 Chapter thirty-six of the shuttle—this LibriVox recording is in the public domain—the shuttle by Francis Hodgson Burnett, Chapter thirty-six, by the roadside everywhere. His breakfast and the talk over it with Penzant seemed good things. It suddenly had become worthwhile to discuss the approaching hop harvest and the yearly influx of the hop pickers from London. Yesterday the subject had appeared discouraging enough. The great hop gardens of the estate had been in times past its most prolific source of agricultural revenue and the boast and wonder of the hop growing county. The neglect and scant food of the lean years had cost them their reputation. Each season they had needed smaller bands of hoppers and their standard had been lowered. It had been his habit to think of them gloomily as of hopeless and irretrievable loss. Because this morning, for a remote reason, the pulse of life beat strong in him. He was taking a new view. Might not study of the subject, constant attention and the application of all available resource to one end, produce appreciable results. The idea 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 his companion. To have a roof over one's head, a sound body, and work to do is not so bad. Such things form the whole of G. Seldon's cheerful aim. His spirit is a light within me. I will walk over and talk to Volta. Volta was a farmer who struggled to make ends meet was almost too much for him. Holdings whose owners, either through neglect or lack of money, have failed to do their duty as landlords in the matter of repairs of farmhouses, outbuilding his fences, and other things, gradually fall into poor hands. Resourceful and prosperous farmers do not care to hold lands under unprosperous landlords. There were farms lying vacant on the Mount Dunstan estate. There were others whose tenants were uncertain rent-payers or slip-shod workers, or dishonest in small ways. Waste or sale of the fertilizer, which should have been given to the soil as its due, neglect in the case of things whose decay meant depreciation of property and expense to the landlord, were dishonesties. But Mount Dunstan knew that if he turned out thorn and fiddle, whom no watching could wholly frustrate in their tricks, under Mount Farm a no-field rise would stand empty for many a year. But for his poverty Volta would have been a good tenant enough. He was in trouble now, because though his hops promised well, he faced difficulties in the matter of pickers. Last year he had not been able to pay satisfactory prices in return for labour, and as a result the prospect of securing good workers was an unpromising one. The hordes of men, women and children who flock year after year to the hop-growing districts know each other. They learn also, which may be called the good neighbourhoods and which the bad, the gardens whose holders are considered satisfactory as masters, and those who are undesirable. They know by experience or report where the best huts are provided, where tents are supplied and where one must get along as one can. Generally the regular flocks are under a captain who gathers his followers each season, manages them, and looks after their interests and their employers. In some cases the same captain brings his regiment to the same gardens year after year, and ends by counting himself as of the soil and almost of the family of his employer. Each hard, thick-fogged winter they fight through in their east-end courts and streets, they look forward to the open-air weeks spent between long, narrow, green groves of tall, garlanded poles whose readings hang thick with fresh and pungent-centred hop-clusters. Children play op-in in dingy rooms and alleys and talk to each other of days when the sun shone hot and birds were singing and flowers smelling sweet in the hedge-rows, of others when the rain streamed down and made mud of the soft earth, and yet there was pleasure in the gypsying life and high cheer in the fire of sticks built in the field by some bold spirit who hung over at a tin kettle to boil for tea. They never forgot the gentry they had caught sight 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 into the gardens to walk about and look at the bins and ask queer questions in their gentry-sounding voices. They never knew anything, and they always seemed to be entertained. Sometimes there were enterprising laughing ones who asked to be shown how to strip the hops into the bins, and after being shown played at the work for a little while, taking off their gloves and showing white fingers with rings on. They always looked as if they had just been washed and as if all of their clothes were fresh from the tub, and when any one stood near them it was observable that they smelt nice. Generally they gave pennies to the children before they left the garden and sometimes shillings to the women. The hop-picking was in fact a wonderful blend of work and holiday combined. Mark Dunston had liked the hopping from his first memories of it. He could recall his sensations of welcoming a renewal of interesting things when season after season he had begun to mark the early stragglers on the road. The stragglers were not of the class gathered under captains. They were derelicts, tramps who spent their summers on the highways and their winters in such workhouses as would take them in. Tinkers who differ from the tramps only because sometimes they owned a rickety cart full of strange household goods, and drunken tenth-hand perambulators piled with dirty bundles and babies, these last propelled by robust or worn-out slatterly women who sat by the small roadside fire stirring the battered pot or tending the battered kettle when resting time at calm and food must be cooked. Gypsies there were who had cooking fires also and hobbled horses cropping the grass. Now and then appeared a grand one who was rumoured to be a lee and therefore royal and who came and lived regally in a gaily-painted caravan. During the late summer weeks one began to see slouching figures tramping along the high-roaded intervals. These were men who were old, men who were middle-aged, and some who were young, all of them more or less dust-grimmed, whether beaten or ragged. Occasionally one was to be seen in heavy, beery slumber under the hedge-row or lying on the grass smoking lazily, or with painful thrift cobbling up a hole in a garment, such as these were drifting in early that they might be on the ground when pickers were wanted. They were the forerunners of the regular army. On his walk to Westways the farm Balter lived on, Mount Dunstan passed two 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 aspect so unusual that it attracted his attention. Its unusualness consisted in its air of exceeding bustling cheerfulness. It was a domestic group of the most luckless type, and ragged, dirty and worn by an evidently long tramp, might well have been expected to look for lawn, discouraged, and out of spirits. A slouching father of five children, one plainly but a few weeks old, and slung in a dirty shawl at its mother's breast, an unhealthy-looking, slattened mother, two ancient perambulators, one piled with dingy bundles and cooking utensils, the seven-year-old eldest girl unpacking things and keeping an eye at the same time on the two youngest, who were neither of them old enough to be steady on their feet, the six-year-old gleefully aiding the slouching father to build a wayside fire. The mother sat upon the grass nursing her baby and staring about her with an expression at once stupefied and illuminated by some temporary bliss. Even the slouching father was grinning, as if good luck had befallen him, and the two youngest were tumbling about with squeals of good cheer. This was not the humour in which such a group usually dropped wearily on the grass at the wayside to eat its meager 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 of food and a can full of milk. Ordinarily he would have passed on, but perhaps because of the human glow 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 was yet on his face. Yes, sir, he answered. How far have you walked? A good fifty miles since we started, sir, took us a good bit. We was pretty done up when we stopped here, but we've had a wonderful piece of good luck, and his grin broadened immensely. I'm glad to hear that, said Mount Dunstan. The good luck was plainly of a nature to have excited them greatly. Chance-good luck did not happen to people like themselves. They were in the state of mind which in their class can only be relieved by talk. The woman broke in, her weak mouth and chin quite unsteady. Seems like it can't be true, sir, she said. I'd only just come out of the union after this one, signifying the new baby at her breast. I wasn't fit to drag along day after day. We had to stop here because I was near fainting away. She looked fair white when she sat down, put in the man, like she was going off. And that very minute, said the woman, a young lady comes by an horse-back, and the minute she sees me she stops her horse and gets done. I never seen nothing like the quick way she'd done it, said the husband, sharp like she was a soldier under order, done and gave her a bridle to the groom and comes over. And kneels down, the woman took him up, right by me and says, What's the matter, what can I do? And finds out in two minutes and sends to the farm for some brandy and all this basket full of stuff, jerking her head toward the treasure at her side, and gives him, with another jerk towards her mate, money enough to help us along until I'm fair on my feet. That quick it was, that quick! Passing her hand over her 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, I wouldn't. She was a very kind young lady, said Mount Dunstan, and you were in luck. He gave a few coppers to the children and strode on his way. The glow was 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 Westway's farm, and he did so. Slim and straight as a young birch tree, and a late with her ride in the morning air, she stood silhouetted in her black habit against the ancient whitewashed 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 have never seen a hop-garden or a hop-picker. After the exchange of a few words, Bolter respectfully melted away and left them together. It was such a wonderful day that I wanted to be out under the sky for a long time, to ride a long way, she explained. I have been looking at hop-gardens as I rode. I have watched them all the summer, from the time when there was only a little thing with two or three pale green leaves, looking imploringly all the way up to the top of each immensely tall hop-pole from its place in the earth at the bottom of it. As if it were saying over and over again under its breath, can I get up there? Can I get up? Can I do it in time? Can I do it in time? Yes, that was what they were saying, the little bold things. I have watched them ever since putting out tendrils and taking hold of the poles and pulling and climbing like little acrobats, and curling round and unfolding leaves and more leaves until at last they threw them out as if they were beginning to boast that they could climb up to the blue of the sky if the summer were long enough. And now look at them, a hand waved towards the great gardens, forests of them, cool green pathways and avenues with leaf canobies over them. You have seen it all, he said. You do see things, don't you? A few hundred yards down the road I passed something you had seen. I knew it was you who had seen it, though the poor wretches had not heard your name. She hesitated a moment, then stooped down and took up in her hand a bit of pebbled earth from the pathway. There was storm in the blue of her eyes as she held it out for him to look at as it lay on the bare rose 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 oneself it is the mere luxury of self-indulgence and the realization of it sometimes tempts one to be even a trifle morbid. Don't you see, a sudden thrill in her voice startled 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 the suffering millions and the monstrously rich who were obviously to blame for every starved sob and cry. When I almost drove me out of my childish senses I went to my father and threw myself into his arms in a violent fit 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 certain load to carry along the highway. It was the thing the whole world wanted and which we ourselves wanted as much as the rest, and we could not sanely throw it away. It was my first lesson in political economy and I abhorred it. I was a passionate child and beat furiously against the