So advance had been made, and work accomplished.  As Betty walked from one place to another she saw the signs of it with gratification.  The place was not the one she had come to a few months ago.  Hothouses, outbuildings, stables were in repair.  Work was still being done in different places.  In the house itself carpenters or decorators were enclosed in some rooms, and at their business, but exterior order prevailed.  In the courtyard stablemen were at work, and her own groom came forward touching his forehead.  She paid a visit to the horses.  They were fine creatures, and, when she entered their stalls, made room for her and whinnied gently, in well-founded expectation of sugar and bread which were kept in a cupboard awaiting her visits.  She smoothed velvet noses and patted satin sides, talking to Mason a little before she went her way.

Then she strolled into the park.  The park was always a pleasure.  She was in a thoughtful mood, and the soft green shadowed silence lured her.  The summer wind hus-s-shed the branches as it lightly waved them, the brown earth of the avenue was sun-dappled, there were bird notes and calls to be heard here and there and everywhere, if one only arrested one’s attention a moment to listen.  And she was in a listening and dreaming mood—­one of the moods in which bird, leaf, and wind, sun, shade, and scent of growing things have part.

And yet her thoughts were of mundane things.

It was on this avenue that G. Selden had met with his accident.  He was still at Dunstan vicarage, and yesterday Mount Dunstan, in calling, had told them that Mr. Penzance was applying himself with delighted interest to a study of the manipulation of the Delkoff.

The thought of Mount Dunstan brought with it the thought of her father.  This was because there was frequently in her mind a connection between the two.  How would the man of schemes, of wealth, and power almost unbounded, regard the man born with a load about his neck—­chained to earth by it, standing in the midst of his hungering and thirsting possessions, his hands empty of what would feed them and restore their strength?  Would he see any solution of the problem?  She could imagine his looking at the situation through his gaze at the man, and considering both in his summing up.

“Circumstances and the man,” she had heard him say.  “But always the man first.”

Being no visionary, he did not underestimate the power of circumstance.  This Betty had learned from him.  And what could practically be done with circumstance such as this?  The question had begun to recur to her.  What could she herself have done in the care of Rosy and Stornham, if chance had not placed in her hand the strongest lever?  What she had accomplished had been easy—­easy.  All that had been required had been the qualities which control of the lever might itself tend to create in one.  Given—­by mere chance again—­imagination and initiative, the moving of the lever did the rest.