. He told me to explain to you. "

"That was intended for a taunt--but it's a warning, " Betty said, thinking the thing over. "We are rather like ladies left alone todefend a besieged castle. He wished us to feel that. " She tightened herenclosing arm. "But we stand together--together. We shall not fail eachother. We can face siege until father comes. "

"You wrote to him last night?"

"A long letter, which I wish him to receive before he sails. He mightdecide to act upon it before leaving New York, to advise with some legalauthority he knows and trusts, to prepare our mother in some way--to dosome wise thing we cannot foresee the value of. He has known the outlineof the story, but not exact details--particularly recent ones. I haveheld back nothing it was necessary he should know. I am going out topost the letter myself. I shall send a cable asking him to prepare tocome to us after he has reflected on what I have written. "

Rosalie was very quiet, but when, having left the room to prepare to goto the village, Betty came back to say a last word, her sister came toher and laid her hand on her arm. 

"I have been so weak and trodden upon for years that it would not benatural for you to quite trust me, " she said. "But I won't fail you, Betty--I won't. "

The winter was drawing in, the last autumn days were short and oftengrey and dreary; the wind had swept the leaves from the trees andscattered them over park lands and lanes, where they lay a mellow-hued, rustling carpet, shifting with each chill breeze that blew. The berriedbriony garlands clung to the bared hedges, and here and there flaredscarlet, still holding their red defiantly until hard frosts should cometo shrivel and blacken them. The rare hours of sunshine were amber hoursinstead of golden. 

As she passed through the park gate Betty was thinking of the firstmorning on which she had walked down the village street between theirregular rows of red-tiled cottages with the ragged little enclosinggardens. Then the air and sunshine had been of the just awakeningspring, now the sky was brightly cold, and through the small-panedwindows she caught glimpses of fireglow. A bent old man walking veryslowly, leaning upon two sticks, had a red-brown woollen muffler wrappedround his neck. Seeing her, he stopped and shuffled the two sticksinto one hand that he might leave the other free to touch his wrinkledforehead stiffly, his face stretching into a slow smile as she stoppedto speak to him. 

"Good-morning, Marlow, " he said. "How is the rheumatism to-day?"

He was a deaf old man, whose conversation was carried on principally byguesswork, and it was easy for him to gather that when her ladyship'shandsome young sister had given him greeting she had not forgotten toinquire respecting the "rheumatics, " which formed the greater part ofexistence. 

"Mornin', miss--mornin', " he answered in the high, cracked voiceof rural ancientry. "Winter be nigh, an' they damp days be full ofrheumatiz. 'T'int easy to get about on my old legs, but I be mainthankful for they warm things you sent, miss. This 'ere, " fumbling athis red-brown muffler proudly, "'tis a comfort on windy days, so'tis, and warmth be a good thing to a man when he be goin' down hill inyears. "

"All of you who are not able to earn your own fires shall be warm thiswinter, " her ladyship's handsome sister said, speaking closer to hisear. "You shall all be warm. Don't be afraid of the cold days coming. "

He shuffled his sticks and touched his forehead again, looking up at heradmiringly and chuckling. 

"'T'will be a new tale for Stornham village, " he cackled. "'T'will bea new tale. Thank ye, miss. Thank ye. "

As she nodded smilingly and passed on, she heard him cackling stillunder his breath as he hobbled on his slow way, comforted and elate. Howalmost shamefully easy it was; a few loads of coal and faggots here andthere, a few blankets and warm garments whose cost counted for so littlewhen one's hands were full, could change a gruesome village winter intoa season during which labour-stiffened and broken old things, closingtheir cottage doors, could draw their chairs round the hearth andhover luxuriously over the red glow, which in its comforting fashion ofseeming to have understanding of the dull dreams in old eyes, was moreto be loved than any human friend. 

But she had not needed her passing speech with Marlow to stimulaterealisation of how much she had learned to care for the mere livingamong these people, to whom she seemed to have begun to belong, andwhose comfortably lighting faces when they met her showed that they knewher to be one who might be turned to in any hour of trouble or dismay. The centuries which had trained them to depend upon their "betters" hadtaught the slowest of them to judge with keen sight those who were to betrusted, not alone as power and wealth holders, but as creatures humanlyupright and merciful with their kind. 

"Workin' folk allus knows gentry, " old Doby had once shrilled to her. "Gentry's gentry, an' us knows 'em wheresoever they be. Better'n theyknow theirselves. So us do!"

Yes, they knew. And though they accepted many things as being merelytheir natural rights, they gave an unsentimental affection andappreciation in return. The patriarchal note in the life was lovable toher. Each creature she passed was a sort of friend who seemed almost ofher own blood. It had come to that. This particular existence wasmore satisfying to her than any other, more heart-filling and warmlycomplete. 

"Though I am only an impostor, " she thought; "I was born in FifthAvenue; yet since I have known this I shall be quite happy in no otherplace than an English village, with a Norman church tower looking downupon it and rows of little gardens with spears of white and blue lupinsand Canterbury bells standing guard before cottage doors. "

And Rosalie--on the evening of that first strange day when she hadcome upon her piteous figure among the heather under the trees nearthe lake--Rosalie had held her arm with a hot little hand and had saidfeverishly:

"If I could hear the roar of Broadway again! Do the stages rattle asthey used to, Betty? I can't help hoping that they do. "

She carried her letter to the post and stopped to talk a few minuteswith the postmaster, who transacted his official business in a smallshop where sides of bacon and hams hung suspended from the ceiling, while groceries, flannels, dress prints, and glass bottles of sweetstuff filled the shelves. "Mr. Tewson's" was the central point ofStornham in a commercial sense. The establishment had also certainsocial qualifications. 

Mr. Tewson knew the secrets of all hearts within the village radius, also the secrets of all constitutions. He knew by some occult means whohad been "taken bad, " or who had "taken a turn, " and was aware at oncewhen anyone was "sinkin' fast. " With such differences of opinion asoccasionally arose between the vicar and his churchwardens he wasimmediately familiar. The history of the fever among the hop pickers atDunstan village he had been able to relate in detail from the moment ofits outbreak. It was he who had first dramatically revealed the truth ofthe action Miss Vanderpoel had taken in the matter, which revelation hadaroused such enthusiasm as had filled The Clock Inn to overflowing andgiven an impetus to the sale of beer. Tread, it was said, had evenmade a speech which he had ended with vague but excellent intentions byproposing the joint healths of her ladyship's sister and the "Presidentof America. " Mr. Tewson was always glad to see Miss Vanderpoel cross histhreshold. This was not alone because she represented the custom of theCourt, which since her arrival had meant large regular orders and largebills promptly paid, but that she brought with her an exotic atmosphereof interest and excitement. 

He had mentioned to friends that somehow a talk with her made him feel"set up for the day. " Betty was not at all sure that he did not prepareand hoard up choice remarks or bits of information as openings toconversation. 

This morning he had thrilling news for her and began with it at once. 

"Dr. Fenwick at Stornham is very low, miss, " he said. "He's very low, you'll be sorry to hear. The worry about the fever upset him terribleand his bronchitis took him bad. He's an old man, you know. "

Miss Vanderpoel was very sorry to hear it. It was quite in the naturalorder of things that she should ask other questions about Dunstanvillage and the Mount, and she asked several. 

The fever was dying out and pale convalescents were sometimes seen inthe village or strolling about the park. His lordship was taking careof the people and doing his best for them until they should be strongenough to return to their homes. 

"But he's very strict about making it plain that it's you, miss, theyhave to thank for what he does. "

"That is not quite just, " said Miss Vanderpoel. "He and Mr. Penzancefought on the field. I only supplied some of the ammunition. "

"The county doesn't think of him as it did even a year ago, miss, " saidTewson rather smugly. "He was very ill thought of then among the gentry. It's wonderful the change that's come about. If he should fall illthere'll be a deal of sympathy. "

"I hope there is no question of his falling ill, " said Miss Vanderpoel. 

Mr. Tewson lowered his voice confidentially. This was really his mostvaluable item of news. 

"Well, miss, " he admitted, "I have heard that he's been looking very badfor a good bit, and it was told me quite private, because the doctorsand the vicar don't want the people to be upset by hearing it--that fora week he's not been well enough to make his rounds. "

"Oh!" The exclamation was a faint one, but it was an exclamation. "I hope that means nothing really serious, " Miss Vanderpoel added. "Everyone will hope so. "

"Yes, miss, " said Mr. Tewson, deftly twisting the string round thepackage he was tying up for her. "A sad reward it would be if he losthis life after doing all he has done. A sad reward! But there'd be agood deal of sympathy. "

The small package contained trifles of sewing and knitting materials shewas going to take to Mrs. Welden, and she held out her hand for it. Sheknew she did not smile quite naturally as she said her good-morningto Tewson. She went out into the pale amber sunshine and stood a fewmoments, glad to find herself bathed in it again. She suddenly neededair and light. "A sad reward!" Sometimes people were not rewarded. Bravemen were shot dead on the battlefield when they were doing brave things;brave physicians and nurses died of the plagues they faithfully wrestledwith. Here were dread and pain confronting her--Betty Vanderpoel--andwhile almost everyone else seemed to have faced them, she was whollyunused to their appalling clutch. What a life hers had been--that inlooking back over it she should realise that she had never been touchedby anything like this before! There came back to her the look of almostawed wonder in G. Selden's honest eyes when he said: "What it must be tobe you--just YOU!" He had been thinking only of the millions and ofthe freedom from all everyday anxieties the millions gave. She smiledfaintly as the thought crossed her brain. The millions! The rollingup of them year by year, because millions were breeders! The newspaperstories of them--the wonder at and belief in their power! It was allgoing on just as before, and yet here stood a Vanderpoel in an Englishvillage street, of no more worth as far as power to aid herself wentthan Joe Buttle's girl with the thick waist and round red cheeks. JennyButtle would have believed that her ladyship's rich American sistercould do anything she chose, open any door, command any presence, sweep aside any obstacle with a wave of her hand. But of the two, JennyButtle's path would have laid straighter before her. If she had had "ayoung man" who had fallen ill she would have been free if his mother hadcherished no objection to their "walking out"--to spend all her sparehours in his cottage, making gruel and poultices, crying until hernose and eyes were red, and pouring forth her hopes and fears to anyneighbour who came in or out or hung over the dividing garden hedge. Ifthe patient died, the deeper her mourning and the louder her sobs at hisfuneral the more respectable and deserving of sympathy and admirationwould Jenny Buttle have been counted. Her ladyship's rich Americansister had no "young man"; she had not at any time been asked to "walkout. " Even in the dark days of the fever, each of which had carriedthought and action of hers to the scene of trouble, there had reignedunbroken silence, except for the vicar's notes of warm and appreciativegratitude. 

"You are very obstinate, Fergus, " Mr. Penzance had said. 

And Mount Dunstan had shaken his head fiercely and answered:

"Don't speak to me about it. Only obstinacy will save me from behavinglike--other blackguards. "

Mr. Penzance, carefully polishing his eyeglasses as he watched him, wasnot sparing in his comment. 

"That is pure folly, " he said, "pure bull-necked, stubborn folly, charging with its head down. Before it has done with you it will havemade you suffer quite enough. "

"Be sure of that, " Mount Dunstan had said, setting his teeth, as hesat in his chair clasping his hands behind his head and glowering intospace. 

Mr. Penzance quietly, speculatively, looked him over, and reflectedaloud--or, so it sounded. 

"It is a big-boned and big-muscled characteristic, but there are thingswhich are stronger. Some one minute will arrive--just one minute--whichwill be stronger. One of those moments when the mysteries of theuniverse are at work. "

"Don't speak to me like that, I tell you!" Mount Dunstan broke outpassionately. And he sprang up and marched out of the room like an angryman. 

Miss Vanderpoel did not go to Mrs. Welden's cottage at once, but walkedpast its door down the lane, where there were no more cottages, but onlyhedges and fields on either side of her. "Not well enough to make hisrounds" might mean much or little. It might mean a temporary breakdownfrom overfatigue or a sickening for deadly illness. She looked at agroup of cropping sheep in a field and at a flock of rooks which hadjust alighted near it with cawing and flapping of wings. She kept hereyes on them merely to steady herself. The thoughts she had brought outwith her had grown heavier and were horribly difficult to control. Onemust not allow one's self to believe the worst will come--one must notallow it. 

She always held this rule before herself, and now she was not holdingit steadily. There was nothing to do. She could write a mere note ofinquiry to Mr. Penzance, but that was all. She could only walk up anddown the lanes and think--whether he lay dying or not. She could donothing, even if a day came when she knew that a pit had been dug in theclay and he had been lowered into it with creaking ropes, and the clodsshovelled back upon him where he lay still--never having told her thathe was glad that her being had turned to him and her heart cried aloudhis name. She recalled with curious distinctness the effect of thesteady toll of the church bell--the "passing bell. "

She could hear it as she had heard it the first time it fell uponher ear, and she had inquired what it meant. Why did they call it the"passing bell"? All had passed before it began to toll--all had passed. If it tolled at Dunstan and the pit was dug in the churchyard beforeher father came, would he see, the moment they met, that something hadbefallen her--that the Betty he had known was changed--gone? Yes, hewould see. Affection such as his always saw. Then he would sit alonewith her in some quiet room and talk to her, and she would tell him thestrange thing that had happened. He would understand--perhaps betterthan she. 

She stopped abruptly in her walk and stood still. The hand holding herpackage was quite cold. This was what one must not allow one's self. Buthow the thoughts had raced through her brain! She turned and hastenedher steps towards Mrs. Welden's cottage. 

In Mrs. Welden's tiny back yard there stood a "coal lodge" suited to thesize of the domicile and already stacked with a full winter's supplyof coal. Therefore the well-polished and cleanly little grate in theliving-room was bright with fire. 

Old Doby, who had tottered round the corner to pay his fellow gossip avisit, was sitting by it, and old Mrs. Welden, clean as to cap and apronand small purple shoulder shawl, had evidently been allaying his naturalanxiety as to the conduct of foreign sovereigns by reading in a loudvoice the "print" under the pictures in an illustrated paper. 

This occupation had, however, been interrupted a few moments before MissVanderpoel's arrival. Mrs. Bester, the neighbour in the nextcottage, had stepped in with her youngest on her hip and was talkingbreathlessly. She paused to drop her curtsy as Betty entered, and oldDoby stood up and made his salute with a trembling hand, "She'll know, " he said. "Gentry knows the ins an' outs of gentry fust. She'll know the rights. "

"What has happened?"

Mrs. Bester unexpectedly burst into tears. There was an element inthe female villagers' temperament which Betty had found was frequentlyunexpected in its breaking forth. 

"He's down, miss, " she said. "He's down with it crool bad. There'll beno savin' of him--none. "

Betty laid her package of sewing cotton and knitting wool quietly on theblue and white checked tablecloth. 

"Who--is he?" she asked. 

"His lordship--and him just saved all Dunstan parish from death--to golike this!"

