“It is not the awful truth now,” said Betty, and she rose to her feet and stood looking before her, but with a look which did not rest on chairs and tables.  She remained so, standing for a few moments of dead silence.

“What a fool he was!” she said at last.  “And what a villain!  But a villain is always a fool.”

She bent, and taking Rosy’s face between her hands, kissed it with a kiss which seemed like a seal.  “That will do,” she said.  “Now I know.  One must know what is in one’s hands and what is not.  Then one need not waste time in talking of miserable things.  One can save one’s strength for doing what can be done.”

“I believe you would always think about doing things,” said Lady Anstruthers.  “That is American, too.”

“It is a quality Americans inherited from England,” lightly; “one of the results of it is that England covers a rather large share of the map of the world.  It is a practical quality.  You and I might spend hours in talking to each other of what Nigel has done and what you have done, of what he has said, and of what you have said.  We might give some hours, I daresay, to what the Dowager did and said.  But wiser people than we are have found out that thinking of black things past is living them again, and it is like poisoning one’s blood.  It is deterioration of property.”

She said the last words as if she had ended with a jest.  But she knew what she was doing.

“You were tricked into giving up what was yours, to a person who could not be trusted.  What has been done with it, scarcely matters.  It is not yours, but Sir Nigel’s.  But we are not helpless, because we have in our hands the most powerful material agent in the world.

“Come, Rosy, and let us walk over the house.  We will begin with that.”

CHAPTER XVII

TOWNLINSON & SHEPPARD

During the whole course of her interesting life—­and she had always found life interesting—­Betty Vanderpoel decided that she had known no experience more absorbing than this morning spent in going over the long-closed and deserted portions of the neglected house.  She had never seen anything like the place, or as full of suggestion.  The greater part of it had simply been shut up and left to time and weather, both of which had had their effects.  The fine old red roof, having lost tiles, had fallen into leaks that let in rain, which had stained and rotted walls, plaster, and woodwork; wind and storm had beaten through broken window panes and done their worst with such furniture and hangings as they found to whip and toss and leave damp and spotted with mould.  They passed through corridors, and up and down short or long stairways, with stained or faded walls, and sometimes with cracked or fallen plastering and wainscotting.  Here and there the oak flooring itself was uncertain.  The rooms, whether large or small, all presented a like aspect of potential beauty and comfort, utterly uncared for and forlorn.  There were many rooms, but none more than scantily furnished, and a number of them were stripped bare.  Betty found herself wondering how long a time it had taken the belongings of the big place to dwindle and melt away into such bareness.