stone walls enclosing present suffering. It was horrible to know that they could not be torn down. I cried out, when I see anyone who is miserable by the roadside I shall stop and give him everything he wants, everything. I was ten years old and I 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, Pinzant said, perhaps you drew each other across seas, who knows. Coming to Westways on a chance errand he had, as it were, found her awaiting him on the threshold. On her part she had certainly not anticipated seeing him there, but when one rides far afield in the sun there are roads towards which one turns as if answering a summoning call, and as her horse had obeyed a certain touch of the rain at a certain point her cheek had felt momentarily hot. Until later when the picking had fairly begun the kilns would not be at work, but there was some interest even now in going over the ground for the first time. I have never been inside an oast house, she said. Bolter is going to show 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 the day before when he had told her his story of Red Godwin. She wondered what it was. They went together over the place escorted by Bolter. They looked into the great circular ovens on whose floors the hops would be laid for drying. They mounted ladder-like steps to the upper room where, when dried, the same hops would lie in soft-like piles until pushed with wooden shovels into the long pokes to be pressed and packed into a solid, marketable mass. Bolter was allowed to explain the technicalities, but it was plain that Mount Dunstan was familiar with all of them, and it was he who, with the sentence here and there, gave her the colour of things. When it is being done there is nearly always outside a touch of the sharp sweetness of early autumn, he said. The sun slanting through the little window falls on the pale yellow heaps, and there is a pungent scent of hops in the air which is rather intoxicating. I'm coming later to see the entire process, she answered. It was a mere matter of seeing common things together and exchanging common speech concerning them, but each was so strongly conscious of the other that no sentence could seem wholly impersonal. There are times when the whole world is personal to a mood whose intensity seems a reason for all things, words are a small moment when the mere sound of a voice makes an unreasonable joy. There was that touch of sharp autumn sweetness in the air yesterday morning, she said, and the chaplets of briny berries that look as if they had been thrown over the hedges are beginning to change to scarlet here and there. The wild rose-hors are reddening and so are the clusters 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 shines on them they will be wonderful to see. What was there in such speeches as these to draw any two nearer and nearer to each other as they walked side by side, to fill the morning air with an intensity of life to seem to cause the world to drop away and become as nothing? As they had been isolated during their waltz in the crowded ballroom at Dunham Castle, so they were isolated now. When they stood in the narrow green groves of the hop-garden talking simply of the placing of the bins and the stripping and measuring of the vines, there might have been no human being within a hundred miles, within a thousand. For the first time his height and strength conveyed to her an impression of physical beauty. His walk and bearing gave her pleasure. When he turned his red-brown eyes upon her suddenly she was conscious that 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 by the dour nature had bestowed on her. Had the world ever held before a woman creature so much to be longed for—abnormal wealth, New York and Fifth Avenue notwithstanding—a man could only think of folding arms around her and whispering in her lovely ear, follies, odes, prayers, gratitude. And yet as they went about together there was growing in Betty Vanderpool's mind a certain realisation. It grew in spite of the recognition of the change in him, the new thing lighted in his eyes. Whatsoever he felt, if he felt anything, he would never allow himself speech. How could he? In his place she could not speak herself, because he was the strong thing which drew her thoughts he would not come to any woman only to cast at her feet a burden which in the nature of things she must take up. And suddenly she comprehended that the mere obstinate Britain in him, even apart from greater things, had an immense attraction for her. As she liked now the red-brown colour of his eyes and saw beauty in his rugged features, so she liked his British stubbornness and the pride which would not be beaten. It is the unconquerable thing which leads them in their battles and makes them bear any horror rather than give in. They have taken half the world with it, they're like bulldogs and lions, she thought, and—and I'm glorying in it. Do you know, said Mount Dunstan, that sometimes you suddenly fling out the most magnificent flag of colour, as if some splendid flame of thought had set up ablaze? I hope it is not a habit, she answered, when one has a splendid flare of thought one should be modest about it. What was the worth recording in the whole hour they spent together? Outwardly there'd only been a chance meeting in a mere passing by, but each left something with the other, and each learned something, and the 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 thought that perhaps we might scarcely meet again this year. I shall become absorbed in hops, and you will no doubt go away. You will make visits or go 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-trees load themselves with coral. To herself she was saying, he means to keep away. I shall not see him. As she rode off, Mount Dunstan stood for a few moments, not moving from his place. At a short distance from the farmhouse gate a side lane opened upon the highway, and as she candid in its direction a horseman turned in from it, a man who was young and well-dressed and who sat well a spirited animal. He came out upon the road, almost face to face with Miss Vanderpool, and from where he stood Mount Dunstan could see his delighted smile as he lifted his hat in salute. It was Lord Westholt, and what more natural than that after an exchange of greetings the two should ride together on their way. For nearly three miles their homeward road would be the same. But in a breath's space Mount Dunstan realized a certain truth, a simple elemental thing. All the exaltation of the morning swooped and fell as a bird seems to swoop and fall through space. It was all over and done with, and he understood it. His normal awakening in the morning, the physical and mental elation of the first clear hours, the spring 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 formed itself into a reality, fantastic and unreasoning as it had been. Some insistent in a consciousness had seized upon and believed it in spite of him, and set all his waking being in tune to it. That was the explanation of his undue spirits and hope. If Penzant had spoken a truth 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 on the roadside everywhere all over the world. Poetically figurative as the thing sounded it was prosaic fact. So still hearing the distant sounds of the hooves beating in cheerful diminuendo on the roadway he turned and went back to talk to Balta. End of Chapter 36 Chapter 37 of the shuttle. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The shuttle by Francis Hodgson Burnett. Chapter 37. Closed Corridors To spend one's days per force in an enormous house alone is a thing likely to play unholy tricks with a man's mind and lead it to gloomy workings. To know the existence of a hundred or so of closed doors shut on the darkness of unoccupied rooms, to be conscious of flights of unmounted stairs, of stretches of untrodden corridors, of unending walls, from which the pictured eyes of long dead men and women stare, as if seeing things which human eyes behold not, is an eerie and unwholesome thing. Mount Dunstan slept in a large four-post bed in a chamber in which he might have died or been murdered a score of times without being able to communicate with the remote servants' quarters below 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 two flickering candles, the silence of the dead in tombs was about him. But it was only a more profound and insistent thing than the silence of the day, because it was the silence of the night, which is a presence. He used to tell himself, with secret smiles at the fact that at certain times the fantasy was half believable, that there were things which walked about softly at night, things which did not want to be dead. He himself had picked them out from among the pictures in the gallery, pretty light, petulant women, adventurous-eyed, full-blooded eager men. This theory was that they hated their stone coffins and fought their way back through the gray mists to try and talk and make love and be seen of warm things which were alive. But it was not to be done, because they had no bodies and no voices, and when they beat upon closed doors they would not open. Still they came back, came back, and sometimes there was a rustle and a sweep through the air in a passage 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 had said 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 come back, I should come back, if God! A man could not be dragged away like this, and to sit alone and think of it was an awful and a lonely thing, a lonely thing. But loneliness was nothing new, only that in these months his had strangely intensified itself. This, though he was not aware of it, was because the soul and body which were the completing parts of him were within reach and without it. When he went down to breakfast he sat singly at his table round which twenty people might have laughed and talked. Between the dining-room and the library he spent his days when he was not out of doors. Since he could not afford servants the many other rooms must be kept closed. It was a ghastly and melancholy thing to make as he must sometimes a sort of precautionary visit to the state apartments. He was the last Mount Dunstan and he would never see them opened again for use, but so long as he lived under the roof he might buy pre-vision check in a measure the two rapid encroachments of decay. To have a leak stopped here a nail-driven or a support put there seemed decent things to do. Whom am I doing it for, he said to Mr. Penzance, I am doing it for myself because I cannot help it. The place seems to me like some gorgeous old warrior come to the end of his days. It has stood the war of things for century after century, the war of things. It is going now I am all that is left to it. It is all I have, so I patch it up when I can afford it with a crutch or a spent and a bandage. Later in the afternoon of the day on which Miss Vanderpool rode away from Westways with Lord Westholt a stealthy and darkly purple cloud rose lifting its ominous bulk against the chrysoprase and pink horizon. It was the kind of cloud which speaks if but one thing to those who watch clouds or even casually consider them. So Lady Ansta this felt some surprise when she saw Sir Nigel Mount his horse before the stone steps and 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 wonder why 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 some nicety. He was not exactly on such terms with Mount Dunstan as would make a casual call seem an entirely natural thing and he wished to drop in upon him for a casual call and in an unpremeditated manner. He meant to reach the mount about the time the storm broke, under which circumstance nothing could bear more likely an air of being unpremeditated than to take refuge in a chance passing. Mount Dunstan was in the library. He had sat smoking his pipe while he watched the purple cloud roll up and spread itself, blotting out the chrysoprase and pink and blue, and when the branches of the trees began to toss about he had looked on with pleasure as the rush of big rain drops came down and pelted things. It was a fine storm, and there were some imposing clups of thunder and jagged flashes of lightning. As one splendid rattle shook the air he was surprised to hear a summons at the great hall-door, who on earth could be turning up at this time. His man Reeve announced the arrival a few moments later, and it was Sennigel and Struthers. He had, he explained, been riding through the village when the deluge descended, and it had occurred to him to turn in at the park gates and ask a temporary