In Stornham village and in all others of the neighbourhood the feminineattitude towards Mount Dunstan had been one of strongly emotionaladmiration. The thwarted female longing for romance--the desire fordrama and a hero had been fed by him. A fine, big young man, one thathad been "spoke ill of" and regarded as an outcast, had suddenly turnedthe tables on fortune and made himself the central figure of the county, the talk of gentry in their grand houses, of cottage women on theirdoorsteps, and labourers stopping to speak to each other by theroadside. Magic stories had been told of him, beflowered with dramaticdetail. No incident could have been related to his credit which wouldnot have been believed and improved upon. Shut up in his village workingamong his people and unseen by outsiders, he had become a popular idol. Any scrap of news of him--any rumour, true or untrue, was seized uponand excitedly spread abroad. Therefore Mrs. Bester wept as she talked, and, if the truth must be told, enjoyed the situation. She was the firstto tell the story to her ladyship's sister herself, as well as to Mrs. Welden and old Doby. 

"It's Tom as brought it in, " she said. "He's my brother, miss, an' he'sone of the ringers. He heard it from Jem Wesgate, an' he heard it atToomy's farm. They've been keepin' it hid at the Mount because thepeople that's ill hangs on his lordship so that the doctors daren't letthem know the truth. They've been told he had to go to London an' maycome back any day. What Tom was sayin', miss, was that we'd all knowwhen it was over, for we'd hear the church bell toll here same as it'dtoll at Dunstan, because they ringers have talked it over an' they'regoin' to talk it over to-day with the other parishes--Yangford an'Meltham an' Dunholm an' them. Tom says Stornham ringers met just now atThe Clock an' said that for a man that's stood by labouring folk like hehas, toll they will, an' so ought the other parishes, same as if he wasroyalty, for he's made himself nearer. They'll toll the minute they hearit, miss. Lord help us!" with a fresh outburst of crying. "It don't seemlike it's fair as it should be. When we hear the bell toll, miss----"

"Don't!" said her ladyship's handsome sister suddenly. "Please don't sayit again. "

She sat down by the table, and resting her elbows on the blue and whitechecked cloth, covered her face with her hands. She did not speak atall. In this tiny room, with these two old souls who loved her, she neednot explain. She sat quite still, and Mrs. Welden after looking at herfor a few seconds was prompted by some sublimely simple intuition, andgently sidled Mrs. Bester and her youngest into the little kitchen, where the copper was. 

"Her helpin' him like she did, makes it come near, " she whispered. "Dessay it seems as if he was a'most like a relation. "

Old Doby sat and looked at his goddess. In his slowly moving old brainstirred far-off memories like long-dead things striving to come to life. He did not know what they were, but they wakened his dim eyes to a newseeing of the slim young shape leaning a little forward, the soft cloudof hair, the fair beauty of the cheek. He had not seen anything likeit in his youth, but--it was Youth itself, and so was that which theringers were so soon to toll for; and for some remote and unformedreason, to his scores of years they were pitiful and should be cheered. He bent forward himself and put out his ancient, veined and knotted, gnarled and trembling hand, to timorously touch the arm of her heworshipped and adored. 

"God bless ye!" he said, his high, cracked voice even more shrill andthin than usual. "God bless ye!" And as she let her hands slip down, and, turning, gently looked at him, he nodded to her speakingly, becauseout of the dimness of his being, some part of Nature's working hadstrangely answered and understood. 

CHAPTER XLVI

LISTENING

On her way back to the Court her eyes saw only the white road beforeher feet as she walked. She did not lift them until she found herselfpassing the lych-gate at the entrance to the churchyard. Then suddenlyshe looked up at the square grey stone tower where the bells hung, andfrom which they called the village to church, or chimed for weddings--orgave slowly forth to the silent air one heavy, regular stroke afteranother. She looked and shuddered, and spoke aloud with a curious, passionate imploring, like a child's. 

"Oh, don't toll! Don't toll! You must not! You cannot!" Terror hadsprung upon her, and her heart was being torn in two in her breast. Thatwas surely what it seemed like--this agonising ache of fear. Now fromhour to hour she would be waiting and listening to each sound borne onthe air. Her thought would be a possession she could not escape. Whenshe spoke or was spoken to, she would be listening--when she was silentevery echo would hold terror, when she slept--if sleep should come toher--her hearing would be awake, and she would be listening--listeningeven then. It was not Betty Vanderpoel who was walking along the whiteroad, but another creature--a girl whose brain was full of abnormalthought, and whose whole being made passionate outcry against the thingwhich was being slowly forced upon her. If the bell tolled--suddenly, the whole world would be swept clean of life--empty and clean. If thebell tolled. 

Before the entrance of the Court she saw, as she approached it, thevicarage pony carriage, standing as it had stood on the day she hadreturned from her walk on the marshes. She felt it quite natural that itshould be there. Mrs. Brent always seized upon any fragment of news, and having seized on something now, she had not been able to resist theexcitement of bringing it to Lady Anstruthers and her sister. 

She was in the drawing-room with Rosalie, and was full of her subjectand the emotion suitable to the occasion. She had even attained acertain modified dampness of handkerchief. Rosalie's handkerchief, however, was not damp. She had not even attempted to use it, but satstill, her eyes brimming with tears, which, when she saw Betty, brimmedover and slipped helplessly down her cheeks. 

"Betty!" she exclaimed, and got up and went towards her, "I believe youhave heard. "

"In the village, I heard something--yes, " Betty answered, and aftergiving greeting to Mrs. Brent, she led her sister back to her chair, andsat near her. 

This--the thought leaped upon her--was the kind of situation she must beprepared to be equal to. In the presence of these who knew nothing, she must bear herself as if there was nothing to be known. No one butherself had the slightest knowledge of what the past months had broughtto her--no one in the world. If the bell tolled, no one in the world buther father ever would know. She had no excuse for emotion. None had beengiven to her. The kind of thing it was proper that she should say and donow, in the presence of Mrs. Brent, it would be proper and decent thatshe should say and do in all other cases. She must comport herself asBetty Vanderpoel would if she were moved only by ordinary human sympathyand regret. 

"We must remember that we have only excited rumour to depend upon, " shesaid. "Lord Mount Dunstan has kept his village under almost militarylaw. He has put it into quarantine. No one is allowed to leave it, sothere can be no direct source of information. One cannot be sure of theentire truth of what one hears. Often it is exaggerated cottage talk. The whole neighbourhood is wrought up to a fever heat of excitedsympathy. And villagers like the drama of things. "

Mrs. Brent looked at her admiringly, it being her fixed habit to admireMiss Vanderpoel, and all such as Providence had set above her. 

"Oh, how wise you are, Miss Vanderpoel!" she exclaimed, even devoutly. "It is so nice of you to be calm and logical when everybody else is soupset. You are quite right about villagers enjoying the dramatic side oftroubles. They always do. And perhaps things are not so bad as they say. I ought not to have let myself believe the worst. But I quite broke downunder the ringers--I was so touched. "

"The ringers?" faltered Lady Anstruthers

"The leader came to the vicar to tell him they wanted permission totoll--if they heard tolling at Dunstan. Weaver's family lives withinhearing of Dunstan church bells, and one of his boys is to run acrossthe fields and bring the news to Stornham. And it was most touching, Miss Vanderpoel. They feel, in their rustic way, that Lord Mount Dunstanhas not been treated fairly in the past. And now he seems to them a heroand a martyr--or like a great soldier who has died fighting. "

"Who MAY die fighting, " broke from Miss Vanderpoel sharply. 

"Who--who may----" Mrs. Brent corrected herself, "though Heaven grant hewill not. But it was the ringers who made me feel as if all reallywas over. Thank you, Miss Vanderpoel, thank you for being so practicaland--and cool. "

"It WAS touching, " said Lady Anstruthers, her eyes brimming over again. "And what the villagers feel is true. It goes to one's heart, " in alittle outburst. "People have been unkind to him! And he has been lonelyin that great empty place--he has been lonely. And if he is dyingto-day, he is lonely even as he dies--even as he dies. "

Betty drew a deep breath. For one moment there seemed to rise beforeher vision of a huge room, whose stately size made its bareness a moredesolate thing. And Mr. Penzance bent low over the bed. She tore herthought away from it. 

"No! No!" she cried out in low, passionate protest. "There will belove and yearning all about him everywhere. The villagers who arewaiting--the poor things he has worked for--the very ringers themselves, are all pouring forth the same thoughts. He will feel even ours--ourstoo! His soul cannot be lonely. "

A few minutes earlier, Mrs. Brent had been saying to herself inwardly:"She has not much heart after all, you know. " Now she looked at her inamazement. 

The blue bells were under water in truth--drenched and drowned. And yetas the girl stood up before her, she looked taller--more the magnificentMiss Vanderpoel than ever--though she expressed a new meaning. 

"There is one thing the villagers can do for him, " she said. "One thingwe can all do. The bell has not tolled yet. There is a service for thosewho are--in peril. If the vicar will call the people to the church, wecan all kneel down there--and ask to be heard. The vicar will do that Iam sure--and the people will join him with all their hearts. "

Mrs. Brent was overwhelmed. 

"Dear, dear, Miss Vanderpoel!" she exclaimed. "THAT is touching, indeedit is! And so right and so proper. I will drive back to the village atonce. The vicar's distress is as great as mine. You think of everything. The service for the sick and dying. How right--how right!"

With a sense of an increase of value in herself, the vicar, and thevicarage, she hastened back to the pony carriage, but in the hall sheseized Betty's hand emotionally. 

"I cannot tell you how much I am touched by this, " she murmured. "I didnot know you were--were a religious girl, my dear. "

Betty answered with grave politeness. 

"In times of great pain and terror, " she said, "I think almost everybodyis religious--a little. If that is the right word. "

There was no ringing of the ordinary call to service. In less than anhour's time people began to come out of their cottages and wend theirway towards the church. No one had put on his or her Sunday clothes. Thewomen had hastily rolled down their sleeves, thrown off their aprons, and donned everyday bonnets and shawls. The men were in their corduroys, as they had come in from the fields, and the children wore theirpinafores. As if by magic, the news had flown from house to house, andeach one who had heard it had left his or her work without a moment'shesitation. They said but little as they made their way to the church. Betty, walking with her sister, was struck by the fact that there weremore of them than formed the usual Sunday morning congregation. Theywere doing no perfunctory duty. The men's faces were heavily moved, most of the women wiped their eyes at intervals, and the children lookedawed. There was a suggestion of hurried movement in the step of each--asif no time must be lost--as if they must begin their appeal at once. Betty saw old Doby tottering along stiffly, with his granddaughter andMrs. Welden on either side of him. Marlow, on his two sticks, was to beseen moving slowly, but steadily. 

Within the ancient stone walls, stiff old knees bent themselves withcare, and faces were covered devoutly by work-hardened hands. Asshe passed through the churchyard Betty knew that eyes followed heraffectionately, and that the touching of foreheads and dropping ofcurtsies expressed a special sympathy. In each mind she was connectedwith the man they came to pray for--with the work he had done--withthe danger he was in. It was vaguely felt that if his life ended, abereavement would have fallen upon her. This the girl knew. 

The vicar lifted his bowed head and began his service. Every man, womanand child before him responded aloud and with a curious fervour--not indecorous fear of seeming to thrust themselves before the throne, makingtoo much of their petitions, in the presence of the gentry. Here andthere sobs were to be heard. Lady Anstruthers followed the servicetimorously and with tears. But Betty, kneeling at her side, by the roundtable in the centre of the great square Stornham pew, which was like aroom, bowed her head upon her folded arms, and prayed her own intense, insistent prayer. 

"God in Heaven!" was her inward cry. "God of all the worlds! Do not lethim die. 'If ye ask anything in my name that I will do. ' Christ said it. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth--do not let him die! All the worlds areyours--all the power--listen to us--listen to us. Lord, I believe--helpthou my unbelief. If this terror robs me of faith, and I praymadly--forgive, forgive me. Do not count it against me as sin. You madehim. He has suffered and been alone. It is not time--it is not time yetfor him to go. He has known no joy and no bright thing. Do not let himgo out of the warm world like a blind man. Do not let him die. Perhapsthis is not prayer, but raging. Forgive--forgive! All power is gone fromme. God of the worlds, and the great winds, and the myriad stars--do notlet him die!"

She knew her thoughts were wild, but their torrent bore her with theminto a strange, great silence. She did not hear the vicar's words, orthe responses of the people. She was not within the grey stone walls. She had been drawn away as into the darkness and stillness of the night, and no soul but her own seemed near. Through the stillness and the darkher praying seemed to call and echo, clamouring again and again. It mustreach Something--it must be heard, because she cried so loud, though tothe human beings about her she seemed kneeling in silence. She went onand on, repeating her words, changing them, ending and beginning again, pouring forth a flood of appeal. She thought later that the flood musthave been at its highest tide when, singularly, it was stemmed. Withoutwarning, a wave of awe passed over her which strangely silenced her--andleft her bowed and kneeling, but crying out no more. The darkness hadbecome still, even as it had not been still before. Suddenly she coweredas she knelt and held her breath. Something had drawn a little near. Nothoughts--no words--no cries were needed as the great stillness grew andspread, and folded her being within it. She waited--only waited. She didnot know how long a time passed before she felt herself drawn back fromthe silent and shadowy places--awakening, as it were, to the sounds inthe church. 

"Our Father, " she began to say, as simply as a child. "Our Father whoart in Heaven--hallowed be thy name. " There was a stirring among thecongregation, and sounds of feet, as the people began to move down theaisle in reverent slowness. She caught again the occasional sound of asubdued sob. Rosalie gently touched her, and she rose, following her outof the big pew and passing down the aisle after the villagers. 

Outside the entrance the people waited as if they wanted to see heragain. Foreheads were touched as before, and eyes followed her. She wasto the general mind the centre of the drama, and "the A'mighty" woulddo well to hear her. She had been doing his work for him "same as hislordship. " They did not expect her to smile at such a time, when shereturned their greetings, and she did not, but they said afterwards, intheir cottages, that "trouble or not she was a wonder for looks, thatshe was--Miss Vanderpoel. "

Rosalie slipped a hand through her arm, and they walked home together, very close to each other. Now and then there was a questioning in Rosy'slook. But neither of them spoke once. 

On an oak table in the hall a letter from Mr. Penzance was lying. Itwas brief, hurried, and anxious. The rumour that Mount Dunstan had beenailing was true, and that they had felt they must conceal the matterfrom the villagers was true also. For some baffling reason the feverhad not absolutely declared itself, but the young doctors were besetby grave forebodings. In such cases the most serious symptoms mightsuddenly develop. One never knew. Mr. Penzance was evidently torn byfears which he desperately strove to suppress. But Betty could see theanguish on his fine old face, and between the lines she read dread andwarning not put into words. She believed that, fearing the worst, hefelt he must prepare her mind. 

"He has lived under a great strain for months, " he ended. "It began longbefore the outbreak of the fever. I am not strong under my sense of thecruelty of things--and I have never loved him as I love him to-day. "

Betty took the letter to her room, and read it two or three times. Because she had asked intelligent questions of the medical authority shehad consulted on her visit to London, she knew something of the feverand its habits. Even her unclerical knowledge was such as it was notwell to reflect upon. She refolded the letter and laid it aside. 

