“I should feel ill-tempered if I were in his place,” said Betty.  “He has enough to rouse his evil passions and make him savage.  What a fate for a man with any sense and decency of feeling!  What fools and criminals the last generation of his house must have produced!  I wonder how such things evolve themselves.  But he is different—­different.  One can see it.  If he had a chance—­just half a chance—­he would build it all up again.  And I don’t mean merely the place, but all that one means when one says ‘his house.’”

“He would need a great deal of money,” sighed Lady Anstruthers.

Betty nodded slowly as she looked out, reflecting, into the park.

“Yes, it would require money,” was her admission.

“And he has none,” Lady Anstruthers added.  “None whatever.”

“He will get some,” said Betty, still reflecting.  “He will make it, or dig it up, or someone will leave it to him.  There is a great deal of money in the world, and when a strong creature ought to have some of it he gets it.”

“Oh, Betty!” said Rosy.  “Oh, Betty!”

“Watch that man,” said Betty; “you will see.  It will come.”

Lady Anstruthers’ mind, working at no time on complex lines, presented her with a simple modern solution.

“Perhaps he will marry an American,” she said, and saying it, sighed again.

“He will not do it on purpose.”  Bettina answered slowly and with such an air of absence of mind that Rosy laughed a little.

“Will he do it accidentally, or against his will?” she said.

Betty herself smiled.

“Perhaps he will,” she said.  “There are Englishmen who rather dislike Americans.  I think he is one of them.”

It apparently became necessary for Lady Anstruthers, a moment later, to lean upon the stone balustrade and pick off a young leaf or so, for no reason whatever, unless that in doing so she averted her look from her sister as she made her next remark.

“Are you—­when are you going to write to father and mother?”

“I have written,” with unembarrassed evenness of tone.  “Mother will be counting the days.”

“Mother!” Rosy breathed, with a soft little gasp.  “Mother!” and turned her face farther away.  “What did you tell her?”

Betty moved over to her and stood close at her side.  The power of her personality enveloped the tremulous creature as if it had been a sense of warmth.

“I told her how beautiful the place was, and how Ughtred adored you—­and how you loved us all, and longed to see New York again.”

The relief in the poor little face was so immense that Betty’s heart shook before it.  Lady Anstruthers looked up at her with adoring eyes.

“I might have known,” she said; “I might have known that—­that you would only say the right thing.  You couldn’t say the wrong thing, Betty.”

Betty bent over her and spoke almost yearningly.