shelter. Mount Dunstan received him with sufficient courtesy. His appearance was not a thing to rejoice over, but it could be endured. Whiskey and soda and a smoke would serve to pass the hour if the storm lasted so long. Conversation was not the easiest thing in the world under the circumstances, but Sennigel led the way steadily after he had taken his seat and accepted the hospitality's offered. What a place it was, this! He had been struck for the hundredth time with the impressiveness of the mass of it, the sweep of the park and the splendid grouping of the timber as he had ridden up the avenue. There was no other place like it in the county. Was there another like it in England? Not in its case, I hope, Mount Dunstan said. There are a few seconds of silence. The rain poured down in splashing sheets and were swept in ruttling gusts against the window-panes. What the place needs is an heiress, and Struthers observed in the tone of a practical man. I believe I have heard that your views of things are 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 as to nationality. Nigel Anstruthers' manner was not a bad one. He chose that tone of casual openness, which, while it doesn't wholly commit itself, may be regarded as suggestive of the amiable half-confidence of speeches made as man to man. My own opportunity of studying the genus American heiress within my own gates is a first-class one. I find that it knows what it wants and that its intention is to get it. A short laugh broke for him as he flicked the ash from his cigar onto the small bronze receptacle at his elbow. It is not many years since it would have been difficult for a girl to be frank enough to say, When I marry I shall ask something in exchange for what I have to give. There are not many who have as much to give, said Mount Dunstan coolly. True, with a slight shrug, you are thinking that men are glad enough to take a girl like that, even one who has not a shape like Diana as an eyes like the sea. Yes, by George, softly and narrowing his lids, she is a handsome creature. Mount Dunstan did not attempt to refute the statement, and Anstruthers laughed low again. It is an asset she knows the value of quite clearly. That is the interesting part of it. She has inherited the far-seeing commercial mind. She does not object to admitting it. She educated herself in delightful cold blood that she might be prepared for the largest prize appearing upon the horizon. She held things in view when she was a child at school and obviously attacked her French, German and Italian conjugations with a twelve-year-old eye on the future. Mount Dunstan leaning back carelessly in his chair laughed as it seemed with him. Internally he was saying that the man was a liar who might always be trusted to lie, but he knew with shame fury that the lies were doing something to his soul, rolling dark vapours over it, stinging him, dragging away props, and making him feel there had been foolish things to lean on. This can always be done with a man in love who has slight foundation for hope. For some mysterious and occult reason civilization has elected to treat the strange and great passion as if it were an unholy and indecent thing whose dominion over him proper social training prevents any man from admitting openly. In passing through its cruelest phases he must bear himself as if he were immune, and this being the custom he may be called upon to endure much without the relief of striking out with manly blows. An enemy getting his case and possessing the infernal gift whose joy is to dishearten and do hurt with courteous despitefulness may plant a poisoned arrow here and there with neatness and fine touch, while his bound victim can with decency neither start nor utter brave howls nor guard himself, but must sit still and listen hospitably supplying smoke and drink and being careful not to make an ass of himself. Therefore, Mount Dunstan pushed the cigars nearer to his visitor and waved his hand hospitably towards the whiskey and soda. There was no reason, in fact, why Anstrothers or any one indeed but Penzance should suspect that he had become somewhat mad in secret. The man's talk was marked merely by the lightly disparaging malice which was rarely to be missed from any speech of his which touched on others. Yet it might have been a thing arranged beforehand to suggest adroitly either lies or truth which would make a man see every sickeningly good reason for feeling that in this contest he did not count for a man at all. It has all been pretty obvious, said Sennigel, there is a sort of cynicism in the openness of the siege. My impression is that almost every youngster who has met her has taken a shot. Tommy Allenbees scrambling up from his knees in one of the rose gardens was a satisfying sight. His much talked-off passion for Jane Lyscombe was temporarily in abeyance. The rain swirled in a torrent against the window and casually glancing outside 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 her bow and spear. She knows she can always get what she wants. A girl like that must have an arrogance of mind. And she is not a young saint. She is one of the women born with the look in her eyes. I own I should not like to be in the place of any primeval poor brute who really went mad over 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 today as the men who lived in the land when Hengiston Horser came, or when Caesar landed a deal. He would seem as remote to her with a shrug also. I should not like to contend that his point of view would not interest her or that she would particularly discourage him. Her eyes would call him, without malice or intention, no doubt, but your early Britain chale or earl would be as well understood by her. Your New York beauty was lived in the marketplace knows principally the prices of things. He was not ill-pleased with himself. He was putting it well and getting rather even with her. If this fellow with his shut mouth had a sore spot hidden anywhere he was giving him to think, and he would find himself thinking, well, whatsoever he thought he would be obliged to continue to keep his ugly mouth shut. The great idea was to say things without saying 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 quite exhilarates one by its novelty, the spice in it. We English have not a look-in when we're dealing with Americans, and yet France calls us a nation of shopkeepers. My impression is that their women take little inventories of every house they enter, of every man they meet. I heard her once speaking to my wife about this place as if she'd lived in it. She spoke of the closed windows and the state of the gardens of broken fountains and fallen arches. She evidently deplored the deterioration of things which represented capital. She has inventoryed Dunham no doubt. That will give West Hall to chance, but she will do nothing until after her next-year season in London, that I'd swear. I look forward to next year. It'll be worth watching. She's been training my wife. A sister who has married an Englishman and has at least spent some years of her life in England has a certain established air. When she's presented one knows she'll be a sensation. After that—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 it will not sweep her off hers. She will stand quite firm in the flood and lose 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 great personages and small ones, pumps and vanities, glittering things and heavy ones. When she sees what she wants, said Anne Struthers, she will hold out her hand, knowing it will come to her. The things which drown will not disturb her. I once made the blunder of suggesting that she might need protection against the important, as if she'd been an English girl. It was an idiotic thing to do. Because, Mount Dunstan for the moment had lost his head, Anne Struthers had maddeningly paused. She answered that if it became necessary she might perhaps be able to protect herself. She was as cool and frank as a boy. No airpense say about it, merely consciousness of being able to put things in their right places. 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 of idle words. What man likes to be reminded of his right place. No man wants to be put in his right place. There is always another place which seems more desirable. She knows if we others do not. I suppose my right place is at Stornham conducting myself as the brother-in-law of a fair American should. I suppose yours is here, shut up, among your closed corridors and locked doors. There must be a lot of them in a house like this. Don't you sometimes feel it too large for you?" Always! answered Mount Dunstan. The fact that he added nothing else and met a rapid cyclance with unmoving red-brown eyes gazing out from under rugged brows perhaps irritated Anne Struthers. He had been rather enjoying himself, but he had not enjoyed himself enough. There was no denying that his plaything had not openly flinched. Plainly he was not good at flinching, and Struthers wondered how far a man might go. He tried again. She likes the place, though she has a natural disdain for its condition, that is practical American. Things which are going to pieces, because money is not spent upon them, mere money, of which all the people who count for anything have so much, are inevitably rather disdained. They are out of it. But she likes the estate. As he watched Mount Dunstan he felt sure he'd got it at last the right thing. If you were a duke with fifty thousand a year, with a distinctly nasty, amicably humorous, faint laugh, she would, by the Lord, I believe, she would take it over, and you with it. Mount Dunstan got up. In his rough walking tweeds he looked over big and heavy and perilous. For two seconds Nigel Anne Struthers would not have been surprised if he had, without warning, slapped his face, or knocked him over, or boiled him out of his chair and kicked him. He would not have liked it, but for two seconds it would have been no surprise. In fact he instinctively braced his not-too-firm muscles. But nothing of the sort occurred. During the two seconds, perhaps three, Mount Dunstan stood still and looked down at him. The brief space at an end he walked over to the hearth and stood with his back to the big fireplace. You don't like her, he said, and his manner was that of a man dealing with a matter of fact. Why do you talk about her? He had got away again, quite away. An ugly flush shot over Anne Struthers' face. There was one more thing to say, whether it was idiotic to say it or not. Things can always be denied afterwards, should denial appear necessary, and for the moment his special devil possessed him. I do not like her, and his mouth twisted. Do I not? I am not an old woman. I am a man like others. I chanced to like her too much. There was a short silence. Mount Dunstan broke it. Then, he remarked, you had better emigrate to some country with the climate which suits you. I should say that England, for the present, does not. I shall stay where I am, answered Anne Struthers, with a slight hoarseness of voice, which made it necessary for him to clear his throat. I shall stay where she is. I will have that satisfaction at least. She does not mind. I am only a rackety middle-aged brother-in-law, and she can take care of herself. As I told you, she has the spirit of the Huntress. Look here, said Mount Dunstan, quite without haste and with an iron civility. I am going to take the liberty of suggesting something. If this 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 the query. Mount Dunstan thought of you seconds. I confess, he said slowly, and he planted his fine blow between the eyes well and with directness. I confess that it would not have occurred to me to ask you to do anything or refrain from doing it for her sake. Thank you, perhaps you are right. One learns that one must protect oneself. I shall not talk, neither will you, I know that. I was a fool to let it out. The storm is over. I must ride home. He rose from his seat and stood smiling. It would smash up things nicely if the new beauty's appearance in the great world were preceded by chatter of the unseemly affection of some adorer of ill repute. Unfairly enough it is always 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, answered St. Igel. She does not like the newspapers. They are too ready to disparage the multimillionaire and cackle about members of his family. The unhidden hatred which still professed to hide itself in the depths of their pupils as they regarded each other, had its birth in a passion as elemental as the quakings of the earth or the rage of two