"I must not think. I must do something. It may prevent my listening, "she said aloud to the silence of her room. 

She cast her eyes about her as if in search. Upon her desk lay anotebook. She took it up and opened it. It contained lists of plants, of flower seeds, of bulbs, and shrubs. Each list was headed with anexplanatory note. 

"Yes, this will do, " she said. "I will go and talk to Kedgers. "

Kedgers and every man under him had been at the service, but they hadreturned to their respective duties. Kedgers, giving directions to someunder gardeners who were clearing flower beds and preparing them fortheir winter rest, turned to meet her as she approached. To Kedgers thesight of her coming towards him on a garden path was a joyful thing. Hehad done wonders, it is true, but if she had not stood by his side withinspiration as well as confidence, he knew that things might have "comeout different. "

"You was born a gardener, miss--born one, " he had said months ago. 

It was the time when flower beds must be planned for the coming year. Her notebook was filled with memoranda of the things they must talkabout. 

It was good, normal, healthy work to do. The scent of the rich, damp, upturned mould was a good thing to inhale. They walked from one end toanother, stood before clumps of shrubs, and studied bits of wall. Herea mass of blue might grow, here low things of white and pale yellow. Aquickly-climbing rose would hang sheets of bloom over this dead tree. This sheltered wall would hold warmth for a Marechal Niel. 

"You must take care of it all--even if I am not here next year, " MissVanderpoel said. 

Kedgers' absorbed face changed. 

"Not here, miss, " he exclaimed. "You not here! Things wouldn't grow, miss. " He checked himself, his weather-toughened skin reddening becausehe was afraid he had perhaps taken a liberty. And then moving his hatuneasily on his head, he took another. "But it's true enough, " lookingdown on the gravel walk, "we--we couldn't expect to keep you. "

She did not look as if she had noticed the liberty, but she did not lookquite like herself, Kedgers thought. If she had been another young lady, and but for his established feeling that she was somehow immune from allills, he would have thought she had a headache, or was low in her mind. 

She spent an hour or two with him, and together they planned for thechanging seasons of the year to come. How she could keep her mind on athing, and what a head she had for planning, and what an eye for colour!But yes--there was something a bit wrong somehow. Now and then she wouldstop and stand still for a moment, and suddenly it struck Kedgers thatshe looked as if she were listening. 

"Did you think you heard something, miss?" he asked her once when shepaused and wore this look. 

"No, " she answered, "no. " And drew him on quickly--almost as if she didnot want him to hear what she had seemed listening for. 

When she left him and went back to the house, all the loveliness ofspring, summer and autumn had been thought out and provided for. Kedgersstood on the path and looked after her until she passed through theterrace door. He chewed his lip uneasily. Then he remembered somethingand felt a bit relieved. It was the service he remembered. 

"Ah! it's that that's upset her--and it's natural, seeing how she'shelped him and Dunstan village. It's only natural. " He chewed his lipagain, and nodded his head in odd reflection. "Ay! Ay!" he summed herup. "She's a great lady that--she's a great lady--same as if she'd beenborn in a civilised land. "

During the rest of the day the look of question in Rosalie's eyeschanged in its nature. When her sister was near her she found herselfglancing at her with a new feeling. It was a growing feeling, whichgradually became--anxiousness. Betty presented to her the aspect of onewithdrawn into some remote space. She was not living this day as herdays were usually lived. She did not sit still or stroll about thegardens quietly. The consecutiveness of her action seemed broken. Shedid one thing after another, as if she must fill each moment. This wasnot her Betty. Lady Anstruthers watched and thought until, in the end, a new pained fear began to creep slowly into her mind, and make her feelas if she were slightly trembling though her hands did not shake. Shedid not dare to allow herself to think the thing she knew she was on thebrink of thinking. She thrust it away from her, and tried not to thinkat all. Her Betty--her splendid Betty, whom nothing could hurt--whocould not be touched by any awful thing--her dear Betty!

In the afternoon she saw her write notes steadily for an hour, then shewent out into the stables and visited the horses, talked to the coachmanand to her own groom. She was very kind to a village boy who had beenrecently taken on as an additional assistant in the stable, and who wasrather frightened and shy. She knew his mother, who had a large family, and she had, indeed, given the boy his place that he might be trainedunder the great Mr. Buckham, who was coachman and head of the stables. She said encouraging things which quite cheered him, and she spokeprivately to Mr. Buckham about him. Then she walked in the park alittle, but not for long. When she came back Rosalie was waiting forher. 

"I want to take a long drive, " she said. "I feel restless. Will youcome with me, Betty?" Yes, she would go with her, so Buckham brought thelandau with its pair of big horses, and they rolled down the avenue, and into the smooth, white high road. He took them far--past thegreat marshes, between miles of bared hedges, past farms and scatteredcottages. Sometimes he turned into lanes, where the hedges were closerto each other, and where, here and there, they caught sight of newpoints of view between trees. Betty was glad to feel Rosy's slim bodynear her side, and she was conscious that it gradually seemed to drawcloser and closer. Then Rosy's hand slipped into hers and held it softlyon her lap. 

When they drove together in this way they were usually both of themrather silent and quiet, but now Rosalie spoke of many things--ofUghtred, of Nigel, of the Dunholms, of New York, and their father andmother. 

"I want to talk because I'm nervous, I think, " she said halfapologetically. "I do not want to sit still and think too much--offather's coming. You don't mind my talking, do you, Betty?"

"No, " Betty answered. "It is good for you and for me. " And she met thepressure of Rosy's hand halfway. 

But Rosy was talking, not because she did not want to sit still andthink, but because she did not want Betty to do so. And all the time shewas trying to thrust away the thought growing in her mind. 

They spent the evening together in the library, and Betty read aloud. She read a long time--until quite late. She wished to tire herself aswell as to force herself to stop listening. 

When they said good-night to each other Rosy clung to her as desperatelyas she had clung on the night after her arrival. She kissed her againand again, and then hung her head and excused herself. 

"Forgive me for being--nervous. I'm ashamed of myself, " she said. "Perhaps in time I shall get over being a coward. "

But she said nothing of the fact that she was not a coward for herself, but through a slowly formulating and struggled--against fear, whichchilled her very heart, and which she could best cover by a pretence ofbeing a poltroon. 

She could not sleep when she went to bed. The night seemed crowded withstrange, terrified thoughts. They were all of Betty, though sometimesshe thought of her father's coming, of her mother in New York, and ofBetty's steady working throughout the day. Sometimes she cried, twistingher hands together, and sometimes she dropped into a feverish sleep, anddreamed that she was watching Betty's face, yet was afraid to look atit. 

She awakened suddenly from one of these dreams, and sat upright in bedto find the dawn breaking. She rose and threw on a dressing-gown, andwent to her sister's room because she could not bear to stay away. 

The door was not locked, and she pushed it open gently. One of thewindows had its blind drawn up, and looked like a patch of dull grey. Betty was standing upright near it. She was in her night-gown, and along black plait of hair hung over one shoulder heavily. She looked allblack and white in strong contrast. The grey light set her forth as atall ghost. 

Lady Anstruthers slid forward, feeling a tightness in her chest. 

"The dawn wakened me too, " she said. 

"I have been waiting to see it come, " answered Betty. "It is going to bea dull, dreary day. "

CHAPTER XLVII

"I HAVE NO WORD OR LOOK TO REMEMBER"

It was a dull and dreary day, as Betty had foreseen it would be. Heavyrain clouds hung and threatened, and the atmosphere was damp and chill. It was one of those days of the English autumn which speak only of theend of things, bereaving one of the power to remember next year's springand summer, which, after all, must surely come. Sky is grey, trees aregrey, dead leaves lie damp beneath the feet, sunlight and birds seemforgotten things. All that has been sad and to be regretted or fearedhangs heavy in the air and sways all thought. In the passing of thesehours there is no hope anywhere. Betty appeared at breakfast in shortdress and close hat. She wore thick little boots, as if for walking. 

"I am going to make visits in the village, " she said. "I want a basketof good things to take with me. Stourton's children need feeding aftertheir measles. They looked very thin when I saw them playing in the roadyesterday. "

"Yes, dear, " Rosalie answered. "Mrs. Noakes shall prepare the basket. Good chicken broth, and jelly, and nourishing things. Jennings, " to thebutler, "you know the kind of basket Miss Vanderpoel wants. Speak toMrs. Noakes, please. "

"Yes, my lady, " Jennings knew the kind of basket and so did Mrs. Noakes. Below stairs a strong sympathy with Miss Vanderpoel's movements haddeveloped. No one resented the preparation of baskets. Somehow they werealways managed, even if asked for at untimely hours. 

Betty was sitting silent, looking out into the greyness of theautumn-smitten park. 

"Are--are you listening for anything, Betty?" Lady Anstruthers askedrather falteringly. "You have a sort of listening look in your eyes. "

Betty came back to the room, as it were. 

"Have I, " she said. "Yes, I think I was listening for--something. "

And Rosalie did not ask her what she listened for. She was afraid sheknew. 

It was not only the Stourtons Betty visited this morning. She passedfrom one cottage to another--to see old women, and old men, as well asyoung ones, who for one reason or another needed help and encouragement. By one bedside she read aloud; by another she sat and told cheerfulstories; she listened to talk in little kitchens, and in one housewelcomed a newborn thing. As she walked steadily over grey road anddown grey lanes damp mist rose and hung about her. And she did not walkalone. Fear walked with her, and anguish, a grey ghost by her side. Onceshe found herself standing quite still on a side path, covering her facewith her hands. She filled every moment of the morning, and walked untilshe was tired. Before she went home she called at the post office, and Mr. Tewson greeted her with a solemn face. He did not wait to bequestioned. 

"There's been no news to-day, miss, so far, " he said. "And that seemsas if they might be so given up to hard work at a dreadful time thatthere's been no chance for anything to get out. When people's hangingover a man's bed at the end, it's as if everything stopped butthat--that's stopping for all time. "

After luncheon the rain began to fall softly, slowly, and with asuggestion of endlessness. It was a sort of mist itself, and became adamp shadow among the bare branches of trees which soon began to drip. 

"You have been walking about all morning, and you are tired, dear, " LadyAnstruthers said to her. "Won't you go to your room and rest, Betty?"

Yes, she would go to her room, she said. Some new books had arrived fromLondon this morning, and she would look over them. She talked a littleabout her visits before she went, and when, as she talked, Ughtred cameover to her and stood close to her side holding her hand and strokingit, she smiled at him sweetly--the smile he adored. He stroked the handand softly patted it, watching her wistfully. Suddenly he lifted it tohis lips, and kissed it again and again with a sort of passion. 

"I love you so much, Aunt Betty, " he cried. "We both love you so much. Something makes me love you to-day more than ever I did before. Italmost makes me cry. I love you so. "

She stooped swiftly and drew him into her arms and kissed him close andhard. He held his head back a little and looked into the blue under herlashes. 

"I love your eyes, " he said. "Anyone would love your eyes, Aunt Betty. But what is the matter with them? You are not crying at all, but--oh!what is the matter?"

"No, I am not crying at all, " she said, and smiled--almost laughed. 

But after she had kissed him again she took her books and went upstairs. 

She did not lie down, and she did not read when she was alone in herroom. She drew a long chair before the window and watched the slowfalling of the rain. There is nothing like it--that slow weeping of therain on an English autumn day. Soft and light though it was, the parkbegan to look sodden. The bare trees held out their branches likeimploring arms, the brown garden beds were neat and bare. The same rainwas drip-dripping at Mount Dunstan--upon the desolate great house--uponthe village--upon the mounds and ancient stone tombs in the churchyard, sinking into the earth--sinking deep, sucked in by the clay beneath--thecold damp clay. She shook herself shudderingly. Why should the thoughtcome to her--the cold damp clay? She would not listen to it, she wouldthink of New York, of its roaring streets and crash of sound, of therush of fierce life there--of her father and mother. She tried to forceherself to call up pictures of Broadway, swarming with crowds of blackthings, which, seen from the windows of its monstrous buildings, seemed like swarms of ants, burst out of ant-hills, out of a thousandant-hills. She tried to remember shop windows, the things in them, thethrongs going by, and the throngs passing in and out of great, swingingglass doors. She dragged up before her a vision of Rosalie, drivingwith her mother and herself, looking about her at the new buildings andchanged streets, flushed and made radiant by the accelerated pace andexcitement of her beloved New York. But, oh, the slow, penetratingrainfall, and--the cold damp clay!

She rose, making an involuntary sound which was half a moan. The longmirror set between two windows showed her momentarily an awful youngfigure, throwing up its arms. Was that Betty Vanderpoel--that?

"What does one do, " she said, "when the world comes to an end? What doesone do?"

All her days she had done things--there had always been something to do. Now there was nothing. She went suddenly to her bell and rang for hermaid. The woman answered the summons at once. 

"Send word to the stable that I want Childe Harold. I do not want Mason. I shall ride alone. "

"Yes, miss, " Ambleston answered, without any exterior sign of emotion. She was too well-trained a person to express any shade of her internalamazement. After she had transmitted the order to the proper manager shereturned and changed her mistress's costume. 

She had contemplated her task, and was standing behind Miss Vanderpoel'schair, putting the last touch to her veil, when she became conscious ofa slight stiffening of the neck which held so well the handsome head, then the head slowly turned towards the window giving upon the frontpark. Miss Vanderpoel was listening to something, listening so intentlythat Ambleston felt that, for a few moments, she did not seem tobreathe. The maid's hands fell from the veil, and she began to listenalso. She had been at the service the day before. Miss Vanderpoel rosefrom her chair slowly--very slowly, and took a step forward. Then shestood still and listened again. 

"Open that window, if you please, " she commanded--"as if a stone imagewas speaking"--Ambleston said later. The window was thrown open, and fora few seconds they both stood still again. When Miss Vanderpoel spoke, it was as if she had forgotten where she was, or as if she were in adream. 

"It is the ringers, " she said. "They are tolling the passing bell. "

The serving woman was soft of heart, and had her feminine emotions. There had been much talk of this thing in the servant's hall. She turnedupon Betty, and forgot all rules and training. 

"Oh, miss!" she cried. "He's gone--he's gone! That good man--out of thishard world. Oh, miss, excuse me--do!" And as she burst into wild tears, she ran out of the room. 

. . . . . 

Rosalie had been sitting in the morning room. She also had striven tooccupy herself with work. She had written to her mother, she had read, she had embroidered, and then read again. What was Betty doing--what wasshe thinking now? She laid her book down in her lap, and covering herface with her hands, breathed a desperate little prayer. That lifeshould be pain and emptiness to herself, seemed somehow natural sinceshe had married Nigel--but pain and emptiness for Betty--No! No! No! Notfor Betty! Piteous sorrow poured upon her like a flood. She did not knowhow the time passed. She sat, huddled together in her chair, with hiddenface. She could not bear to look at the rain and ghost mist out ofdoors. Oh, if her mother were only here, and she might speak to her! Andas her loving tears broke forth afresh, she heard the door open. 

"If you please, my lady--I beg your pardon, my lady, " as she started anduncovered her face. 

"What is it, Jennings?"

