Penzance had listened seriously.

“What you say is very suggestive,” he commented.  “It strikes me as true, too.  You have seen something of her also, at least more than I have.”

“I did not think these things when I saw her—­though I suppose I felt them unconsciously.  I have reached this way of summing her up by processes of exclusion and inclusion.  One hears of her, as you know yourself, and one thinks her over.”

“You have thought her over?”

“A lot,” rather grumpily.  “A beautiful female creature inevitably gives an unbeautiful male creature something to think of—­if he is not otherwise actively employed.  I am not.  She has become a sort of dawning relief to my hopeless humours.  Being a low and unworthy beast, I am sometimes resentful enough of the unfairness of things.  She has too much.”

When they rode through Stornham village they saw signs of work already done and work still in hand.  There were no broken windows or palings or hanging wicket gates; cottage gardens had been put in order, and there were evidences of such cheering touches as new bits of window curtain and strong-looking young plants blooming between them.  So many small, but necessary, things had been done that the whole village wore the aspect of a place which had taken heart, and was facing existence in a hopeful spirit.  A year ago Mount Dunstan and his vicar riding through it had been struck by its neglected and dispirited look.

As they entered the hall of the Court Miss Vanderpoel was descending the staircase.  She was laughing a little to herself, and she looked pleased when she saw them.

“It is good of you to come,” she said, as they crossed the hall to the drawing-room.  “But I told him I really thought you would.  I have just been talking to him, and he was a little uncertain as to whether he had assumed too much.”

“As to whether he had ‘butted in,’” said Mr. Penzance.  “I think he must have said that.”

“He did.  He also was afraid that he might have been ‘too fresh.’” answered Betty.

“On our part,” said Mr. Penzance, with gentle glee, “we hesitated a moment in fear lest we also might appear to be ‘butting in.’”

Then they all laughed together.  They were laughing when Lady Anstruthers entered, and she herself joined them.  But to Mount Dunstan, who felt her to be somehow a touching little person, there was manifest a tenderness in her feeling for G. Selden.  For that matter, however, there was something already beginning to be rather affectionate in the attitude of each of them.  They went upstairs to find him lying in state upon a big sofa placed near a window, and his joy at the sight of them was a genuine, human thing.  In fact, he had pondered a good deal in secret on the possibility of these swell people thinking he had “more than his share of gall” to expect them to remember him after he passed on his junior assistant salesman’s way.  Reuben S. Vanderpoel’s daughters were of the highest of his Four Hundred, but they were Americans, and Americans were not as a rule so “stuck on themselves” as the English.  And here these two swells came as friendly as you please.  And that nice old chap that was a vicar, smiling and giving him “the glad hand”!