lions in a desert lashing their flanks in the blazing sun. It was well that at this moment they should part ways. St. Igel'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 to have 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 hooves splashing in the rain-pools left in the avenue after the storm. He was not so sure, after all, that he had made a mistake, and for the moment he was not in the mood to care whether he had made one or not. His agreeable smile showed itself as he thought of the obstinate, proud brute he had left behind, sitting alone among his shut doors and closed corridors. They had not shaken hands, either at meeting or parting. Queer thing it was, the kind of enmity a man could feel for another when he was upset by a woman. It was amusing enough that it should be she who was upsetting him after all these years, impudent little Betty with the ferocious manner. CHAPTER XXXVIII On a late summer evening in New York, the atmosphere surrounding a certain corner table at Chandy's cheap restaurant in 14th Street was stirred by a sense of excitement. The corner table in question was the favourite meeting-place of a group of young men of the G. Selden type, who usually took possession of it at dinnertime, having decided that Chandy's supplied more decent food for fifty cents or even for twenty-five and was to be found at other places of its order. Chandy's was about all right, they said to each other, and patronised it accordingly, three or four of them generally dining together with a friendly and adroit manipulation of portions and half-portions which enabled them to add variety to their bill of fare. The street outside was lighted, the tide of passes by was less full and more leisurely in its movements than it was during the seething working hours of daylight, but the electric car swung past each other with whiz and clang of bell almost unceasingly, their sound being swelled at short intervals by the roar and rumbling rattle of the trains dashing by on the elevated railroad. This, however, to the frequenters of Chandy's was the usual accompaniment of every day New York life, and was regarded as a rather cheerful sort of thing. This evening the four claimants of the favourite corner table had met together earlier than usual. Jim Belter, who hammered a typewriter at Schwab's Brewery, Tom Weatherby, who was in a downtown office, Bert Johnson, who was out for the Delcoff, and Nick Baumgarten, who having for some time beaten certain streets as assistants salesman for the same illustrator. The illustrious machine had been recently elevated to a territory of his own and was therefore in high spirits. Say, he said, let's give him a fine dinner. We can make it between us. Beefsteak and mushrooms and potatoes hashed brown. He likes them. Good ol' G.S., I shall be right glad to see him. Hope foreign traveller's not 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 Jim Belter. Tom Weatherby was looking over the letter referred to. It had been written to the fore conjointly toward the termination of Seldon's visit to Mr. Penzance. The young man was not an ardent or fluent correspondent, but Tom Weatherby was chuckling as he read the epistle. Say, boys, he said, this big thing is keeping back to tell us when he sees us is all right. But what takes me is old George paying a visit to a parson. He ain't no young man's Christian association. But Johnson leaned forward and looked at the address on the letter paper. Mount Dunstan vicarage, he read aloud. That looks pretty swell, doesn't it? With a laugh. Say, fellas, you know Jepsen at the office, that chap that prides himself on reading such a lot? He said it reminded him of the names of places in English novels. That Johnny's the biggest snob you ever set your tooth into. When I told him about the Lord Fellow that owns the castle, and that George seems to have seen him, he nearly fell over himself. Never had any use for George before, but just you watch him make up to him when he sees him next. People were dropping in and taking seats at the tables. They were all of one class. Young men who lived in hall bedrooms, young women who worked in 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 in some theatre afterwards. In the latter case the girls wore their best hats, had bright eyes and cheeks slightly flushed by their sense of festivity. Two or three were very pretty in their thin summer dresses and flowered or feathered headgear, tilted at picturesque angles over their thick hair. When each one entered, the eyes of the young men at the corner table followed her with curiosity and interest, but the glances at her escort were always of a disparaging nature. There is a beaut, said Nick Baumgarten. Get under that pink stuff on her hat, will you? She's done it because it's just the colour of her cheeks. They all looked, and the girl was aware of it, and began to laugh and talk coquettishly to the young man who was her companion. I wonder where she got Clarence, said Jim Belter in sarcastic allusion to her escort. The things those lookers have fastened onto them gets me. If it was one of us now, said Bert Johnson, upon which they broke into simultaneous good-natured laughter. It's queer, isn't it, young Baumgarten put in, how a fellow always feels sore when he sees another fellow with a peach like that. It's just straight human nature, I guess. The door swung open to admit a newcomer, at the sight of whom Jim Belter exclaimed joyously, Good old Georgie, here he is, fellas, get on to his glad rags. Glad rags, is supposed to buoyantly describe such attire as, by its freshness or elegance of style, is rendered a suitable adornment for festive occasions or loftier leisure moments. Glad rags may mean evening dress when a young gentleman's wardrobe can aspire to splendour so marked, but it also applies to one's best and latest purchased garb, in contra-distinction to the less ornamental habiliments worn every day and designated as office clothes. G. Seldon's economy has not enabled him to give himself into the hands of a Bond Street tailor. But a careful study of cut and material, as spread before the eye in elegant coloured illustrations in the windows of respectable shops in less ambitious quarters, had resulted in the purchase of a well-made suit of smart English cut. He had a nice young figure, and looked extremely neat and tremendously new and clean, so much so indeed that several persons glanced at him a little admiringly, as 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 you leave the royal family? Glad to get back?" They all greeted him at once, shaking hands and slapping him on the back as they hustled him gleefully back to the corner-table and made him sit down. Say, gar-song! said Nick Bormgarten to their favourite waiter, who came at once in answer to his summons. Let's have a porter-house steak half the size of this table, and with plenty of mushrooms and potatoes hashed brown. Here is Mr. Seldon just returned from visiting at Windsor Castle, and if we don't treat him well he'll look down on us. Gee, Seldon grinned! Have you been getting on, Sam? he said, nodding cheerfully to the man. They were old and tried friends. Sam knew all about the days when a fellow could not come into Shandy's at all or must satisfy his strong young hunger with a bowl of soup or coffee and a 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 the pool tip. Been getting along as well as can be expected. Sam grinned back. Hope you had a fine time, Mr. Seldon. Fine! I should smile. Fine wasn't in it, answered Seldon. But I'm looking forward to a Shandy porter-house steak all the same. Did they give you a better one in the Strand, asked Bonegarden, in what he believed to be a correct cockney accent? You bet they didn't, said Seldon. Shandy's takes a lot of beating. That last is English. The people at the other tables cast involuntary glances at them. Their eager hearty young pleasure in the festivity of the occasion was a healthy thing to see. As they sat around the corner-table they produced the effect of gathering close around D. Seldon. They concentrated their combined attention upon him, Belter and Johnson leaning forward on their folded arms to watch him as he talked. Billy Page came back in August looking pretty bum, Nick Baumgarden began. He'd been painting gay paris brick-red and he'd spend more money than he'd meant to, and that wasn't half-and-half. Landed dead broke. He said it had a great time, but he'd come home with rather a dark 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 in whetherby, but I told him I guess that was where he was way off. I believe you'd had the best time of the two of you. Boys, said Seldon, I had the time of my life. He said it almost solemnly and laid his hand on the table. It was like one of those urine spurt tells us. Half the time I didn't believe it, and half the time I was ashamed of myself to think it was all happening to me and none of you fellas were in it. Oh, well, said Jim Belter, luck chases some fellas anyhow. Look at Nick there. Well, Seldon summed the whole thing up. I just fell into it where it was so deep that I had to strike out all I knew how to keep from drowning. Tell us the whole thing, Nick Bungarden put in, from beginning to end, your letter didn't give anything away. A letter would have spoiled it. I can't write letters anyhow. I wanted to wait until I got right here with you fellas round where I could answer questions. Well, stop with the deliberation befitting such an opening. I'd sold machines enough to pay my expenses and leave some over. You have? Gee whiz, say, give us your prescription. Glad I know you, Georgie. And who do you suppose bought the first three? At this point it was he who leaned forward upon the table, his climax being a thing to concentrate upon. Reuben S. Vanderpool'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 inner flap laying it before them on the tablecloth. His knowledge that they would not have believed him if he had not brought his proof was founded on everyday facts. They would not have doubted his veracity but the possibility of such delirious good fortune. What they would have believed would have been that he was playing a hilarious joke on them. Jokes of this kind, but not of this proportion, were common entertainments. Their first impulse had been towards an outburst of laughter, but even before he produced his letter a certain truthful seriousness in his look had startled them. When he laid the envelope down each man caught his breath. It could not be denied that Jim Belter turned pale with emotion. Jim had never been one of the lucky ones. She let me read it, said G. Selden, taking the letter from its envelope with great care. And I said to her, Miss Vanderpool, would you 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 knew I'd want to be told, and she just laughed and said, I don't mind at all. I like 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 I have written to you. Please be good to him. Affectionately, Betty. Each young man read it in turn. None of them said anything just at first. A kind of awe had descended upon them. Not in the least awe of Vanderpool, who, with other multimillionaires, were served up each week with cheerful, neighbourly comment, or equally neighbourly disrespect, in huge Sunday papers read throughout the land. But awe of the unearthly luck which had fallen without warning to good old G.S., who lived like the rest of them in a hall by Drumont N. Per, earned by tramping the streets for the Delcoff. That girl, said G. Selden gravely, that girl is a winner from Winnersville. I take off my hat to her. If it's the scheme that some people's got to have millions and others have got to sell Delcoff's, that girl's one of those that's entitled to the millions. It's all right, she should have them. 