The figure at the door was that of the serious, elderly butler, and hewore a respectfully grave air. 

"As your ladyship is sitting in this room, we thought it likely youwould not hear, the windows being closed, and we felt sure, my lady, that you would wish to know----"

Lady Anstruthers' hands shook as they clung to the arms of her chair. 

"To know----" she faltered. "Hear what?"

"The passing bell is tolling, my lady. It has just begun. It is forLord Mount Dunstan. There's not a dry eye downstairs, your ladyship, notone. "

He opened the windows, and she stood up. Jennings quietly left the room. The slow, heavy knell struck ponderously on the damp air, and she stoodand shivered. 

A moment or two later she turned, because it seemed as if she must. 

Betty, in her riding habit, was standing motionless against the door, her wonderful eyes still as death, gazing at her, gazing in an awful, simple silence. 

Oh, what was the use of being afraid to speak at such a time as this?In one moment Rosy was kneeling at her feet, clinging about her knees, kissing her hands, the very cloth of her habit, and sobbing aloud. 

"Oh, my darling--my love--my own Betty! I don't know--and I won'task--but speak to me--speak just a word--my dearest dear!"

Betty raised her up and drew her within the room, closing the doorbehind them. 

"Kind little Rosy, " she said. "I came to speak--because we two love eachother. You need not ask, I will tell you. That bell is tolling for theman who taught me--to KNOW. He never spoke to me of love. I have not oneword or look to remember. And now---- Oh, listen--listen! I have beenlistening since the morning of yesterday. " It was an awful thing--herwhite face, with all the flame of life swept out of it. 

"Don't listen--darling--darling!" Rosy cried out in anguish. "Shut yourears--shut your ears!" And she tried to throw her arms around the highblack head, and stifle all sound with her embrace. 

"I don't want to shut them, " was the answer. "All the unkindness andmisery are over for him, I ought to thank God--but I don't. I shallhear--O Rosy, listen!--I shall hear that to the end of my days. "

Rosy held her tight, and rocked and sobbed. 

"My Betty, " she kept saying. "My Betty, " and she could say no more. Whatmore was there to say? At last Betty withdrew herself from her arms, andthen Rosalie noticed for the first time that she wore the habit. 

"Dearest, " she whispered, "what are you going to do?"

"I was going to ride, and I am going to do it still. I must dosomething. I shall ride a long, long way--and ride hard. You won't tryto keep me, Rosy. You will understand. "

"Yes, " biting her lip, and looking at her with large, awed eyes, as shepatted her arm with a hand that trembled. "I would not hold you back, Betty, from anything in the world you chose to do. "

And with another long, clinging clasp of her, she let her go. 

Mason was standing by Childe Harold when she went down the broad steps. He also wore a look of repressed emotion, and stood with bared headbent, his eyes fixed on the gravel of the drive, listening to the heavystrokes of the bell in the church tower, rather as if he were takingpart in some solemn ceremony. 

He mounted her silently, and after he had given her the bridle, lookedup, and spoke in a somewhat husky voice:

"The order was that you did not want me, miss? Was that correct?"

"Yes, I wish to ride alone. "

"Yes, miss. Thank you, miss. "

Childe Harold was in good spirits. He held up his head, and blew thebreath through his delicate, dilated, red nostrils as he set out withhis favourite sidling, dancing steps. Mason watched him down the avenue, saw the lodge keeper come out to open the gate, and curtsy as herladyship's sister passed through it. After that he went slowly back tothe stables, and sat in the harness-room a long time, staring at thefloor, as the bell struck ponderously on his ear. 

The woman who had opened the gate for her Betty saw had red eyes. Sheknew why. 

"A year ago they all thought of him as an outcast. They would havebelieved any evil they had heard connected with his name. Now, in everycottage, there is weeping--weeping. And he lies deaf and dumb, " was herthought. 

She did not wish to pass through the village, and turned down a sideroad, which would lead her to where she could cross the marshes, andcome upon lonely places. The more lonely, the better. Every few momentsshe caught her breath with a hard short gasp. The slow rain fell uponher, big round, crystal drops hung on the hedgerows, and dripped uponthe grass banks below them; the trees, wreathed with mist, were likewaiting ghosts as she passed them by; Childe Harold's hoof upon theroad, made a hollow, lonely sound. 

A thought began to fill her brain, and make insistent pressure upon it. She tried no more to thrust thought away. Those who lay deaf and dumb, those for whom people wept--where were they when the weeping seemed tosound through all the world? How far had they gone? Was it far? Couldthey hear and could they see? If one plead with them aloud, could theydraw near to listen? Did they begin a long, long journey as soon as theyhad slipped away? The "wonder of the world, " she had said, watching lifeswelling and bursting the seeds in Kedgers' hothouses! But this was agreater wonder still, because of its awesomeness. This man had been, andwho dare say he was not--even now? The strength of his great body, thelook in his red-brown eyes, the sound of his deep voice, the struggle, the meaning of him, where were they? She heard herself followed by thehollow echo of Childe Harold's hoofs, as she rode past copse and hedge, and wet spreading fields. She was this hour as he had been a monthago. If, with some strange suddenness, this which was Betty Vanderpoel, slipped from its body----She put her hand up to her forehead. It wasunthinkable that there would be no more. Where was he now--where was henow?

This was the thought that filled her brain cells to the exclusion of allothers. Over the road, down through by-lanes, out on the marshes. Wherewas he--where was he--WHERE? Childe Harold's hoofs began to beat it outas a refrain. She heard nothing else. She did not know where she wasgoing and did not ask herself. She went down any road or lane whichlooked empty of life, she took strange turnings, without caring; she didnot know how far she was afield. 

Where was he now--this hour--this moment--where was he now? Did he knowthe rain, the greyness, the desolation of the world?

Once she stopped her horse on the loneliness of the marsh land, andlooked up at the low clouds about her, at the creeping mist, the dankgrass. It seemed a place in which a newly-released soul might wanderbecause it did not yet know its way. 

"If you should be near, and come to me, you will understand, " her clearvoice said gravely between the caught breaths, "what I gave you wasnothing to you--but you took it with you. Perhaps you know without mytelling you. I want you to know. When a man is dead, everything meltsaway. I loved you. I wish you had loved me. "

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE MOMENT

In the unnatural unbearableness of her anguish, she lost sight ofobjects as she passed them, she lost all memory of what she did. She didnot know how long she had been out, or how far she had ridden. When thethought of time or distance vaguely flitted across her mind, it seemedthat she had been riding for hours, and might have crossed one countyand entered another. She had long left familiar places behind. Ridingthrough and inclosed by the mist, she, herself, might have been awandering ghost, lost in unknown places. Where was he now--where was henow?

Afterwards she could not tell how or when it was that she found herselfbecoming conscious of the evidences that her horse had been ridden toolong and hard, and that he was worn out with fatigue. She did not knowthat she had ridden round and round over the marshes, and had passedseveral times through the same lanes. Childe Harold, the sure of foot, actually stumbled, out of sheer weariness of limb. Perhaps it was thiswhich brought her back to earth, and led her to look around her witheyes which saw material objects with comprehension. She had reached thelonely places, indeed and the evening was drawing on. She was atthe edge of the marsh, and the land about her was strange to her anddesolate. At the side of a steep lane, overgrown with grass, and seeminga mere cart-path, stood a deserted-looking, black and white, timberedcottage, which was half a ruin. Close to it was a dripping spinney, its trees forming a darkling background to the tumble-down house, whosethatch was rotting into holes, and its walls sagging forward perilously. The bit of garden about it was neglected and untidy, here and therewindows were broken, and stuffed with pieces of ragged garments. Altogether a sinister and repellent place enough. 

She looked at it with heavy eyes. (Where was he now--where was henow?--This repeating itself in the far chambers of her brain. ) Her sightseemed dimmed, not only by the mist, but by a sinking faintness whichpossessed her. She did not remember how little food she had eaten duringmore than twenty-four hours. Her habit was heavy with moisture, andclung to her body; she was conscious of a hot tremor passing over her, and saw that her hands shook as they held the bridle on which they hadlost their grip. She had never fainted in her life, and she was notgoing to faint now--women did not faint in these days--but she mustreach the cottage and dismount, to rest under shelter for a short time. No smoke was rising from the chimney, but surely someone was living inthe place, and could tell her where she was, and give her at least waterfor herself and her horse. Poor beast! how wickedly she must have beenriding him, in her utter absorption in her thoughts. He was wet, notalone with rain, but with sweat. He snorted out hot, smoking breaths. 

She spoke to him, and he moved forward at her command. He was tremblingtoo. Not more than two hundred yards, and she turned him into the lane. But it was wet and slippery, and strewn with stones. His trembling andher uncertain hold on the bridle combined to produce disaster. He sethis foot upon a stone which slid beneath it, he stumbled, and she couldnot help him to recover, so he fell, and only by Heaven's mercy notupon her, with his crushing, big-boned weight, and she was able to dragherself free of him before he began to kick, in his humiliated effortsto rise. But he could not rise, because he was hurt--and when she, herself, got up, she staggered, and caught at the broken gate, becausein her wrenching leap for safety she had twisted her ankle, and for amoment was in cruel pain. 

When she recovered from her shock sufficiently to be able to look at thecottage, she saw that it was more of a ruin than it had seemed, evenat a short distance. Its door hung open on broken hinges, no smoke rosefrom the chimney, because there was no one within its walls to lighta fire. It was quite empty. Everything about the place lay in dead andutter silence. In a normal mood she would have liked the mystery ofthe situation, and would have set about planning her way out of herdifficulty. But now her mind made no effort, because normal interestin things had fallen away from her. She might be twenty miles fromStornham, but the possible fact did not, at the moment, seem to concernher. (Where is he now--where is he now?) Childe Harold was trying torise, despite his hurt, and his evident determination touched her. Hewas too proud to lie in the mire. She limped to him, and tried to steadyhim by his bridle. He was not badly injured, though plainly in pain. 

"Poor boy, it was my fault, " she said to him as he at last struggled tohis feet. "I did not know I was doing it. Poor boy!"

He turned a velvet dark eye upon her, and nosed her forgivingly witha warm velvet muzzle, but it was plain that, for the time, he was donefor. They both moved haltingly to the broken gate, and Betty fastenedhim to a thorn tree near it, where he stood on three feet, his fine headdrooping. 

She pushed the gate open, and went into the house through the door whichhung on its hinges. Once inside, she stood still and looked about her. If there was silence and desolateness outside, there was within thedeserted place a stillness like the unresponse of death. It had beenlong since anyone had lived in the cottage, but tramps or gipsies hadat times passed through it. Dead, blackened embers lay on the hearth, abundle of dried grass which had been slept on was piled in the corner, an empty nail keg and a wooden box had been drawn before the big chimneyplace for some wanderer to sit on when the black embers had been hot andred. 

Betty gave one glance around her and sat down upon the box standing onthe bare hearth, her head sinking forward, her hands falling claspedbetween her knees, her eyes on the brick floor. 

"Where is he now?" broke from her in a loud whisper, whose sound wasmechanical and hollow. "Where is he now?"

And she sat there without moving, while the grey mist from the marshescrept close about the door and through it and stole about her feet. 

So she sat long--long--in a heavy, far-off dream. 

Along the road a man was riding with a lowering, fretted face. He hadcome across country on horseback, because to travel by train meantwearisome stops and changes and endlessly slow journeying, annoyingbeyond endurance to those who have not patience to spare. His ride wouldhave been pleasant enough but for the slow mist-like rain. Also he hadtaken a wrong turning, because he did not know the roads he travelled. The last signpost he had passed, however, had given him his cue again, and he began to feel something of security. Confound the rain! The bestroad was slippery with it, and the haze of it made a man's mind feelbefogged and lowered his spirits horribly--discouraged him--would worryhim into an ill humour even if he had reason to be in a good one. As forhim, he had no reason for cheerfulness--he never had for the matterof that, and just now----! What was the matter with his horse? He waslifting his head and sniffing the damp air restlessly, as if hescented or saw something. Beasts often seemed to have a sort of secondsight--horses particularly. 

What ailed him that he should prick up his ears and snort after hissniffing the mist! Did he hear anything? Yes, he did, it seemed. He gaveforth suddenly a loud shrill whinny, turning his head towards a roughlane they were approaching, and immediately from the vicinity ofa deserted-looking cottage behind a hedge came a sharp butmournful-sounding neigh in answer. 

"What horse is that?" said Nigel Anstruthers, drawing in at theentrance to the lane and looking down it. "There is a fine brute with aside-saddle on, " he added sharply. "He is waiting for someone. What is awoman doing there at this time? Is it a rendezvous? A good place----"

He broke off short and rode forward. "I'm hanged if it is not ChildeHarold, " he broke out, and he had no sooner assured himself of the factthan he threw himself from his saddle, tethered his horse and strode upthe path to the broken-hinged door. 

He stood on the threshold and stared. What a hole it was--what a hole!And there SHE sat--alone--eighteen or twenty miles from home--on aturned-up box near the black embers, her hands clasped loosely betweenher knees, her face rather awful, her eyes staring at the floor, as ifshe did not see it. 

"Where is he now?" he heard her whisper to herself with soft weirdness. "Where is he now?"

Sir Nigel stepped into the place and stood before her. He had smiledwith a wry unpleasantness when he had heard her evidently unconsciouswords. 

"My good girl, " he said, "I am sure I do not know where he is--but itis very evident that he ought to be here, since you have amiably putyourself to such trouble. It is fortunate for you perhaps that I am herebefore him. What does this mean?" the question breaking from him withsavage authority. 

He had dragged her back to earth. She sat upright and recognised himwith a hideous sense of shock, but he did not give her time to speak. His instinct of male fury leaped within him. 

"YOU!" he cried out. "It takes a woman like you to come and hide herselfin a place of this sort, like a trolloping gipsy wench! It takes a NewYork millionairess or a Roman empress or one of Charles theSecond's duchesses to plunge as deep as this. You, with your goldenpedestal--you, with your ostentatious airs and graces--you, with yourcondescending to give a man a chance to repent his sins and turn overa new leaf! Damn it, " rising to a sort of frenzy, "what are you doingwaiting in a hole like this--in this weather--at this hour--you--you!"

The fool's flame leaped high enough to make him start forward, as if toseize her by the shoulder and shake her. 

But she rose and stepped back to lean against the side of thechimney--to brace herself against it, so that she could stand in herlame foot's despite. Every drop of blood had been swept from her face, and her eyes looked immense. His coming was a good thing for her, thoughshe did not know it. It brought her back from unearthly places. All herchild hatred woke and blazed in her. Never had she hated a thing so, andit set her slow, cold blood running like something molten. 

"Hold your tongue!" she said in a clear, awful young voice of warning. "And take care not to touch me. If you do--I have my whip here--I shalllash you across your mouth!"

He broke into ribald laughter. A certain sudden thought which had cutinto him like a knife thrust into flesh drove him on. 

"Do!" he cried. "I should like to carry your mark back to Stornham--andtell people why it was given. I know who you are here for. Only suchfellows ask such things of women. But he was determined to be safe, ifyou hid in a ditch. You are here for Mount Dunstan--and he has failedyou!"

