That her sister, Miss Vanderpoel, had beauty, it was not necessary to hesitate in deciding.  Neither Lord Dunholm nor his wife nor their son did hesitate.  A girl with long limbs an alluring profile, and extraordinary black lashes set round lovely Irish-blue eyes, possesses physical capital not to be argued about.

She was not one of the curious, exotic little creatures, whose thin, though sometimes rather sweet, and always gay, high-pitched young voices Lord Dunholm had been so especially struck by in the early days of the American invasion.  Her voice had a tone one would be likely to remember with pleasure.  How well she moved—­how well her black head was set on her neck!  Yes, she was of the new type—­the later generation.

These amazing, oddly practical people had evolved it—­planned it, perhaps, bought—­figuratively speaking—­the architects and material to design and build it—­bought them in whatever country they found them, England, France, Italy Germany—­pocketing them coolly and carrying them back home to develop, complete, and send forth into the world when their invention was a perfected thing.  Struck by the humour of his fancy, Lord Dunholm found himself smiling into the Irish-blue eyes.  They smiled back at him in a way which warmed his heart.  There were no pauses in the conversation which followed.  In times past, calls at Stornham had generally held painfully blank moments.  Lady Dunholm was as pleased as her husband.  A really charming girl was an enormous acquisition to the neighbourhood.

Westholt, his father saw, had found even more than the story of old Doby’s pipe had prepared him to expect.

Country calls were not usually interesting or stimulating, and this one was.  Lord Dunholm laid subtly brilliant plans to lead Miss Vanderpoel to talk of her native land and her views of it.  He knew that she would say things worth hearing.  Incidentally one gathered picturesque detail.  To have vibrated between the two continents since her thirteenth year, to have spent a few years at school in one country, a few years in another, and yet a few years more in still another, as part of an arranged educational plan; to have crossed the Atlantic for the holidays, and to have journeyed thousands of miles with her father in his private car; to make the visits of a man of great schemes to his possessions of mines, railroads, and lands which were almost principalities—­these things had been merely details of her life, adding interest and variety, it was true, but seeming the merely normal outcome of existence.  They were normal to Vanderpoels and others of their class who were abnormalities in themselves when compared with the rest of the world.

Her own very lack of any abnormality reached, in Lord Dunholm’s mind, the highest point of illustration of the phase of life she beautifully represented—­for beautiful he felt its rare charms were.

When they strolled out to look at the gardens he found talk with her no less a stimulating thing.  She told her story of Kedgers, and showed the chosen spot where thickets of lilies were to bloom, with the giants lifting white archangel trumpets above them in the centre.