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 kick coming from any of us. Of course there's something about you that royal families cry for, and they won't be happy until they get. All of us boys know that. But what we want to find out is how you worked it so that they saw the kind of pearl-studded hairpin you were. Worked it, Selden answered. I didn't work it. I've got a good bit of nerve, but I never should have had enough to invent what happened. Just happened. I broke my leg, falling off my bike, and fell right into a whole bunch of them—urls and countesses and viscounts and van der Poels—and it was Miss van der Poel who saw me first, lying on the ground. And I was in Storrum Court, where Lady Anstra lives, and she used to be Miss Rosalie van der Poel. Boys, said Burt Johnson, with friendly disgust, he's been up to his neck in them. Cheer up, the worst is yet to come, chaff Tom Weatherby. Never had such a dinner taken place at the corner table, or in fact at any other table at Chandy's. Sam brought beef steaks, which were princely, mushrooms, and hashed brown potatoes in portions whose generosity reached the heart. Sam was on good terms with Chandy's carver, and had worked upon his nobler feelings. Steins of Larger beer were ventured upon. There was hearty satisfying of fine hungers. Two of the party had eaten nothing but one quick lunch throughout the day, one of them because he was short of time, the other for economy's sake because he was short of money. The meal was a splendid thing. The telling of the story could not be wholly checked by the eating of food. It advanced between mouthfuls, questions being asked, and details given in answers. Chandy's became more crowded as the hour advanced. People all over the room cast interested looks at the party at the corner table, enjoying itself so hugely. Groups sitting at the tables nearest to it found themselves excited by the things they heard. That young fella in the new suit has just come back from Europe, said a 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 heard him say, Lord Mount Dunstan and Lady Anstrowthers in Miss Vanderpool were at the garden party. Who do you suppose he is? Well, he's a nice young fella, and he has English clothes on, but he doesn't look like one of the four hundred. Will you have pie or vanilla ice cream, Bessie? Bessie, who chose vanilla ice cream, lost all knowledge of its flavour in her absorption in the conversation at the next table, which he could not have avoided hearing, even if she had wished. She bent over the bed and laughed, just like any other nice girl, and she said, You are at Stornham Court, which belongs to Sir Nigel Anstrowthers. Lady Anstrowthers is my sister. I am Miss Vanderpool. And, boys, she used to come and talk to me every day. George, said Nick Baumgarten, you take about seventy-five bottles of Warner's safe cure and rub yourself all over with St. Jacob's oil. Luck like that ain't healthy. Mr. Vanderpool, sitting in his study, wore the interestedly grave look of a man thinking of absorbing things. He'd just given orders that a young man who would call in the course of the evening should be brought to him at once, and he was, incidentally, considering this young man, as he reflected upon matters recalled to his mind by his impending arrival. They were matters he had thought of with gradually increasing seriousness for some months, and they had at first been the result of the letters from Stornham, which each steamer day brought. They had been of immense interest to him, these letters. He would have found them absorbing as a study, even if he had not deeply loved Betty. He read in them things she did not state in words, and they set him thinking. He was not suspected by men like himself of concealing an imagination beneath the trained steadiness of his exterior, but he possessed more than the world knew, and it singularly combined itself with powers of logical deduction. If he had been with his daughter he would have seen day by day where her thoughts were leading her and in what direction she was developing, but at a distance of three thousand miles he found himself asking questions and endeavouring to reach conclusions. His affection for Betty was the central emotion of his existence. He had never told himself that he had outgrown the kind and pretty creature he had married in his early youth, and certainly his tender care for her and pleasure in her simple goodness had never wavered, but Betty had given him a companionship which had countered greatly in the sum of his happiness. Because imagination was not suspected in him no one knew what she stood for in his life. He had no son. He stood at the head of a great house, so to speak, the American parallel of what a great house is in non-Republican countries. The power of it counted for great things, not in America alone, but throughout the world. As international intimacies increased the influence of such houses might end in aiding in the making of history. Enormous, constantly increasing wealth and huge financial schemes could not confine their influence, but must reach far. The man whose hand held the lever controlling them was doing well when he thought of them gravely. Such a man had to do with more than his own mere life and living. This man had confronted many problems as the years had passed. He had seen men like himself die, leaving behind them the force they had controlled, and he had seen this force, controlled no longer, let loose upon the world, sometimes a power of evil, sometimes scattering itself aimlessly into nothingness and folly which wrought harm. He was not an ambitious man, but perhaps because he was not only a man of thought, but a vanderpool of the blood of the First Ruben, these were things he did not contemplate without restlessness. When Rosie had gone away and seemed lost to them, he had been glad when he had seen Betty growing day by day into a strong thing. Feminine though she was, she sometimes suggested to him the son who might have been his, but was not. As the closeness of their companionship increased with her years, his admiration for her grew with his love. Power left in her hands must work for the advancement of things and would not be idly disseminated if no antagonistic influence wrought against her. He had found himself reflecting that after all was said the marriage of such a 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 man who must inevitably strongly colour her whole being and vitally mark our life would in a sense lay his hand upon the lever also. If he brought sorrow and disorder with him the lever would not move steadily. Fortune such as his grow rapidly and he was a richer man by millions than he had been when Rosalie had married Nigel and Struthers. The memory of that marriage had been a painful thing to him even before he had known the whole truth of its results. The man had been a common adventurer and scoundrel despite the facts of good birth and the air of decent breeding. If a man who was as much as scoundrel but cleverer it would be necessary that he should be much cleverer, made the best of himself to Betty, it was folly to think one could guess what a woman or a man either for that matter would love. He knew Betty, but no man knows the thing which comes as it were in the dark and claimed its own whether for good or evil. He had lived long enough to see beautiful strong-spirited creatures do strange things, follow strange gods, swept away into seas of pain by strange waves. Even Betty, he had said to himself now and then, even my Betty, good God, who knows! Because of this he had read each letter with keen eyes. They were long letters full of detail and colour because she knew he enjoyed them. She had a delightful touch. He sometimes felt as if they walked the English lanes together. His intimacy with her neighbours and her neighbourhood was one of his relaxations. He found himself thinking of old Dobie and Mrs Weldon as a sort of soporific measure when he lay awake at night. She had sent photographs of Stornham, of Dunham Castle and of Dole, and had even found an old engraving of Lady Allenby and her youth. Her evident liking for the Dunham's had pleased him. They were people whose dignity and admirableness were part of general knowledge. Lord Westholt was plainly a young man of many attractions, if the two were drawn to each other, and what more natural, all would be well. He wondered if it would be Westholt. But his love quickened a sagacity which needed no stimulus. He said to himself in time that, though she liked and admired Westholt, she went no further. That others paid court to her he could guess without being told. He had seen the effect she had produced when she had been at home, and also an unexpected letter to his wife from Millie Bowen had revealed many things. Millie, having noted Mrs. Vanderpool's eager anxiety to hear direct news of Lady Anstruthers, was not the person to let fall from her hand a useful thread of connection. She had written quite at length, managing adroitly to convey all that she had seen and all that she had heard. She had been making a visit within driving distance of Stornham, and it had the pleasure of meeting both Lady Anstruthers and Miss Vanderpool at various parties. She was so sure that Mrs. Vanderpool would like to hear how well Lady Anstruthers was looking that she ventured to write. Betty's effect upon the county was made quite clear, as also was the interested expectation of her appearance in town next season. Mr. Vanderpool perhaps gathered more from the letter than his wife did. In her mind relieved happiness and consternation were mingled. Do you think, Reuben, that Betty will marry that Lord Westhold, she rather faltered? He seems very nice, but I would rather she married an American. I should feel as if I had no girls at all if they both lived in England. Lady Bowen gives him a good character, her husband said, smiling. But if anything untoward happens, Annie, you shall have a house of your own, half way between Dunham Castle and Stornham Court. When he had begun to decide that Lord Westhold did not seem to be the man fate was veering towards, he not unnaturally cast a mental eye over such other persons as the letters mentioned. At exactly what period his thought first dwelt a shade anxiously on Mount Dunstan he couldn't have told, but he at length became conscious that it so dwelt. He had begun by 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 letter should speak of him. What she had written had recalled to him certain rumours of the disgraceful old scandal. Yes, they had been a bad lot. He arranged to put a casual sounding question also to certain persons who knew English society well. What he gathered was not encouraging. The present Lord Mount Dunstan was considered rather a surly brute and lived a mysterious 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 rather shady in his going to America or Australia a few years ago. Good-looking! Well, so few people had seen him. The lady who was speaking had heard that he was one of those big rather lumpy men and had an ill-tempered expression. She always gave a wide berth to a man who looked nasty-tempered. One or two other persons who had spoken of him had conveyed to Mr. Vanderpool about the same amount of vaguely unpromising information. The episode of G. Selden had been interesting enough with its suggestions of picturesque contrasts and combinations. Betty's stature had made the junior salesman attracting. It was a good type this of a young fellow who, battling with the discouragements of a hard life, still did not lose his amazing good cheer and patience and found healthy sleep and honest waking even in the hall bedroom. He had consented to Betty's request that he would see him, partly because he was inclined to like what he had heard and partly for a reason which Betty did not suspect. By extraordinary chance G. Selden had seen Mount Dunstan and his surroundings at close range. Mr. Vanderpool had liked what he had gathered of Mount Dunstan's attitude towards a personality so singularly exotic to himself. Crude, uneducated and slangy, the junior salesman was not in any degree a fool. To an American father with a daughter like Betty, the summing up of a normal nice-natured common-young denizen of the United States, fresh from contact with the effete, might be subtly instructive and well worth hearing if it was unconsciously expressed. Mr. Vanderpool thought he knew how, after he had overcome his visitors' first awkwardness, if he chanced to be self-conscious, he could lead him to talk. What he hoped to do was to make him forget himself and begin to talk to him as he had talked to Betty, to ingeniously reveal impressions and points of view. Young men of his clean rudimentary type were very definite about the things they liked and disliked and could be trusted to reveal admiration or lack of it without absolute intention or actual statement. Being elemental and undismayed, they saw things cleared of the mists of social prejudice and modification. Yes, he felt he should be glad to hear of Lord Mount Dunstan and the Mount Dunstan estate from G. Selden in a happy moment of unawareness. Why was it that it happened to be Mount Dunstan he was desirous to hear of? For 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 spoken of Mount Dunstan in his home, they had also described Lord Westholt and Dunham Castle. Of these two men she had certainly spoken more fully than of others. Of Mount Dunstan she had more to relate through the incident of G. Selden. He smiled as he realized the importance of the figure of G. Selden. It was Selden and his broken leg the two men had ridden over from Mount Dunstan to visit, but for Selden Betty might not have met Mount Dunstan again. He was reason enough for all she had said, and yet, perhaps between Betty and himself there existed the thing which impresses and communicates without words. Perhaps because their affection was unusual they realized each other's emotions. The half-defined anxiety he felt now was not a new thing, but he confessed to himself that it had been spurred a little by the letter the last steamer had brought him. It was not Lord Westholt it definitely appeared. He had asked her to be his wife, and she had declined his proposal. 