But she only stood and stared at him, holding her whip behind her, knowing that at any moment he might snatch it from her hand. Andshe knew how poor a weapon it was. To strike out with it would onlyinfuriate him and make him a wild beast. And it was becoming an agonyto stand upon her foot. And even if it had not been so--if she had beenstrong enough to make a leap and dash past him, her horse stood outsidedisabled. 

Nigel Anstruthers' eyes ran over her from head to foot, down the side ofher mud-stained habit, while a curious light dawned in them. 

"You have had a fall from your horse, " he exclaimed. "You are lame!"Then quickly, "That was why Childe Harold was trembling and standing onthree feet! By Jove!"

Then he sat down on the nail keg and began to laugh. He laughed for afull minute, but she saw he did not take his eyes from her. 

"You are in as unpleasant a situation as a young woman can well be, " hesaid, when he stopped. "You came to a dirty hole to be alone with a manwho felt it safest not to keep his appointment. Your horse stumbled anddisabled himself and you. You are twenty miles from home in a desertedcottage in a lane no one passes down even in good weather. You arefrightened to death and you have given me even a better story to playwith than your sister gave me. By Jove!"

His face was an unholy thing to look upon. The situation and herpowerlessness were exciting him. 

"No, " she answered, keeping her eyes on his, as she might have kept themon some wild animal's, "I am not frightened to death. "

His ugly dark flush rose. 

"Well, if you are not, " he said, "don't tell me so. That kind ofdefiance is not your best line just now. You have been disdaining mefrom magnificent New York heights for some time. Do you think that I amnot enjoying this?"

"I cannot imagine anyone else who would enjoy it so much. " And she knewthe answer was daring, but would have made it if he had held a knife'spoint at her throat. 

He got up, and walking to the door drew it back on its crazy hingesand managed to shut it close. There was a big wooden bolt inside and heforced it into its socket. 

"Presently I shall go and put the horses into the cowshed, " he said. "If I leave them standing outside they will attract attention. I donot intend to be disturbed by any gipsy tramp who wants shelter. I havenever had you quite to myself before. "

He sat down again and nursed his knee gracefully. 

"And I have never seen you look as attractive, " biting his under lipin cynical enjoyment. "To-day's adventure has roused your emotions andactually beautified you--which was not necessary. I daresay you havebeen furious and have cried. Your eyes do not look like mere eyes, but like splendid blue pools of tears. Perhaps _I_ shall make you crysometime, my dear Betty. "

"No, you will not. "

"Don't tempt me. Women always cry when men annoy them. They rage, butthey cry as well. "

"I shall not. "

"It's true that most women would have begun to cry before this. That iswhat stimulates me. You will swagger to the end. You put the devil intome. Half an hour ago I was jogging along the road, languid and bored toextinction. And now----" He laughed outright in actual exultation. "ByJove!" he cried out. "Things like this don't happen to a man in thesedull days! There's no such luck going about. We've gone back fivehundred years, and we've taken New York with us. " His laugh shut off inthe middle, and he got up to thrust his heavy, congested face close tohers. "Here you are, as safe as if you were in a feudal castle, and hereis your ancient enemy given his chance--given his chance. Do you think, by the Lord, he is going to give it up? No. To quote your own words, 'you may place entire confidence in that. '"

Exaggerated as it all was, somehow the melodrama dropped away from itand left bare, simple, hideous fact for her to confront. The evil in himhad risen rampant and made him lose his head. He might see his senselessfolly to-morrow and know he must pay for it, but he would not seeit to-day. The place was not a feudal castle, but what he said wasinsurmountable truth. A ruined cottage on the edge of miles of marshland, a seldom-trodden road, and night upon them! A wind was risingon the marshes now, and making low, steady moan. Horrible things hadhappened to women before, one heard of them with shudders when they wererecorded in the newspapers. Only two days ago she had remembered thatsometimes there seemed blunderings in the great Scheme of things. Wasall this real, or was she dreaming that she stood here at bay, her backagainst the chimney-wall, and this degenerate exulting over her, whileRosy was waiting for her at Stornham--and at this very hour her fatherwas planning his journey across the Atlantic?

"Why did you not behave yourself?" demanded Nigel Anstruthers, shakingher by the shoulder. "Why did you not realise that I should get evenwith you one day, as sure as you were woman and I was man?"

She did not shrink back, though the pupils of her eyes dilated. Was itthe wildest thing in the world which happened to her--or was it not?Without warning--the sudden rush of a thought, immense and strange, swept over her body and soul and possessed her--so possessed her thatit changed her pallor to white flame. It was actually Anstrutherswho shrank back a shade because, for the moment, she looked so nearunearthly. 

"I am not afraid of you, " she said, in a clear, unshaken voice. "I amnot afraid. Something is near me which will stand between us--somethingwhich DIED to-day. "

He almost gasped before the strangeness of it, but caught back hisbreath and recovered himself. 

"Died to-day! That's recent enough, " he jeered. "Let us hear about it. Who was it?"

"It was Mount Dunstan, " she flung at him. "The church-bells were tollingfor him when I rode away. I could not stay to hear them. It killed me--Iloved him. You were right when you said it. I loved him, though he neverknew. I shall always love him--though he never knew. He knows now. Those who died cannot go away when THAT is holding them. They must stay. Because I loved him, he may be in this place. I call on him----" raisingher clear voice. "I call on him to stand between us. "

He backed away from her, staring an evil, enraptured stare. 

"What! There is that much temperament in you?" he said. "That was what Ihalf-suspected when I saw you first. But you have hidden it well. Now itbursts forth in spite of you. Good Lord! What luck--what luck!"

He moved to the door and opened it. 

"I am a very modern man, and I enjoy this to the utmost, " he said. "WhatI like best is the melodrama of it--in connection with Fifth Avenue. I am perfectly aware that you will not discuss this incident in thefuture. You are a clever enough young woman to know that it will be moreto your interest than to mine that it shall be kept exceedingly quiet. "

The white fire had not died out of her and she stood straight. 

"What I have called on will be near me, and will stand between us, " shesaid. 

Old though it was, the door was massive and heavy to lift. To open itcost him some muscular effort. 

"I am going to the horses now, " he explained before he dragged it backinto its frame and shut her in. "It is safe enough to leave you here. You will stay where you are. "

He felt himself secure in leaving her because he believed she could notmove, and because his arrogance made it impossible for him to counton strength and endurance greater than his own. Of endurance he knewnothing and in his keen and cynical exultance his devil made a fool ofhim. 

As she heard him walk down the path to the gate, Betty stood amazed athis lack of comprehension of her. 

"He thinks I will stay here. He absolutely thinks I will wait until hecomes back, " she whispered to the emptiness of the bare room. 

Before he had arrived she had loosened her boot, and now she stooped andtouched her foot. 

"If I were safe at home I should think I could not walk, but I can walknow--I can--I can--because I will bear the pain. "

In such cottages there is always a door opening outside from the littlebricked kitchen, where the copper stands. She would reach that, and, passing through, would close it behind her. After that SOMETHING wouldtell her what to do--something would lead her. 

She put her lame foot upon the floor, and rested some of her weight uponit--not all. A jagged pain shot up from it through her whole side itseemed, and, for an instant, she swayed and ground her teeth. 

"That is because it is the first step, " she said. "But if I am to bekilled, I will die in the open--I will die in the open. "

The second and third steps brought cold sweat out upon her, but she toldherself that the fourth was not quite so unbearable, and she stiffenedher whole body, and muttered some words while she took a fifth and sixthwhich carried her into the tiny back kitchen. 

"Father, " she said. "Father, think of me now--think of me! Rosy, loveme--love me and pray that I may come home. You--you who have died, standvery near!"

If her father ever held her safe in his arms again--if she ever awokefrom this nightmare, it would be a thing never to let one's mind harkback to again--to shut out of memory with iron doors. 

The pain had shot up and down, and her forehead was wet by the time shehad reached the small back door. Was it locked or bolted--was it? Sheput her hand gently upon the latch and lifted it without making anysound. Thank God Almighty, it was neither bolted nor locked, the latchlifted, the door opened, and she slid through it into the shadow of thegrey which was already almost the darkness of night. Thank God for that, too. 

She flattened herself against the outside wall and listened. He washaving difficulty in managing Childe Harold, who snorted and pulledback, offended and made rebellious by his savagely impatient hand. GoodChilde Harold, good boy! She could see the massed outline of the treesof the spinney. If she could bear this long enough to get there--evenif she crawled part of the way. Then it darted through her mind that hewould guess that she would be sure to make for its cover, and that hewould go there first to search. 

"Father, think for me--you were so quick to think!" her brain cried outfor her, as if she was speaking to one who could physically hear. 

She almost feared she had spoken aloud, and the thought which flashedupon her like lightning seemed to be an answer given. He would beconvinced that she would at once try to get away from the house. If shekept near it--somewhere--somewhere quite close, and let him search thespinney, she might get away to its cover after he gave up the search andcame back. The jagged pain had settled in a sort of impossible anguish, and once or twice she felt sick. But she would die in the open--and sheknew Rosalie was frightened by her absence, and was praying for her. Prayers counted and, yet, they had all prayed yesterday. 

"If I were not very strong, I should faint, " she thought. "But I havebeen strong all my life. That great French doctor--I have forgotten hisname--said that I had the physique to endure anything. "

She said these things that she might gain steadiness and convinceherself that she was not merely living through a nightmare. Twice shemoved her foot suddenly because she found herself in a momentary respitefrom pain, beginning to believe that the thing was a nightmare--thatnothing mattered--because she would wake up presently--so she need nottry to hide. 

"But in a nightmare one has no pain. It is real and I must gosomewhere, " she said, after the foot was moved. Where could she go?She had not looked at the place as she rode up. She had onlyhalf-consciously seen the spinney. Nigel was swearing at the horses. Having got Childe Harold into the shed, there seemed to be nothingto fasten his bridle to. And he had yet to bring his own horse in andsecure him. She must get away somewhere before the delay was over. 

How dark it was growing! Thank God for that again! What was the ratherhigh, dark object she could trace in the dimness near the hedge? It wassharply pointed, is if it were a narrow tent. Her heart began to beatlike a drum as she recalled something. It was the shape of the sortof wigwam structure made of hop poles, after they were taken from thefields. If there was space between it and the hedge--even a narrowspace--and she could crouch there? Nigel was furious because ChildeHarold was backing, plunging, and snorting dangerously. She haltedforward, shutting her teeth in her terrible pain. She could scarcelysee, and did not recognise that near the wigwam was a pile of hop poleslaid on top of each other horizontally. It was not quite as high as thehedge whose dark background prevented its being seen. Only a few stepsmore. No, she was awake--in a nightmare one felt only terror, not pain. 

"YOU, WHO DIED TO-DAY, " she murmured. 

She saw the horizontal poles too late. One of them had rolled from itsplace and lay on the ground, and she trod on it, was thrown forwardagainst the heap, and, in her blind effort to recover herself, slippedand fell into a narrow, grassed hollow behind it, clutching at thehedge. The great French doctor had not been quite right. For thefirst time in her life she felt herself sinking into bottomlessdarkness--which was what happened to people when they fainted. 

When she opened her eyes she could see nothing, because on one sideof her rose the low mass of the hop poles, and on the other was thelong-untrimmed hedge, which had thrown out a thick, sheltering growthand curved above her like a penthouse. Was she awakening, after all? No, because the pain was awakening with her, and she could hear, what seemedat first to be quite loud sounds. She could not have been unconsciouslong, for she almost immediately recognised that they were the echo ofa man's hurried footsteps upon the bare wooden stairway, leading tothe bedrooms in the empty house. Having secured the horses, Nigel hadreturned to the cottage, and, finding her gone had rushed to the upperfloor in search of her. He was calling her name angrily, his voiceresounding in the emptiness of the rooms. 

"Betty; don't play the fool with me!"

She cautiously drew herself further under cover, making sure that noend of her habit remained in sight. The overgrowth of the hedge washer salvation. If she had seen the spot by daylight, she would not havethought it a possible place of concealment. 

Once she had read an account of a woman's frantic flight from a murdererwho was hunting her to her death, while she slipped from one poor hidingplace to another, sometimes crouching behind walls or bushes, sometimeslying flat in long grass, once wading waist-deep through a stream, andat last finding a miserable little fastness, where she hid shivering forhours, until her enemy gave up his search. One never felt the reality ofsuch histories, but there was actually a sort of parallel in this. Madand crude things were let loose, and the world of ordinary life seemedthousands of miles away. 

She held her breath, for he was leaving the house by the front door. Sheheard his footsteps on the bricked path, and then in the lane. He wentto the road, and the sound of his feet died away for a few moments. Thenshe heard them returning--he was back in the lane--on the brick path, and stood listening or, perhaps, reflecting. He muttered somethingexclamatory, and she heard a match struck, and shortly afterwards hemoved across the garden patch towards the little spinney. He had thoughtof it, as she had believed he would. He would not think of this place, and in the end he might get tired or awakened to a sense of his luridfolly, and realise that it would be safer for him to go back to Stornhamwith some clever lie, trusting to his belief that there existed no girlbut would shrink from telling such a story in connection with a man whowould brazenly deny it with contemptuous dramatic detail. If he wouldbut decide on this, she would be safe--and it would be so like him thatshe dared to hope. But, if he did not, she would lie close, even if shemust wait until morning, when some labourer's cart would surely pass, and she would hear it jolting, and drag herself out, and call aloudin such a way that no man could be deaf. There was more room under herhedge than she had thought, and she found that she could sit up, byclasping her knees and bending her head, while she listened to everysound, even to the rustle of the grass in the wind sweeping across themarsh. 

She moved very gradually and slowly, and had just settled into uttermotionlessness when she realised that he was coming back through thegarden--the straggling currant and gooseberry bushes were being trampledthrough. 

"Betty, go home, " Rosalie had pleaded. "Go home--go home. " And she hadrefused, because she could not desert her. 

She held her breath and pressed her hand against her side, because herheart beat, as it seemed to her, with an actual sound. He moved withunsteady steps from one point to another, more than once he stumbled, and his angry oath reached her; at last he was so near her hiding placethat his short hard breathing was a distinct sound. A moment later hespoke, raising his voice, which fact brought to her a rush of relief, through its signifying that he had not even guessed her nearness. 

"My dear Betty, " he said, "you have the pluck of the devil, butcircumstances are too much for you. You are not on the road, and I havebeen through the spinney. Mere logic convinces me that you cannot be faraway. You may as well give the thing up. It will be better for you. "

"You who died to-day--do not leave me, " was Betty's inward cry, and shedropped her face on her knees. 

"I am not a pleasant-tempered fellow, as you know, and I am losing myhold on myself. The wind is blowing the mist away, and there will be amoon. I shall find you, my good girl, in half an hour's time--and thenwe shall be jolly well even. "

She had not dropped her whip, and she held it tight. If, when themoonlight revealed the pile of hop poles to him, he suspected and sprangat them to tear them away, she would be given strength to make onespring, even in her agony, and she would strike at his eyes--awfully, without one touch of compunction--she would strike--strike. 

