“It seems so wonderful,” Lady Anstruthers argued.  “I have always felt as if they hated each other.”

“They did once—­but how could it last between those of the same blood—­of the same tongue?  If we were really aliens we might be a menace.  But we are of their own.”  Betty leaned forward on the edge of the box, looking out over the crowded house, filled with almost as many Americans as English faces.  She smiled, reflecting.  “We were children put out to nurse and breathe new air in the country, and now we are coming home, vigorous, and full-grown.”

She studied the audience for some minutes, and, as her glance wandered over the stalls, it took in more than one marked variety of type.  Suddenly it fell on a face she delightedly recognised.  It was that of the nice, speculative-eyed Westerner they had seen enjoying himself in Bond Street.

“Rosy,” she said, “there is the Western man we love.  Near the end of the fourth row.”

Lady Anstruthers looked for him with eagerness.

“Oh, I see him!  Next to the big one with the reddish hair.”

Betty turned her attention to the man in question, whom she had not chanced to notice.  She uttered an exclamation of surprise and interest.

“The big man with the red hair.  How lovely that they should chance to sit side by side—­the big one is Lord Mount Dunstan!”

The necessity of seeing his solicitors, who happened to be Messrs. Townlinson & Sheppard, had brought Lord Mount Dunstan to town.  After a day devoted to business affairs, he had been attracted by the idea of going to the theatre to see again a play he had already seen in New York.  It would interest him to observe its exact effect upon a London audience.  While he had been in New York, he had gone with something of the same feeling to see a great English actor play to a crowded house.  The great actor had been one who had returned to the country for a third or fourth time, and, in the enthusiasm he had felt in the atmosphere about him, Mount Dunstan had seen not only pleasure and appreciation of the man’s perfect art, but—­at certain tumultuous outbursts—­an almost emotional welcome.  The Americans, he had said to himself, were creatures of warmer blood than the English.  The audience on that occasion had been, in mass, American.  The audience he made one of now, was made up of both nationalities, and, in glancing over it, he realised how large was the number of Americans who came yearly to London.  As Lady Anstruthers had done, he found himself selecting from the assemblage the types which were manifestly American, and those obviously English.  In the seat next to himself sat a man of a type he felt he had learned by heart in the days of his life as Jem Salter.  At a short distance fluttered brilliantly an English professional beauty, with her male and female court about her.  In the stage box, made sumptuous with flowers, was a royal party.