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 I feel a little depressed by my certainty that I do not love him. If she had loved him the whole matter would have been simplified. If the other man had drawn her the thing would not be simple. Her father foresaw all the complications, and he did not want complications for Betty. Yet emotions were perverse and irresistible things, and the stronger the creature swayed by them the more enormous their power. But as he sat in his easy chair and thought over it all, the one feeling predominant in his mind was that nothing mattered but Betty, nothing really mattered but Betty. In the meantime G. Selden was walking up Fifth Avenue at once touched and exhilarated by the stir about him and his sense of homecoming. It was pretty good to be in little old New York again. The hurried pace of the life about him stimulated his young blood. There were no street-cars in Fifth Avenue, but there were carriages, wagons, carts, motors, all panting a hurried and fretting and struggling when the crowded state of the thoroughfare held them back. The beautifully dressed women in the carriages wore no light air of being at leisure. It was evident that they were going to keep engagements, to do things, to achieve objects. Something doing, something doing, was his cheerful self-congratulatory thought. He had spent his life in the midst of it, he liked it, and it welcomed him back. The appointment he was on his way to keep thrilled him into an uplifted mood. Once or twice a half-nervous chuckle broke from him as he tried to realize that he had been given the chance which a year ago had seemed so impossible that by its mere incredibleness had made it a natural subject for jokes. He was going to call on Ruben S. Vanderpool, and he was going because Ruben S. had made an appointment with him. He wore his London suit of clothes, and he felt that he looked pretty decent. He could only do his best in the matter of bearing. He always thought that so long as a fellow didn't get chesty and kept his head from swelling he was all right. Of course he'd never been in one of these swell Fifth Avenue houses, and he felt a bit nervous. But Miss Vanderpool would have told her father what sort of a fellow he was, and her father was likely to be something like herself. The house which had been built since Lady Anstra this marriage was well uptown, and was big and imposing. When a man served and opened the front door the square hall looked very splendid to Seldon. It was full of light and of rich furniture, which was like the stuff he had seen in one or two special shop windows in Fifth Avenue, places where they sold magnificent gilded or carven coffers and vases, pieces of tapestry and marvellous embroideries, and equities from foreign palaces. Though it was quite different 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 no mistake. He was expected. The man led him across the hall to Miss Vanderpool's room. After he had announced his name he closed the door quietly and went away. Miss Vanderpool rose from an armchair to come forward to meet his visitor. He was tall and straight. Betty had inherited her slender height from him. His well-balanced face suggested the relationship between them. He had a steady mouth and eyes which looked as if they saw much and far. I'm glad to see you, Mr. Seldon, he said, shaking hands with him. You have seen my daughters and can tell me how they are. Miss Vanderpool has written to me of you several times. He asked him to sit down, and as he took his chair Seldon felt that he had been right in telling himself that Rubinez Vanderpool would be somehow like his girl. She was a girl and he was an elderly man of business, but they were like each other. There was the same kind of straight way of doing things and the same straight-seeing look in both of them. It was queer how natural things seemed when they rarely happened to a fellow. Here he was sitting in a big leather chair and opposite to him in its fellow sat Rubinez Vanderpool looking at him with friendly eyes. And it seemed all right, too, not as if he'd managed to butt in and would find himself politely fired out directly. He might have been one of the four hundred making a call. Rubinez knew how to make a man feel easy and no mistake. This, he Seldon observed at once, though he had, in fact, no knowledge of the practical tact which dealt with him. He found himself answering questions about Lady Anstruthers and her sister, which led to the opening up of other subjects. He did not realise that he began to express ingenious opinions and describe things. His listener's interest led him on. A question here, a rather pleased laugh there, were encouraging. He'd enjoyed himself so much during his stay in England and had felt his experiences so greatly to be rejoiced over that they were easy to talk of at any time. In fact it was even a trifle difficult not to talk of them. But stimulated by the look which rested on him, by the deft word and ready smile, words flowed readily and without the restraint of self-consciousness. When you think that it all sought a began with a robin, it's queer enough, he said. But for that robin I shouldn't be here, sir, with a boyish laugh. And he was an English robin, a little fellow, not half the size of the kind that hops about Central Park. Let me hear about that, said Mr. Vanderpool. It was a good story, and he told it well, though in his own junior salesman phrasing. He began with his bicycle ride into the green country, his spin over the fine roads, his rest under the hedge during the shower, and then the song of the robin perched among the fresh wet leafage, his feathers puffed out, his red young satin gloss breast pulsating and swelling. His words were colloquial enough, but they called up the picture. Everything sought a glittering with the sunshine on the wet drops and things smelling good like they do after rain, leaves and grass and good earth. I tell you it made a fellow feel as if the whole world was his brother. And when Mr. Rob blid on that twig and swelled his red breast out as if he knew the whole thing was his, and began to let them notes out, calling for his lady friend to come and go halves with him, I just had to laugh and speak to him. And that was when Lord Mount Dunstown heard me and jumped over the hedge. He'd been listening too. The expression Rubinesse-Vanderpool War made it an agreeable thing to talk, to go on. He evidently cared to hear. So Seldon did his best and enjoyed himself in doing it. His style made for realism and brought things clearly before one. The big-built man in the rough and shabby shooting clothes, his way when he dropped onto the grass to sit beside the stranger and talk, certain meanings in his words which conveyed to Vanderpool what had not been conveyed to G. Seldon. Yes, the man carried a heaviness about with him and hated the burden. Seldon quite unconsciously brought him out strongly. I don't know whether I'm the kind of fellow who's always making breaks, he said, with his voice laugh again, but if I am I never made a worse one than when I asked him straight if he was out of a job and on the tramp. It showed what a nice fellow he was that he didn't get hot about it, some fellows would. He only laughed, sort of short, and said his job had been more than he could handle, and he was afraid he was down and out. Mr. Vanderpool was conscious that so far he was somewhat attracted by this central figure. G. Seldon was also proving satisfactory in the matter 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 told me who he was. I was a bit hard in the collar myself. I'd felt sorry for him because I thought he was a chap like myself and he was up against it. I know what that is, and I'd wanted to jolly him along a bit. When he said his name was Mount Dunstan and the place belonged to him, I guess he thought he was making a joke. So I got on my wheel and started off, and then he got mad for keeps. He said he wasn't such a damn fool as he looked, and what he'd said was true, and I could go and be hanged. Ruben S. Vanderpool laughed. He liked that. It sounded like decent British hot temper, which he had often found accompanied honest British decencies. He liked other things as the story proceeded. The picture of the huge house with the shut windows made him slightly restless. The concealed imagination, combined with financiers' resentment of dormant interest, disturbed him. That which had attracted Seldon in the reverent Louis Pencance strongly attracted himself. Also a man was a good deal to be judged by his friends. The man who lived alone in the midst of stately desolateness and held as his chief intimate a high-bred and gentle-minded scholar of ripe years, gave in doing this certain evidence which did not tell against him. The whole situation meant something a splendid, vivid-minded young creature might be moved by, might be allured by, even despite herself. There was something fantastic in the odd linking of incidents, Seldon's chance view of Betty as she rode by, his next day sudden resolve to turn back and go to Stornham. His accident and all that followed seemed, if one were fanciful, part of a scheme pre-arranged. When I came to myself, G. Seldon said, I felt like that fella in the Shakespeare play that they'd dress up and put to bed in the palace when he's drunk. I thought I'd gone off my head. And then Miss Vanderpool came. He paused a moment and looked down on the carpet, thinking, Gee whiz, it was queer, he said. Betty Vanderpool's father could almost hear her voice as the rest was told. He knew how her laugh had sounded and what her presence must have been to the young fellow, his delightful human, always satisfying Betty. Through this odd trick of fortune, Mount Dunstan had begun to see her. Since, through the unfair endowment of nature, that it was not wholly fair he had often told himself, she was all the things that desire could yearn for. There were many chances that when a man saw her he must long to see her again, and there were the same chances that such a one as Mount Dunstan might long also, and if fate was against him long with a bitter strength. Selden was not aware that he had spoken more fully of Mount Dunstan and his place than of other things. That this had been the case had been because Miss Vanderpool had intended it should be so. He had subtly drawn out and encouraged a detailed account of the time spent at Mount Dunstan Vicarage. It was easily encouraged. Selden's affectionate admiration for the vicar led him on to enthusiasm. The quiet house and garden, the old books, the afternoon tea under the Copper Beach, and the long talks of old things which had been so new to the young New Yorker had plainly made a mark upon his life not likely to be erased even by the rush of after-years. The way he knew history was what got me, he said, and the way you got interested in it when he talked. It wasn't just history like you learn at school and forget never see the use of anyhow. It was things about men just like yourself hustling for a living in their way just as we're hustling in broadway. Most of it was fighting, and the amounts 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 old pony-shaes we trundled about in, and he'd draw up and we'd sit and talk. There were men here on this very spot, he'd say, looking out for a tack, eating, drinking, cooking their food, polishing their weapons, laughing and shouting, men seldom, fifty-five years before Christ was born, and sometimes the New Testament times seemed to was so far away that they're 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 country about there was full of queer places, and both he and Lord Dunstan knew more about them than I