There was a brief silence, and then a match was struck again, and almostimmediately she inhaled the fragrance of an excellent cigar. 

"I am going to have a comfortable smoke and stroll about--always withinsight and hearing. I daresay you are watching me, and wondering whatwill happen when I discover you, I can tell you what will happen. Youare not a hysterical girl, but you will go into hysterics--and no onewill hear you. "

(All the power of her--body and soul--in one leap on him and then a lashthat would cut to the bone. And it was not a nightmare--and Rosy wasat Stornham, and her father looking over steamer lists and choosing hisstaterooms. )

He walked about slowly, the scent of his cigar floating behind him. She noticed, as she had done more than once before, that he seemed toslightly drag one foot, and she wondered why. The wind was blowing themist away, and there was a faint growing of light. The moon was notfull, but young, and yet it would make a difference. But the upper partof the hedge grew thick and close to the heap of wood, and, but for herfall, she would never have dreamed of the refuge. 

She could only guess at his movements, but his footsteps gave some clue. He was examining the ground in as far as the darkness would allow. Hewent into the shed and round about it, he opened the door of the tinycoal lodge, and looked again into the small back kitchen. He camenear--nearer--so near once that, bending sidewise, she could have putout a hand and touched him. He stood quite still, then made a step or soaway, stood still again, and burst into a laugh once more. 

"Oh, you are here, are you?" he said. "You are a fine big girl to beable to crowd yourself into a place like that!"

Hot and cold dew stood out on her forehead and made her hair damp as sheheld her whip hard. 

"Come out, my dear!" alluringly. "It is not too soon. Or do you preferthat I should assist you?"

Her heart stood quite still--quite. He was standing by the wigwam of hoppoles and thought she had hidden herself inside it. Her place under thehedge he had not even glanced at. 

She knew he bent down and thrust his arm into the wigwam, for his furyat the result expressed itself plainly enough. That he had made a foolof himself was worse to him than all else. He actually wheeled about andstrode away to the house. 

Because minutes seemed hours, she thought he was gone long, but he wasnot away for twenty minutes. He had, in fact, gone into the bare frontroom again, and sitting upon the box near the hearth, let his head dropin his hands and remained in this position thinking. In the end he gotup and went out to the shed where he had left the horses. 

Betty was feeling that before long she might find herself making thatstrange swoop into the darkness of space again, and that it didnot matter much, as one apparently lay quite still when one wasunconscious--when she heard that one horse was being led out into thelane. What did that mean? Had he got tired of the chase--as the otherman did--and was he going away because discomfort and fatigue had cooledand disgusted him--perhaps even made him feel that he was playing thepart of a sensational idiot who was laying himself open to derision?That would be like him, too. 

Presently she heard his footsteps once more, but he did not come as nearher as before--in fact, he stood at some yards' distance when he stoppedand spoke--in quite a new manner. 

"Betty, " his tone was even cynically cool, "I shall stalk you no more. The chase is at an end. I think I have taken all out of you I intendedto. Perhaps it was a bad joke and was carried too far. I wanted to proveto you that there were circumstances which might be too much even fora young woman from New York. I have done it. Do you suppose I am sucha fool as to bring myself within reach of the law? I am going away andwill send assistance to you from the next house I pass. I have leftsome matches and a few broken sticks on the hearth in the cottage. Bea sensible girl. Limp in there and build yourself a fire as soon as youhear me gallop away. You must be chilled through. Now I am going. "

He tramped across the bit of garden, down the brick path, mounted hishorse and put it to a gallop at once. Clack, clack, clack--clackingfainter and fainter into the distance--and he was gone. 

When she realised that the thing was true, the effect upon her of hersense of relief was that the growing likelihood of a second swoop intodarkness died away, but one curious sob lifted her chest as she leanedback against the rough growth behind her. As she changed her positionfor a better one she felt the jagged pain again and knew that in thetenseness of her terror she had actually for some time felt next tonothing of her hurt. She had not even been cold, for the hedge behindand over her and the barricade before had protected her from both windand rain. The grass beneath her was not damp for the same reason. Theweary thought rose in her mind that she might even lie down and sleep. But she pulled herself together and told herself that this was like thetemptation of believing in the nightmare. He was gone, and she had arespite--but was it to be anything more? She did not make any attempt toleave her place of concealment, remembering the strange things she hadlearned in watching him, and the strange terror in which Rosalie lived. 

"One never knows what he will do next; I will not stir, " she saidthrough her teeth. "No, I will not stir from here. "

And she did not, but sat still, while the pain came back to her bodyand the anguish to her heart--and sometimes such heaviness that herhead dropped forward upon her knees again, and she fell into a stupefiedhalf-doze. 

From one such doze she awakened with a start, hearing a slight click ofthe gate. After it, there were several seconds of dead silence. It wasthe slightness of the click which was startling--if it had not beencaused by the wind, it had been caused by someone's having cautiouslymoved it--and this someone wishing to make a soundless approach hadimmediately stood still and was waiting. There was only one person whowould do that. By this time, the mist being blown away, the light ofthe moon began to make a growing clearness. She lifted her hand anddelicately held aside a few twigs that she might look out. 

She had been quite right in deciding not to move. Nigel Anstruthershad come back, and after his pause turned, and avoiding the brick path, stole over the grass to the cottage door. His going had merely been aninspiration to trap her, and the wood and matches had been intended tomake a beacon light for him. That was like him, as well. His horse hehad left down the road. 

But the relief of his absence had been good for her, and she was ableto check the shuddering fit which threatened her for a moment. The next, her ears awoke to a new sound. Something was stumbling heavily about thepatch of garden--some animal. A cropping of grass, a snorting breath, and more stumbling hoofs, and she knew that Childe Harold had managedto loosen his bridle and limp out of the shed. The mere sense of hisnearness seemed a sort of protection. 

He had limped and stumbled to the front part of the garden before Nigelheard him. When he did hear, he came out of the house in the humour ofa man the inflaming of whose mood has been cumulative; Childe Harold'stemper also was not to be trifled with. He threw up his head, swingingthe bridle out of reach; he snorted, and even reared with an uglylashing of his forefeet. 

"Good boy!" whispered Betty. "Do not let him take you--do not!"

If he remained where he was he would attract attention if anyone passedby. "Fight, Childe Harold, be as vicious as you choose--do not allowyourself to be dragged back. "

And fight he did, with an ugliness of temper he had never shownbefore--with snortings and tossed head and lashed--out heels, as if heknew he was fighting to gain time and with a purpose. 

But in the midst of the struggle Nigel Anstruthers stopped suddenly. Hehad stumbled again, and risen raging and stained with damp earth. Nowhe stood still, panting for breath--as still as he had stood after theclick of the gate. Was he--listening? What was he listening to? Had shemoved in her excitement, and was it possible he had caught the sound?No, he was listening to something else. Far up the road it echoed, but coming nearer every moment, and very fast. Another horse--a bigone--galloping hard. Whosoever it was would pass this place; it couldonly be a man--God grant that he would not go by so quickly that hisattention would not be arrested by a shriek! Cry out she must--and ifhe did not hear and went galloping on his way she would have betrayedherself and be lost. 

She bit off a groan by biting her lip. 

"You who died to-day--now--now!"

Nearer and nearer. No human creature could pass by a thing like this--itwould not be possible. And Childe Harold, backing and fighting, scentedthe other horse and neighed fiercely and high. The rider was slackeninghis pace; he was near the lane. He had turned into it and stopped. Nowfor her one frantic cry--but before she could gather power to give itforth, the man who had stopped had flung himself from his saddle and wasinside the garden speaking. A big voice and a clear one, with a ringingtone of authority. 

"What are you doing here? And what is the matter with Miss Vanderpoel'shorse?" it called out. 

Now there was danger of the swoop into the darkness--greatdanger--though she clutched at the hedge that she might feel its thornsand hold herself to the earth. 

"YOU!" Nigel Anstruthers cried out. "You!" and flung forth a shout oflaughter. 

"Where is she?" fiercely. "Lady Anstruthers is terrified. We have beensearching for hours. Only just now I heard on the marsh that she hadbeen seen to ride this way. Where is she, I say?"

A strong, angry, earthly voice--not part of the melodrama--not part of adream, but a voice she knew, and whose sound caused her heart to leapto her throat, while she trembled from head to foot, and a light, colddampness broke forth on her skin. Something had been a dream--her wild, desolate ride--the slew tolling; for the voice which commanded with suchhuman fierceness was that of the man for whom the heavy bell had struckforth from the church tower. 

Sir Nigel recovered himself brilliantly. Not that he did not recognisethat he had been a fool again and was in a nasty place; but it was notfor the first time in his life, and he had learned how to brazen himselfout of nasty places. 

"My dear Mount Dunstan, " he answered with tolerant irritation, "I havebeen having a devil of a time with female hysterics. She heard the belltoll and ran away with the idea that it was for you, and paid you thecompliment of losing her head. I came on her here when she had riddenher horse half to death and they had both come a cropper. Confoundwomen's hysterics! I could do nothing with her. When I left her for amoment she ran away and hid herself. She is concealed somewhere onthe place or has limped off on to the marsh. I wish some New Yorkmillionairess would work herself into hysteria on my humble account. "

"Those are lies, " Mount Dunstan answered--"every damned one of them!"

He wheeled around to look about him, attracted by a sound, and in theclearing moonlight saw a figure approaching which might have risen fromthe earth, so far as he could guess where it had come from. He strodeover to it, and it was Betty Vanderpoel, holding her whip in a clenchedhand and showing to his eagerness such hunted face and eyes as werebarely human. He caught her unsteadiness to support it, and felt herfingers clutch at the tweed of his coatsleeve and move there as if themere feeling of its rough texture brought heavenly comfort to her andgave her strength. 

"Yes, they are lies, Lord Mount Dunstan, " she panted. "He said that hemeant to get what he called 'even' with me. He told me I could not getaway from him and that no one would hear me if I cried out for help. Ihave hidden like some hunted animal. " Her shaking voice broke, and sheheld the cloth of his sleeve tightly. "You are alive--alive!" with asudden sweet wildness. "But it is true the bell tolled! While I wascrouching in the dark I called to you--who died to-day--to stand betweenus!"

The man absolutely shuddered from head to foot. 

"I was alive, and you see I heard you and came, " he answered hoarsely. 

He lifted her in his arms and carried her into the cottage. Her cheekfelt the enrapturing roughness of his tweed shoulder as he did it. Helaid her down on the couch of hay and turned away. 

"Don't move, " he said. "I will come back. You are safe. "

If there had been more light she would have seen that his jaw was setlike a bulldog's, and there was a red spark in his eyes--a fearsome one. But though she did not clearly see, she KNEW, and the nearness of thelast hours swept away all relenting. 

Nigel Anstruthers having discreetly waited until the two had passed intothe house, and feeling that a man would be an idiot who did not removehimself from an atmosphere so highly charged, was making his way towardthe lane and was, indeed, halfway through the gate when heavy feet werebehind him and a grip of ugly strength wrenched him backward. 

"Your horse is cropping the grass where you left him, but you are notgoing to him, " said a singularly meaning voice. "You are coming withme. "

Anstruthers endeavoured to convince himself that he did not at thatmoment turn deadly sick and that the brute would not make an ass ofhimself. 

"Don't be a bally fool!" he cried out, trying to tear himself free. 

The muscular hand on his shoulder being reinforced by another, whichclutched his collar, dragged him back, stumbling ignominiously throughthe gooseberry bushes towards the cart-shed. Betty lying upon her bed ofhay heard the scuffling, mingled with raging and gasping curses. ChildeHarold, lifting his head from his cropping of the grass, looked afterthe violently jerking figures and snorted slightly, snuffing withdilated red nostrils. As a war horse scenting blood and battle, he wasexcited. 

When Mount Dunstan got his captive into the shed the blood which hadsurged in Red Godwyn's veins was up and leaping. Anstruthers, his collarheld by a hand with fingers of iron, writhed about and turned a livid, ghastly face upon his captor. 

"You have twice my strength and half my age, you beast and devil!" hefoamed in a half shriek, and poured forth frightful blasphemies. 

"That counts between man and man, but not between vermin andexecutioner, " gave back Mount Dunstan. 

The heavy whip, flung upward, whistled down through the air, cuttingthrough cloth and linen as though it would cut through flesh to bone. 

"By God!" shrieked the writhing thing he held, leaping like a man whohas been shot. "Don't do that again! DAMN you!" as the unswerving lashcut down again--again. 

What followed would not be good to describe. Betty through the open doorheard wild and awful things--and more than once a sound as if a dog werehowling. 

When the thing was over, one of the two--his clothes cut to ribbons, his torn white linen exposed, lay, a writhing, huddled worm, hiccoughingfrenzied sobs upon the earth in a corner of the cart-shed. The other manstood over him, breathless and white, but singularly exalted. 

"You won't want your horse to-night, because you can't use him, " hesaid. "I shall put Miss Vanderpoel's saddle upon him and ride with herback to Stornham. You think you are cut to pieces, but you are not, andyou'll get over it. I'll ask you to mark, however, that if you open yourfoul mouth to insinuate lies concerning either Lady Anstruthers or hersister I will do this thing again in public some day--on the steps ofyour club--and do it more thoroughly. "

He walked into the cottage soon afterwards looking, to BettyVanderpoel's eyes, pale and exceptionally big, and also more a man thanit is often given even to the most virile male creature to look--and hewalked to the side of her resting place and stood there looking down. 

"I thought I heard a dog howl, " she said. 

"You did hear a dog howl, " he answered. He said no other word, and sheasked no further question. She knew what he had done, and he was wellaware that she knew it. 

There was a long, strangely tense silence. The light of the moon wasgrowing. She made at first no effort to rise, but lay still and lookedup at him from under splendid lifted lashes, while his own gaze fellinto the depth of hers like a plummet into a deep pool. This continuedfor almost a full minute, when he turned quickly away and walked to thehearth, indrawing a heavy breath. 

He could not endure that which beset him; it was unbearable, because hereyes had maddeningly seemed to ask him some wistful question. Why didshe let her loveliness so call to him. She was not a trifler whocould play with meanings. Perhaps she did not know what her power was. Sometimes he could believe that beautiful women did not. 

In a few moments, almost before he could reach her, she was rising, andwhen she got up she supported herself against the open door, standingin the moonlight. If he was pale, she was pale also, and her large eyeswould not move from his face, so drawing him that he could not keep awayfrom her. 

"Listen, " he broke out suddenly. "Penzance told me--warned me--thatsome time a moment would come which would be stronger than all else in aman--than all else in the world. It has come now. Let me take you home. "

"Than what else?" she said slowly, and became even paler than before. 

He strove to release himself from the possession of the moment, and inhis struggle answered with a sort of savagery. 

"Than scruple--than power--even than a man's determination and decentpride. "

"Are you proud?" she half whispered quite brokenly. "I am not--since Iwaited for the ringing of the church bell--since I heard it toll. Afterthat the world was empty--and it was as empty of decent pride as ofeverything else. There was nothing left. I was the humblest broken thingon earth. "

"You!" he gasped. "Do you know I think I shall go mad directly perhapsit is happening now. YOU were humble and broken--your world was empty!Because----?"