know about 23rd Street. You saw Lord Mount Dunstan often, Mr. Vanderpool suggested? Every day, sir, and the more I saw him the more I got to like him, he's all right. But it's hard luck to be fixed as he is that stone-cold truth. What's a man to do? The money he ought to have to keep up his place was spent before he was born. His father and his eldest brother were a bum lot, and his grandfather and great-grandfather were 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 interested in. I have thought a good deal at times of the position of the holders of larger states they cannot afford to keep up. This special instance is a case in point. Gee, Seldon felt himself in luck again. Ruben S. quite evidently found his subject worthy of undivided attention. Seldon had not heartily liked Lord Mount Dunstan and lived in the atmosphere surrounding him looking about him with sharp young New York eyes without learning a good deal. He'd seen the practical hardship of the situation and laid it bare. What Mr. Penzance says is that he's like the men that built things in the beginning, fought for them, fought Romans and Saxons and Normans, perhaps the whole lot at different times. I used to like to get Mr. Penzance to tell stories about the Mount Dunstan's. They were splendid. It must be pretty fine to look back about a thousand years and know your folks have been something. All the same it's pretty fierce to have to stand alone at the end of it, not able to help yourself because some of your relations were crazy fools. I don't wonder he feels mad. Does he, Mr. Vanderpool inquired. He's straight, said G. Seldon sympathetically. He's all right, but only money can help him and he's got none, so he has to stand and stare at things falling to pieces. And, well, I tell you, Mr. Vanderpool, he loves that place. He's crazy about it, and he's proud. I don't mean he's got the swell head, because he hasn't, but he's just proud. Now, for instance, he hasn't any use for men like himself that marry just for money. He's seen a lot of it, and it's made him sick. He's not that kind. He had been asked and had answered a good many questions before he went away, but each had dropped into the talk so incidentally that he had not recognized them as queries. He did not know that Lord Mount Dunstan stood out a clearly defined figure in Mr. Vanderpool's mind, a figure to be reflected upon and one not without its attraction. Miss Vanderpool tells me, Mr. Vanderpool said, when the interview was drawing to a close, that you are an agent for the Delcoff typewriter. G. Seldon flushed slightly. Yes, sir, he answered, but I didn't. I hear that three machines are in use on the Stornham estate and that they have proved satisfactory. It's a good machine," said G. Seldon, his flush a little deeper. Mr. Vanderpool smiled. You are a business-like young man, he said, and I have no doubt you have a catalogue in your pocket. G. Seldon was a business-like young man. He gave Mr. Vanderpool one serious look, and the catalogue was drawn forth. It wouldn't be business, sir, for me to be caught out without it, he said. I shouldn't leave it behind if I went to a funeral. A man's got to run no risks. I should like to look at it." The thing had happened. It was not a dream. Ruben S. Vanderpool, clothed and in his right mind, had, without pressure being exerted upon him, expressed his desire to look at the catalogue, to examine it, to have it explained to him at length. He listened attentively while G. Seldon did his best. He asked a question now and then, or made a comment. His manner was that of a thoroughly composed man of business, but he was remembering what Betty had told him of the ten per and a number of other things. He saw the flush come and go under the still boyish skin. He observed that G. Seldon's hand was not wholly steady, though he was making an effort not to seem excited. But he was excited. This actually meant this thing so unimportant to multimillionaires that he was having his chance, and his young fortunes were perhaps in the balance. Yes, said Ruben S., when he had finished, it seems a good up-to-date machine. It's the best on the market, said G. Seldon, 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 a territory 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 Seldon courageously. It's a good machine. I like it, said Mr. Vanderpool. I can see a good many places where it could be used. Perhaps if you make it known at your office that when you are given a good territory I shall give preference to the Delcoff over other typewriting machines it might, eh? A light broke out upon G. Seldon's countenance. A light radiant and magnificent. He caught his breath. A desire to shout, to yell, to hoop as when in the society of the boys was barely conquered in time. Mr. Vanderpool, he said, standing up. I—Mr. Vanderpool, sir, I feel as if I was having a pipe dream. I'm not, am I? No, answered Mr. Vanderpool, you are not. I like you, Mr. Seldon. My daughter liked you. I do not mean to lose sight of you. We will begin, however, with the territory and the Delcoff. I don't think there will be any difficulty about it. Ten minutes later G. Seldon was walking down Fifth Avenue, wondering if there was any chance of his being arrested by a policeman upon the charge that he was reeling instead of walking steadily. He hoped he should get back to the hall bedroom safely. Nick Baumgarten and Jem Boulter 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 Ruben S. Vanderpool's life. There had been no life-saving, but the thing had come true. But if it hadn't been for Lord Mount Dunstan, he said, thinking it over excitedly, I should never have seen Miss Vanderpool, and if it hadn't been for Miss Vanderpool I should have never got next to Ruben S. in my life. Both sides of the Atlantic Ocean got busy to do a good turn to little Willie. Holly G. In his study Mr. Vanderpool was rereading Betty's letters. He felt that he had gained a certain knowledge of Lord Mount Dunstan. End of Chapter thirty-eight. Chapter thirty-nine of The Shuttle, this Libra Fox recording is in the public domain, The Shuttle by Francis Hodgson Burnett, Chapter thirty-nine 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 reflecting itself in the narrow dykes gave a blue colour to the water. Her scent of the sea was in the air as one breathed it. Flocks of plover rose now and then, crying softly. Betty, walking with her dog, had passed a heron standing at the edge of a pool. From her first discovery of them she had been attracted by the Marshes with their English suggestion of the Roman Campania, their broad expanse of level land spread out to the sun and wind, the thousands of white sheep dotted or clustered as far as I could reach, the hues of the marsh grass and the plants growing thick at the borders of the strips of water. Its beauty was all its own and curiously aloof from the softly wooded undulating world about it. Driving or walking along the high road, the road the Romans had built to London Town long centuries ago, on either side of one were meadows, farms, scattered cottages and hop gardens, but beyond and below stretched the marshland, golden and grey, and always alluring one by its silence. I never pass it without wanting to go to it, to take solitary walks over 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 world-helded bay by mere space and stillness, they must feel something we know 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 her side as her sole companion, for having need for time and space for thought, she had found them in the silence and aloofness. Life had been a vivid and pleasurable thing to her as far as she could look back upon it. She began to realise that she must have been very happy, because she had never found herself desiring existence other than such as had come to her day by day. Except for her passionate childish regret at Rosie's marriage, she had experienced no painful feeling. In fact she had faced no hurt in her life and certainly had been confronted by no limitations. Arguing that girls in their teens usually fall in love, her father had occasionally wondered that she passed through no little episodes of sentiment. But the fact was that her interests had been larger and more numerous than the interests of girls generally are, and her affectionate intimacy with himself had left no such small vacant spaces as are frequently filled by unimportant young emotions. Because she was a logical creature and had watched life and those living it with clear and interested eyes, she had not been blind to the path which had marked itself before her during the summer's growth and waning. She had not at first perhaps known exactly when things began to change for her, when the clarity of her mind began to be disturbed. She had thought in the beginning, as people have a habit of doing, that in instance a problem, a situation had attracted her attention because it was absorbing enough to think over. Her view of the matter had been that as the same thing would have interested her father it had interested herself. But from the morning when she had been conscious of the sudden fury roused in her by Nigel Anstra, this ugly sneer at Mount Dunstan, she had better understood the thing which had come upon her. Day by day it had increased and gathered power, and she realised with a certain sense of impatience that she had not in any degree understood it when she had seen and wondered at its effect on other women. Each day had been like a wave encroaching further upon the shore she stood upon. At the outset a certain ignoble pride she knew it ignoble, filled her with rebellion. She had seen so much of this kind of situation and had heard so much of the general comment. People had learnt how to sneer because experience had taught them. If she gave them cause why should they not sneer at her as at things? She recalled what she had herself thought of such things, the folly of them, the obviousness, the almost deserved disaster. She had arrogated to herself judgment of women and men, who might, yes, who might have stood upon their strip of sand as she stood, with the waves creeping in, each one higher stronger and more engulfing than the last. There might have been those among them who also had knowledge of that sudden deadly joy at the sight of one face, at the drop of one voice. When that wave submerged one's pulsing being, what had the world to do with one? How could one hear and think of what its speech might be? Its voice clamoured 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 rolling, padding along heavily close at her side. How still and wide and golden it was, how the cry of plover and lifting trill of skylark assured one that one was wholly encircled by solitude in space which were more enclosing than any walls. She was going to the mounds to which Mr. Pen's aunts had trundled G. Selden in the pony-shays when he had given him the marvellous hour which had brought Roman camp and Roman legions to 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 marshland world. So she was presently seated with her heavy-limbed rolling to her feet. She had come here to try to put things clearly to herself, to plan with such reason as she could control. She had begun to be unhappy, she had begun, with some unfairness, to look back upon the Betty Vanderpool of the past as an unwittingly self-sufficient young woman, to find herself suddenly entangled by things, even to know a touch of desperateness. Not to take a remnant from the ducal bargain-counter, she was saying mentally. That was why her smile was a little hard. What if the remnant from the ducal bargain-counter had prejudices of his own? If he were passionately, passionately in love with me, she said, with red-staining her cheeks, he would not come. He would not come. He would not come. And because of that he is more to me, more, and more he will become every day, and the more strongly he will hold me. And there we stand. Roland lifted his fine head from his paws, and, holding it erect on a stiff, strong neck, stared at her in obvious inquiry. She put out her hand and tenderly patted him. He will have none of me, she said. He will have none of me. And she faintly smiled, but the next instant shook her head a little haughtily, and, having done it, looked down with an altered expression upon the cloth of her skirt, because she had shaken upon it from the extravagant lashes, two clear drops. It was not the result of chance that she had seen nothing of him for weeks. She had not attempted to persuade herself of that. Twice he had declined an invitation to storm him, and once