"Look at me, Lord Mount Dunstan, " and the sweetest voice in the worldwas a tender, wild little cry to him. "Oh LOOK at me!"

He caught her out-thrown hands and looked down into the beautifulpassionate soul of her. The moment had come, and the tidal wave risingto its height swept all the common earth away when, with a savage sob, he caught and held her close and hard against that which thudded racingin his breast. 

And they stood and swayed together, folded in each other's arms, whilethe wind from the marshes lifted its voice like an exulting human thingas it swept about them. 

CHAPTER XLIX

AT STORNHAM AND AT BROADMORLANDS

The exulting wind had swept the clouds away, and the moon rode in a darkblue sea of sky, making the night light purely clear, when they drewa little apart, that they might better see the wonderfulness in eachother's faces. It was so mysteriously great a thing that they felt nearto awe. 

"I fought too long. I wore out my body's endurance, and now I am quakinglike a boy. Red Godwyn did not begin his wooing like this. Forgive me, "Mount Dunstan said at last. 

"Do you know, " with lovely trembling lips and voice, "that forlong--long--you have been unkind to me?"

It was merely human that he should swiftly enfold her again, and answerwith his lips against her cheek. 

"Unkind! Unkind! Oh, the heavenly woman's sweetness of your telling meso--the heavenly sweetness of it!" he exclaimed passionately andlow. "And I was one of those who are 'by the roadside everywhere, ' anunkempt, raging beggar, who might not decently ask you for a crust. "

"It was all wrong--wrong!" she whispered back to him, and he pouredforth the tenderest, fierce words of confession and prayer, and shelistened, drinking them in, with now and then a soft sob pressed againstthe roughness of the enrapturing tweed. For a space they had bothforgotten her hurt, because there are other things than terror whichhypnotise pain. Mount Dunstan was to be praised for remembering itfirst. He must take her back to Stornham and her sister without furtherdelay. 

"I will put your saddle on Anstruthers' horse, or mine, and lift you toyour seat. There is a farmhouse about two miles away, where I will takeyou first for food and warmth. Perhaps it would be well for you tostay there to rest for an hour or so, and I will send a message to LadyAnstruthers. "

"I will go to the place, and eat and drink what you advise, " sheanswered. "But I beg you to take me back to Rosalie without delay. Ifeel that I must see her. "

"I feel that I must see her, too, " he said. "But for her--God blessher!" he added, after his sudden pause. 

Betty knew that the exclamation meant strong feeling, and that somehowin the past hours Rosalie had awakened it. But it was only when, aftertheir refreshment at the farm, they had taken horse again and wereriding homeward together, that she heard from him what had passedbetween them. 

"All that has led to this may seem the merest chance, " he said. "Butsurely a strange thing has come about. I know that without understandingit. " He leaned over and touched her hand. "You, who are Life--withoutunderstanding I ride here beside you, believing that you brought meback. "

"I tried--I tried! With all my strength, I tried. "

"After I had seen your sister to-day, I guessed--I knew. But not atfirst. I was not ill of the fever, as excited rumour had it; but I wasill, and the doctors and the vicar were alarmed. I had fought too long, and I was giving up, as I have seen the poor fellows in the ballroomgive up. If they were not dragged back they slipped out of one's hands. If the fever had developed, all would have been over quickly. I knewthe doctors feared that, and I am ashamed to say I was glad of it. But, yesterday, in the morning, when I was letting myself go with a morbidpleasure in the luxurious relief of it--something reached me--some slowrising call to effort and life. "

She turned towards him in her saddle, listening, her lips parted. 

"I did not even ask myself what was happening, but I began to beconscious of being drawn back, and to long intensely to see you again. Iwas gradually filled with a restless feeling that you were near me, andthat, though I could not physically hear your voice, you were surelyCALLING to me. It was the thing which could not be--but it was--andbecause of it I could not let myself drift. "

"I did call you! I was on my knees in the church asking to be forgivenif I prayed mad prayers--but praying the same thing over and over. Thevillagers were kneeling there, too. They crowded in, leaving everythingelse. You are their hero, and they were in deep earnest. "

His look was gravely pondering. His life had not made a mystic ofhim--it was Penzance who was the mystic--but he felt himself perplexedby mysteriously suggestive thought. 

"I was brought back--I was brought back, " he said. "In the afternoonI fell asleep and slept profoundly until the morning. When I awoke, Irealised that I was a remade man. The doctors were almost awed when Ifirst spoke to them. Old Dr. Fenwick died later, and, after I hadheard about it, the church bell was tolled. It was heard at Weaver'sfarmhouse, and, as everybody had been excitedly waiting for the sound, it conveyed but one idea to them--and the boy was sent racing across thefields to Stornham village. Dearest! Dearest!" he exclaimed. 

She had bowed her head and burst into passionate sobbing. Because shewas not of the women who wept, her moment's passion was strong andbitter. 

"It need not have been!" she shuddered. "One cannot bear it--because itneed not have been!"

"Stop your horse a moment, " he said, reining in his own, while, withburning eyes and swelling throat, he held and steadied her. But he didnot know that neither her sister nor her father had ever seen her insuch mood, and that she had never so seen herself. 

"You shall not remember it, " he said to her. 

"I will not, " she answered, recovering herself. "But for one moment allthe awful hours rushed back. Tell me the rest. "

"We did not know that the blunder had been made until a messenger fromDole rode over to inquire and bring messages of condolence. Then weunderstood what had occurred and I own a sort of frenzy seized me. Iknew I must see you, and, though the doctors were horribly nervous, theydare not hold me back. The day before it would not have been believedthat I could leave my room. You were crying out to me, and though I didnot know, I was answering, body and soul. Penzance knew I must have myway when I spoke to him--mad as it seemed. When I rode through Stornhamvillage, more than one woman screamed at sight of me. I shall not beable to blot out of my mind your sister's face. She will tell you whatwe said to each other. I rode away from the Court quite half mad----"his voice became very gentle, "because of something she had told me inthe first wild moments. "

Lady Anstruthers had spent the night moving restlessly from one roomto another, and had not been to bed when they rode side by side up theavenue in the early morning sunlight. An under keeper, crossing thepark a few hundred yards above them, after one glance, dashed acrossthe sward to the courtyard and the servants' hall. The news flashedelectrically through the house, and Rosalie, like a small ghost, cameout upon the steps as they reined in. Though her lips moved, she couldnot speak aloud, as she watched Mount Dunstan lift her sister from herhorse. 

"Childe Harold stumbled and I hurt my foot, " said Betty, trying to becalm. 

"I knew he would find you!" Rosalie answered quite faintly. "I knew youwould!" turning to Mount Dunstan, adoring him with all the meaning ofher small paled face. 

She would have been afraid of her memory of what she had said in thestrange scene which had taken place before them a few hours ago, butalmost before either of the two spoke she knew that a great gulf hadbeen crossed in some one inevitable, though unforeseen, leap. How it hadbeen taken, when or where, did not in the least matter, when she clungto Betty and Betty clung to her. 

After a few moments of moved and reverent waiting, the admirableJennings stepped forward and addressed her in lowered voice. 

"There's been little sleep in the village this night, my lady, " hemurmured earnestly. "I promised they should have a sign, with yourpermission. If the flag was run up--they're all looking out, and they'dknow. "

"Run it up, Jennings, " Lady Anstruthers answered, "at once. "

When it ran up the staff on the tower and fluttered out in gay answeringto the morning breeze, children in the village began to run aboutshouting, men and women appeared at cottage doors, and more than onecap was thrown up in the air. But old Doby and Mrs. Welden, who had beenwaiting for hours, standing by Mrs. Welden's gate, caught each other'sdry, trembling old hands and began to cry. 

The Broadmorlands divorce scandal, having made conversation during aseason quite forty years before Miss Vanderpoel appeared at StornhamCourt, had been laid upon a lower shelf and buried beneath other storieslong enough to be forgotten. Only one individual had not forgotten it, and he was the Duke of Broadmorlands himself, in whose mind it remainedhideously clear. He had been a young man, honestly and much in lovewhen it first revealed itself to him, and for a few months he had eventhought it might end by being his death, notwithstanding that he wasstrong and in first-rate physical condition. He had been a fine, hearty young man of clean and rather dignified life, though he was notunderstood to be brilliant of mind. Privately he had ideals connectedwith his rank and name which he was not fluent enough clearly toexpress. After he had realised that he should not die of the publichumiliation and disgrace, which seemed to point him out as having beenthe kind of gullible fool it is scarcely possible to avoid laughingat--or, so it seemed to him in his heart-seared frenzy--he thought itnot improbable that he should go mad. He was harried so by memories oflovely little soft ways of Edith's (his wife's name was Edith), ofthe pretty sound of her laugh, and of her innocent, girlish habit ofkneeling down by her bedside every night and morning to say her prayers. This had so touched him that he had sometimes knelt down to say his, too, saying to her, with slight awkward boyishness, that a fellow whohad a sort of angel for his wife ought to do his best to believe in thethings she believed in. 

"And all the time----!" a devil who laughed used to snigger in his earover and over again, until it was almost like the ticking of a clockduring the worst months, when it did not seem probable that a man couldfeel his brain whirling like a Catherine wheel night and day, and stillmanage to hold on and not reach the point of howling and shrieking anddashing his skull against wails and furniture. 

But that passed in time, and he told himself that he passed with it. Since then he had lived chiefly at Broadmorlands Castle, and was spokenof as a man who had become religious, which was not true, but, havingreached the decision that religion was good for most people, he paid agood deal of attention to his church and schools, and was rigorous inthe matter of curates. 

He had passed seventy now, and was somewhat despotic and haughty, because a man who is a Duke and does not go out into the world to rubagainst men of his own class and others, but lives altogether on a greatand splendid estate, saluted by every creature he meets, and universallyobeyed and counted before all else, is not unlikely to forget that he isa quite ordinary human being, and not a sort of monarch. 

He had done his best to forget Edith, who had soon died of being a shadycurate's wife in Australia, but he had not been able to encompass it. Heused, occasionally, to dream she was kneeling by the bed in her childishnightgown saying her prayers aloud, and would waken crying--as he hadcried in those awful young days. Against social immorality or villagelight-mindedness he was relentlessly savage. He allowed for nopalliating or exonerating facts. He began to see red when he heard of orsaw lightness in a married woman, and the outside world frequently saidthat this characteristic bordered on monomania. 

Nigel Anstruthers, having met him once or twice, had at first been muchamused by him, and had even, by giving him an adroitly careful lead, managed to guide him into an expression of opinion. The Duke, whohad heard men of his class discussed, did not in the least like him, notwithstanding his sympathetic suavity of manner and his air of beingintelligently impressed by what he heard. Not long afterwards, however, it transpired that the aged rector of Broadmorlands having died, theliving had been given to Ffolliott, and, hearing it, Sir Nigel was notslow to conjecture that quite decently utilisable tools would lie readyto his hand if circumstances pressed; this point of view, it will beseen, being not illogical. A man who had not been a sort of hermit wouldhave heard enough of him to be put on his guard, and one who was a manof the world, looking normally on existence, would have reasoned coolly, and declined to concern himself about what was not his affair. But aparallel might be drawn between Broadmorlands and some old lion woundedsorely in his youth and left to drag his unhealed torment through theyears of age. On one subject he had no point of view but his own, and could be roused to fury almost senseless by wholly inadequatelysupported facts. He presented exactly the material required--and that inmass. 

About the time the flag was run up on the tower at Stornham Court acarter, driving whistling on the road near the deserted cottage, washailed by a man who was walking slowly a few yards ahead of him. Thecarter thought that he was a tramp, as his clothes were plainly inbad case, which seeing, his answer was an unceremonious grunt, and itcertainly did not occur to him to touch his forehead. A minute later, however, he "got a start, " as he related afterwards. The tramp was agentleman whose riding costume was torn and muddied, and who looked"gashly, " though he spoke with the manner and authority which Binns, the carter, recognised as that of one of the "gentry" addressing aday-labourer. 

"How far is it from here to Medham?" he inquired. 

"Medham be about four mile, sir, " was the answer. "I be carryin' these'taters there to market. "

"I want to get there. I have met with an accident. My horse took frightat a pheasant starting up rocketting under his nose. He threw me into ahedge and bolted. I'm badly enough bruised to want to reach a town andsee a doctor. Can you give me a lift?"

"That I will, sir, ready enough, " making room on the seat beside him. "You be bruised bad, sir, " he said sympathetically, as his passengerclimbed to his place, with a twisted face and uttering blasphemies underhis breath. 

"Damned badly, " he answered. "No bones broken, however. "

"That cut on your cheek and neck'll need plasterin', sir. "

"That's a scratch. Thorn bush, " curtly. 

Sympathy was plainly not welcome. In fact Binns was soon of the opinionthat here was an ugly customer, gentleman or no gentleman. A joltingcart was, however, not the best place for a man who seemed sore fromhead to foot, and done for out and out. He sat and ground his teeth, ashe clung to the rough seat in the attempt to steady himself. He becamemore and more "gashly, " and a certain awful light in his eyes alarmedthe carter by leaping up at every jolt. Binns was glad when he left himat Medham Arms, and felt he had earned the half-sovereign handed to him. 

Four days Anstruthers lay in bed in a room at the Inn. No one saw himbut the man who brought him food. He did not send for a doctor, becausehe did not wish to see one. He sent for such remedies as were needed bya man who had been bruised by a fall from his horse. He made no remarkwhich could be considered explanatory, after he had said irritably thata man was a fool to go loitering along on a nervous brute who neededwatching. Whatsoever happened was his own damned fault. 

Through hours of day and night he lay staring at the whitewashed beamsor the blue roses on the wall paper. They were long hours, and filledwith things not pleasant enough to dwell on in detail. Physical miserywhich made a man writhe at times was not the worst part of them. Therewere a thousand things less endurable. More than once he foamed at themouth, and recognised that he gibbered like a madman. 

There was but one memory which saved him from feeling that this was thevery end of things. That was the memory of Broadmorlands. While a manhad a weapon left, even though it could not save him, he might pay upwith it--get almost even. The whole Vanderpoel lot could be plunged neckdeep in a morass which would leave mud enough sticking to them, evenif their money helped them to prevent its entirely closing over theirheads. He could attend to that, and, after he had set it well going, hecould get out. There were India, South Africa, Australia--a dozen placesthat would do. And then he would remember Betty Vanderpoel, and cursehorribly under the bed clothes. It was the memory of Betty which outdidall others in its power to torment. 

On the morning of the fifth day the Duke of Broadmorlands received anote, which he read with somewhat annoyed curiosity. A certain Sir NigelAnstruthers, whom it appeared he ought to be able to recall, was in theneighbourhood, and wished to see him on a parochial matter of interest. "Parochial matter" was vague, and so was the Duke's recollection of theman who addressed him. If his memory served him rightly, he had methim in a country house in Somersetshire, and had heard that he was theacquaintance of the disreputable eldest son. What could a person of thatsort have to say of parochial matters? The Duke considered, and then, inobedience to a rigorous conscience, decided that one ought, perhaps, togive him half an hour. 

There was that in the intruder's aspect, when he arrived in theafternoon, which produced somewhat the effect of shock. In the firstplace, a man in his unconcealable physical condition had no right to beout of his bed. Though he plainly refused to admit the fact, his mannerof bearing himself erect, and even with a certain touch of cool swagger, was, it was evident, achieved only by determined effort. He looked likea man who had not yet recovered from some evil fever. Since the meetingin Somersetshire he had aged more than the year warranted. Despite hisobstinate fight with himself it was obvious that he was horribly shaky. A disagreeable scratch or cut, running from cheek to neck, did notimprove his personal appearance. 

He pleased his host no more than he had pleased him at their firstencounter; he, in fact, repelled him strongly, by suggesting a degreeof abnormality of mood which was smoothed over by an attempt at entirenormality of manner. The Duke did not present an approachable front as, after Anstruthers had taken a chair, he sat and examined him with brightblue old eyes set deep on either side of a dominant nose and framed overby white eyebrows. No, Nigel Anstruthers summed him up, it would not beeasy to open the matter with the old fool. He held himself magnificentlyaloof, with that lack of modernity in his sense of place which, even atthis late day, sometimes expressed itself here and there in the mannerof the feudal survival. 

"I am afraid you have been ill, " with rigid civility. 

"A man feels rather an outsider in confessing he has let his horse throwhim into a hedge. It was my own fault entirely. I allowed myself toforget that I was riding a dangerously nervous brute. I was thinking ofa painful and absorbing subject. I was badly bruised and scratched, butthat was all. "

"What did your doctor say?"

"That I was in luck not to have broken my neck. "

"You had better have a glass of wine, " touching a bell. "You do not lookequal to any exertion. "

In gathering himself together, Sir Nigel felt he was forced to useenormous effort. It had cost him a gruesome physical struggle to endurethe drive over to Broadmorlands, though it was only a few miles fromMedham. There had been something unnatural in the exertion necessary tosit upright and keep his mind decently clear. That was the worst of it. The fever and raging hours of the past days and nights had so shaken himthat he had become exhausted, and his brain was not alert. He was notthinking rapidly, and several times he had lost sight of a point it wasimportant to remember. He grew hot and cold and knew his hands andvoice shook, as he answered. But, perhaps--he felt desperately--signs ofemotion were not bad. 

"I am not quite equal to exertion, " he began slowly. "But a man cannotlie on his bed while some things are undone--a MAN cannot. "

As the old Duke sat upright, the blue eyes under his bent brows werestartled, as well as curious. Was the man going out of his mind aboutsomething? He looked rather like it, with the dampness starting out onhis haggard face, and the ugly look suddenly stamped there. The fact wasthat the insensate fury which had possessed and torn Anstruthers as hehad writhed in his inn bedroom had sprung upon him again in full force, and his weakness could not control it, though it would have been wiserto hold it in check. He also felt frightfully ill, which filled himwith despair, and, through this fact, he lost sight of the effect heproduced, as he stood up, shaking all over. 

"I come to you because you are the one man who can most easilyunderstand the thing I have been concealing for a good many years. "

The Duke was irritated. Confound the objectionable idiot, what did hemean by taking that intimate tone with a man who was not prepared toconcern himself in his affairs?

"Excuse me, " he said, holding up an authoritative hand, "are you goingto make a confession? I don't like such things. I prefer to be excused. Personal confidences are not parochial matters. "

"This one is. " And Sir Nigel was sickeningly conscious that he wasputting the statement rashly, while at the same time all better wordsescaped him. "It is as much a parochial matter, " losing all hold on hiswits and stammering, "as was--as was--the affair of--your wife. "

It was the Duke who stood up now, scarlet with anger. He sprang fromhis chair as if he had been a young man in whom some insult had struckblazing fire. 

"You--you dare!" he shouted. "You insolent blackguard! You force yourway in here and dare--dare----!" And he clenched his fist, wildlyshaking it. 

Nigel Anstruthers, staggering on his uncertain feet, would have shoutedalso, but could not, though he tried, and he heard his own voice comeforth brokenly. 

"Yes, I dare! I--your--my own--my----!"

Swaying and tottering, he swung round to the chair he had left, and fellinto it, even while the old Duke, who stood raging before him, startedback in outraged amazement. What was the fellow doing? Was he makingfaces at him? The drawn malignant mouth and muscles suggested it. Washe a lunatic, indeed? But the sense of disgusted outrage changed all atonce to horror, as, with a countenance still more hideously livid andtwisted, his visitor slid helplessly from his seat and lay a huddlingheap of clothes on the floor. 

CHAPTER L

THE PRIMEVAL THING

When Mr. Vanderpoel landed in England his wife was with him. Thisquiet-faced woman, who was known to be on her way to join her daughterin England, was much discussed, envied, and glanced at, when shepromenaded the deck with her husband, or sat in her chair softly wrappedin wonderful furs. Gradually, during the past months, she had been toldcertain modified truths connected with her elder daughter's marriage. They had been painful truths, but had been so softened and expurgatedof their worst features that it had been possible to bear them, when onerealised that they did not, at least, mean that Rosy had forgotten orceased to love her mother and father, or wish to visit her home. Thesteady clearness of foresight and readiness of resource which were oftenspoken of as being specially characteristic of Reuben S. Vanderpoel, were all required, and employed with great tenderness, in the managementof this situation. As little as it was possible that his wife shouldknow, was the utmost she must hear and be hurt by. Unless ensuing eventscompelled further revelations, the rest of it should be kept from her. As further protection, her husband had frankly asked her to contentherself with a degree of limited information. 

"I have meant all our lives, Annie, to keep from you the unpleasantthings a woman need not be troubled with, " he had said. "I promisedmyself I would when you were a girl. I knew you would face things, ifI needed your help, but you were a gentle little soul, like Rosy, and Inever intended that you should bear what was useless. Anstruthers wasa blackguard, and girls of all nations have married blackguards before. When you have Rosy safe at home, and know nothing can hurt her again, you both may feel you would like to talk it over. Till then we won't gointo detail. You trust me, I know, when I tell you that you shall holdRosy in your arms very soon. We may have something of a fight, but therecan only be one end to it in a country as decent as England. Anstruthersisn't exactly what I should call an Englishman. Men rather like him areto be found in two or three places. " His good-looking, shrewd, elderlyface lighted with a fine smile. "My handsome Betty has saved us a gooddeal by carrying out her fifteen-year-old plan of going to find hersister, " he ended. 

Before they landed they had decided that Mrs. Vanderpoel should becomfortably established in a hotel in London, and that after this wasarranged, her husband should go to Stornham Court alone. If Sir Nigelcould be induced to listen to logic, Rosalie, her child, and Bettyshould come at once to town. 

"And, if he won't listen to logic, " added Mr. Vanderpoel, with a drycomposure, "they shall come just the same, my dear. " And his wife puther arms round his neck and kissed him because she knew what he said wasquite true, and she admired him--as she had always done--greatly. 

But when the pilot came on board and there began to stir in the ship theagreeable and exciting bustle of the delivery of letters and welcomingtelegrams, among Mr. Vanderpoel's many yellow envelopes he opened onethe contents of which caused him to stand still for some moments--sostill, indeed, that some of the bystanders began to touch each other'selbows and whisper. He certainly read the message two or three timesbefore he folded it up, returned it to its receptacle, and walkedgravely to his wife's sitting-room. 

"Reuben!" she exclaimed, after her first look at him, "have you badnews? Oh, I hope not!"

He came and sat down quietly beside her, taking her hand. 

"Don't be frightened, Annie, my dear, " he said. "I have just beenreminded of a verse in the Bible--about vengeance not belonging to merehuman beings. Nigel Anstruthers has had a stroke of paralysis, and it isnot his first. Apparently, even if he lies on his back for some monthsthinking of harm, he won't be able to do it. He is finished. "

When he was carried by the express train through the country, he sawall that Betty had seen, though the summer had passed, and there wereneither green trees nor hedges. He knew all that the long letters hadmeant of stirred emotion and affection, and he was strongly moved, though his mind was full of many things. There were the farmhouses, the square-towered churches, the red-pointed hop oasts, and the villagechildren. How distinctly she had made him see them! His Betty--hissplendid Betty! His heart beat at the thought of seeing her high, youngblack head, and holding her safe in his arms again. Safe! He resentedhaving used the word, because there was a shock in seeming to admit thepossibility that anything in the universe could do wrong to her. Yet oneman had been villain enough to mean her harm, and to threaten herwith it. He slightly shuddered as he thought of how the man wasfinished--done for. 

The train began to puff more loudly, as it slackened its pace. It wasdrawing near to a rustic little station, and, as it passed in, he saw acarriage standing outside, waiting on the road, and a footman in along coat, glancing into each window as the train went by. Two or threecountry people were watching it intently. Miss Vanderpoel's fatherwas coming up from London on it. The stationmaster rushed to open thecarriage door, and the footman hastened forward, but a tall lovely thingin grey was opposite the step as Mr. Vanderpoel descended it to theplatform. She did not recognise the presence of any other humanbeing than himself. For the moment she seemed to forget even thebroad-shouldered man who had plainly come with her. As Reuben S. Vanderpoel folded her in his arms, she folded him and kissed him as hewas not sure she had ever kissed him before. 

"My splendid Betty! My own fine girl!" he said. 

And when she cried out "Father! Father!" she bent and kissed the breastof his coat. 

He knew who the big young man was before she turned to present him. 

"This is Lord Mount Dunstan, father, " she said. "Since Nigel was broughthome, he has been very good to us. "

Reuben S. Vanderpoel looked well into the man's eyes, as he shook handswith him warmly, and this was what he said to himself:

"Yes, she's safe. This is quite safe. It is to be trusted with the wholething. "

Not many days after her husband's arrival at Stornham Court, Mrs. Vanderpoel travelled down from London, and, during her journey, scarcelysaw the wintry hedges and bare trees, because, as she sat in hercushioned corner of the railway carriage, she was inwardly offering upgentle, pathetically ardent prayers of gratitude. She was the woman whoprays, and the many sad petitions of the past years were being answeredat last. She was being allowed to go to Rosy--whatsoever happened, shecould never be really parted from her girl again. She asked pardon manytimes because she had not been able to be really sorry when she hadheard of her son-in-law's desperate condition. She could feel pity forhim in his awful case, she told herself, but she could not wish for thething which perhaps she ought to wish for. She had confided this to herhusband with innocent, penitent tears, and he had stroked her cheek, which had always been his comforting way since they had been youngthings together. 

"My dear, " he said, "if a tiger with hydrophobia were loose among a lotof decent people--or indecent ones, for the matter of that--you wouldnot feel it your duty to be very sorry if, in springing on a group ofthem, he impaled himself on an iron fence. Don't reproach yourself toomuch. " And, though the realism of the picture he presented was such asto make her exclaim, "No! No!" there were still occasional moments whenshe breathed a request for pardon if she was hard of heart--this softestof creatures human. 

It was arranged by the two who best knew and loved her that her meetingwith Rosalie should have no spectators, and that their first hourtogether should be wholly unbroken in upon. 

"You have not seen each other for so long, " Betty said, when, on herarrival, she led her at once to the morning-room where Rosy waited, pale with joy, but when the door was opened, though the two figures wereswept into each other's arms by one wild, tremulous rush of movement, there were no sounds to be heard, only caught breaths, until the doorhad closed again. 

The talks which took place between Mr. Vanderpoel and Lord MountDunstan were many and long, and were of absorbing interest to both. Eachpresented to the other a new world, and a type of which his previousknowledge had been but incomplete. 

"I wonder, " Mr. Vanderpoel said, in the course of one of them, "ifmy world appeals to you as yours appeals to me. Naturally, from yourstandpoint, it scarcely seems probable. Perhaps the up-building of largefinancial schemes presupposes a certain degree of imagination. Iam becoming a romantic New York man of business, and I revel in it. Kedgers, for instance, " with the smile which, somehow, suggested Betty, "Kedgers and the Lilium Giganteum, Mrs. Welden and old Doby threaten todevelop into quite necessary factors in the scheme of happiness. WhatBetty has felt is even more comprehensible than it seemed at first. "

They walked and rode together about the countryside; when Mount Dunstanitself was swept clean of danger, and only a few convalescents lingeredto be taken care of in the huge ballroom, they spent many days in goingover the estate. The desolate beauty of it appealed to and touched Mr. Vanderpoel, as it had appealed to and touched his daughter, and, also, wakened in him much new and curious delight. But Mount Dunstan, with atouch of his old obstinacy, insisted that he should ignore the beauty, and look closely at less admirable things. 

"You must see the worst of this, " he said. "You must understand that Ican put no good face upon things, that I offer nothing, because I havenothing to offer. "

If he had not been swept through and through by a powerful and rapturouspassion, he would have detested and abhorred these days of deliberateproud laying bare of the nakedness of the land. But in the hours hespent with Betty Vanderpoel the passion gave him knowledge of thethings which, being elemental, do not concern themselves with pride andobstinacy, and do not remember them. Too much had ended, and too muchbegun, to leave space or thought for poor things. In their eyes, whenthey were together, and even when they were apart, dwelt a glow whichwas deeply moving to those who, looking on, were sufficiently profoundof thought to understand. 

Watching the two walking slowly side by side down the leafless avenue ona crystal winter day, Mr. Vanderpoel conversed with the vicar, whom hegreatly liked. 

"A young man of the name of Selden, " he remarked, "told me more of thisthan he knew. "

"G. Selden, " said the vicar, with affectionate smiling. "He is not awarethat he was largely concerned in the matter. In fact, without G. Selden, I do not know how, exactly, we should have got on. How is he, nicefellow?"

"Extremely well, and in these days in my employ. He is of the honest, indefatigable stuff which makes its way. "

His own smiles, as he watched the two tall figures in the distance, settled into an expression of speculative absorption, because he wasreflecting upon profoundly interesting matters. 

"There is a great primeval thing which sometimes--not often, onlysometimes--occurs to two people, " he went on. "When it leaps into being, it is well if it is not thwarted, or done to death. It has happened tomy girl and Mount Dunstan. If they had been two young tinkers by theroadside, they would have come together, and defied their beggary. Asit is, I recognise, as I sit here, that the outcome of what is to be mayreach far, and open up broad new ways. "

"Yes, " said the vicar. "She will live here and fill a strong man's lifewith wonderful human happiness--her splendid children will be born here, and among them will be those who lead the van and make history. "

. . . . . 

For some time Nigel Anstruthers lay in his room at Stornham Court, surrounded by all of aid and luxury that wealth and exalted medicalscience could gather about him. Sometimes he lay a livid unconsciousmask, sometimes his nurses and doctors knew that in his hollow eyesthere was the light of a raging half reason, and they saw that hestruggled to utter coherent sounds which they might comprehend. This henever accomplished, and one day, in the midst of such an effort, he wasstricken dumb again, and soon afterwards sank into stillness and died. 

And the Shuttle in the hand of Fate, through every hour of every day, and through the slow, deep breathing of all the silent nights, weavesto and fro--to and fro--drawing with it the threads of human life andthought which strengthen its web: and trace the figures of its yet vagueand uncompleted design.