he had ridden past her on the road when he might have stopped to exchange greetings or have ridden on by her side. He did not mean to seem to desire ever so likely to be counted as in the lists. Whether he was drawn by any liking 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 in this world would part forever. She would not know how long it took to break him utterly if such a man could be broken. If no magic change took place in his fortunes and what change could come, the decay about him would spread day by day. Stone walls last a long time so the house would stand while every beauty and stateliness within it fell into ruin. Gardens would become wildernesses, terraces and fountains crumble and be overgrown. Walls that were to-day leaning would fall with time. The years would pass and his youth with them. He would gradually change into an old man while he watched the things he loved with passion die slowly and hard. How strange it was that life should touch and pass on the ocean of time, and nothing should result—nothing at all! When she went on her way it would be as if a ship loaded with every aid of food and treasure had passed a boat in which a strong man tossed starving to death 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 that growing disturbance caused by yet another thing which was increasingly troubling, increasingly difficult to face. Gradually, and at first with wonderful naturalness of bearing, Nigel Anstrothers had managed to create for himself a singular place in her everyday life. It had begun with a certain personal-ness in his attitude, a personal-ness which was a thing to dislike but almost impossible openly to resent. Certainly as a self-invited guest in his house she could scarcely protest against the aim-ability of his demeanour and his exterior courtesy and attentiveness of Marin his conduct towards her. She had tried to sweep away the objectionable quality in his bearing by frankness, by indifference, by entire lack of response, but she had remained conscious of its increasing as the spider's web might increase, as the spider spun it quietly over one, throwing out threads so impulpable that one could not brush them away because they were too slight to be seen. She was aware that in the first years of his married life he had alternately resented the scarcity of the invitations sent them and rudely refused such as were received. Since he had returned to find her at Stornham he had insisted that no invitation should be declined and had escorted his wife and herself wherever they went. What could have been conventionally more proper? What more improper than that he should have persistently have remained at home? And yet there came a time when, as day three drove together at night in the closed carriage, Betty was conscious that as he sat opposite to her in the dark, when he spoke, when he touched her in arranging the robe over her, or opening or shutting the window, he subtly but persistently conveyed that the personalness of his voice, look and physical nearness, was a sort of hideous confidence between them which they were cleverly concealing from Rosalie in the outside world. When she wrote about the country he had a way of appearing at some turning and making himself her companion, riding too closely at her side and assuming a noticeable air of being engaged in meaningly confidential talk. Once when he had been leaning towards her with an audaciously tender manner they had been passed by the Dunham carriage, and Lady Dunham and the friend driving with her had evidently tried not to look surprised. Lady Allenby, meeting them in the same way at another time, had put up her glasses and stared in open disapproval. She might admire a strikingly handsome American girl, but her favour would not last through any such vulgar silliness as flirtations with disgraceful brothers-in-law. When Betty strolled about the park or the lanes she much too often encountered Sir Nigel strolling also, and knew that he did not mean to allow her to rid herself of him. In public he made a point of keeping observably close to her, of hovering in her vicinity and looking on at all she did with eyes she rebelled against finding fixed on her each time she was obliged to turn in his direction. He had a fashion of coming to her side and speaking in a dropped voice which excluded others as a favoured lover might. She had seen both men and women glance at her in half embarrassment at their sudden sense of finding themselves slightly detro. She had said aloud to him on one such occasion, and she had said it with smiling casualness for the benefit of Lady Allenby to whom she had been talking. Don't alarm me by dropping your voice Nigel, I am easily frightened, and Lady Allenby will think we are conspirators. For an instant he was taken by surprise. He had been pleased to believe that there was no way in which he could defend herself unless she would condescend to something stupidly like a scene. He flushed and drew himself up. I beg your pardon, my dear Betty, he said, and walked away with the manner of an offended Adora, leaving her to realise an odiously unpleasant truth which is that there are incidents only made more inexplicable by an effort to explain. She saw also that he was quite aware of this, and that his offended departure was a brilliant inspiration and had left her as it were in the lurch. To have said to Lady Allenby, my brother-in-law, in whose house I am merely staying for my sister's sake, is trying to lead you to believe that I allow him to make love to me, would have suggested either folly or insanity on her own part. As it was, after a glance at Sir Nigel's stiffly retreating back, Lady Allenby merely looked away with a wholly uninviting expression. When Betty spoke to him afterwards, haughtily and with determination, he laughed. My dearest girl, he said, if I watch you with interest and drop my voice when I get a chance to speak to you, I only do what every other man does. I do it because you are an alluring young woman which no one is more perfectly aware of than yourself. Your pretence that you do not know you are alluring is the most captivating thing about you. And what do you think of doing, if I continue to offend you? Do you propose to desert us, to leave poor Rosalie to sink back again into the bundle of old clothes she was when you came? For heaven's sake, don't do that." All that his word suggested took form before her vividly, how well he understood 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 you to America, he said next. She is as far off from that as she was when I brought her to Stornham. I've told her so. A man cannot tie his wife to the bed-post in these days, but he can make her efforts to leave him so decidedly unpleasant that decent women prefer to stay at home and take what is coming. I have seen that often enough to bank on it, if I may quote your American friends. Do you remember my once-saying, Betty remarked, that when a woman has been properly ill-treated the time comes when nothing matters, nothing but release from the life she loathes? Yes, he answered, and to you nothing would matter, but, excuse my saying it, your own damnable headstrong pride. But Rosalie is different, everything matters to her, and you will find it so, my dear girl. And that this was at least half-true was brought home to her by the fact that late the same night Rosie came to her white with crying. It is not your fault, Betty, she said. Don't think that I think it is your fault, but he has been in my room in one of those humours when he seems like a devil. He thinks she will go back to America and try to take me with you. But, Betty, you must not think about me. It will be better for you to go. I've seen you again. I've had you for a time. 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, Rosie, she said? What is it that he does to you that makes you like this? I don't know, but that he makes me feel that there is nothing but evil and lies in the world, nothing can help one against them. Those things, he says about every one, men and women, things one can't repeat make me sick, and when I try to deny them, he laughs. Does he say things about me? Betty inquired very quietly, and suddenly Rosalie threw her arms around her. Betty, darling, she cried, go home, go home, you mustn't stay here. When I go, you will go with me, Betty answered. I am not going back to mother without you." She made a collection of many facts before their interview was at an end and they parted for the night. Among the first was that Nigel had prepared for certain possibilities as wise holders of a fortress prepare for siege. Father Long, sitting alone over whiskey and soda, had, without making him loquacious, heated his blood in such a manner as led him to be 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. So he revealed more than he absolutely intended. It was to be gathered that he did not mean to permit his wife to leave him even for a visit. He would not allow himself to be made ridiculous by such a thing. A man who could not control his wife was a fool and deserved to be a laughing stock. As Utrid and his future inheritance seemed to have become of interest to his grandfather and were to be well nursed and taken care of, his intention was that the boy should remain under his own supervision. He could amuse himself well enough at Stornham now that it had been put in order if it was kept up properly and he filled it with people who did not bore him. There were people who did not bore him, plenty of them. Rosalie would stay where she was and receive his guests. If she imagined that the little episode of Follyott had been entirely dormant she was mistaken. He knew where the man was and exactly how serious it would be to him if scandal was stirred up. He had been at some trouble to find out. The fellow had recently had the luck to fall into a very fine living. It had been bestowed on him by the old Duke of Broadmorelands, who was the most straight-laced old boy in England. He had become so in his disgust at the light behaviour of the wife he had divorced in his early manhood. Nigel cackled gently as he detailed that by an agreeable coincidence it happened that her grace had suddenly become filled with pierce fervour, roused there too by a good-looking locum tenon's result, painful discoveries, the pair being now rumoured to be keeping a lodging-house together somewhere in Australia. A word to good old Broadmorelands would produce the effect of a lighted match on a barrel of gunpowder. It would be the end of Follyott. Neither would it be a good introduction to Betty's first season in London, neither would it be enjoyed by her mother whom he remembered as a woman with primitive views of domestic rectitude. He smiled the awful smile as he took out of his pocket the envelope containing the words his wife had written to Mr. Follyott, do not come to the house, meet me at Barty and Wood. It did not take much to convince people if one managed things with decent forethought. The Brents, for instance, were fond neither of her nor of Betty, and they had never forgotten the questionable conduct of their locum tenon's. Then suddenly he had changed his manner and had sat down laughing and drawn Rosalie to his knee and kissed her. Yet he had kissed her and told her not to look like a little fool or act like one. Nothing unpleasant would happen if she behaved herself. Betty had improved her greatly and she had grown young and pretty again. She looked quite like a child sometimes now that her bones were covered and she dressed well. If she wanted to please him she could put her arms around his neck and kiss 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 as if the very blood in your veins turned white. Answered Rosie in a low voice, 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. Follyott, like murdering his mother and mine and like murdering Utrid, because he would be killed by the shame of things, and by being taken from me. We have loved each other so much, so much, don't you see?" I see all that rises up before you, Betty said, and I understand your feeling that you cannot save yourself by bringing ruin upon an innocent man who helped you. I realize that one must have time to think it over. But Rosie, a sudden ring in her voice, I tell you there is a way out, there is a way out. The end of the misery is coming and it will not be what he thinks. You always believe, began Rosie. I know, answered Betty, I know there are some things so bad that they cannot go on. They kill themselves through their own evil. I know, I know, that is all. End of chapter 39