The first was to touch with dignified pathos on the subject of Ughtred.  Betty, he intimated gently, could imagine what a man’s grief and disappointment might be on finding his son and heir deformed in such a manner.  The delicate reserve with which he managed to convey his fear that Rosalie’s own uncontrolled hysteric attacks had been the cause of the misfortune was very well done.  She had, of course, been very young and much spoiled, and had not learned self-restraint, poor girl.

It was at this point that Betty first realised a certain hideous thing.  She must actually remain silent—­there would be at the outset many times when she could only protect her sister by refraining from either denial or argument.  If she turned upon him now with refutation, it was Rosy who would be called upon to bear the consequences.  He would go at once to Rosy, and she herself would have done what she had said she would not do—­she would have brought trouble upon the poor girl before she was strong enough to bear it.  She suspected also that his intention was to discover how much she had heard, and if she might be goaded into betraying her attitude in the matter.

But she was not to be so goaded.  He watched her closely and her very colour itself seemed to be under her own control.  He had expected—­if she had heard hysteric, garbled stories from his wife—­to see a flame of scarlet leap up on the cheek he was admiring.  There was no such leap, which was baffling in itself.  Could it be that experience had taught Rosalie the discretion of keeping her mouth shut?

“I am very fond of Ughtred,” was the sole comment he was granted.  “We made friends from the first.  As he grows older and stronger, his misfortune may be less apparent.  He will be a very clever man.”

“He will be a very clever man if he is at all like——­” He checked himself with a slight movement of his shoulders.  “I was going to say a thing utterly banal.  I beg your pardon.  I forgot for the moment that I was not talking to an English girl.”

It was so stupid that she turned and looked at him, smiling faintly.  But her answer was quite mild and soft.

“Do not deprive me of compliments because I am a mere American,” she said.  “I am very fond of them, and respond at once.”

“You are very daring,” he said, looking straight into her eyes—­“deliciously so.  American women always are, I think.”

“The young devil,” he was saying internally.  “The beautiful young devil!  She throws one off the track.”

He found himself more and more attracted and exasperated as they made their rounds.  It was his sense of being attracted which was the cause of his exasperation.  A girl who could stir one like this would be a dangerous enemy.  Even as a friend she would not be safe, because one faced the absurd peril of losing one’s head a little and forgetting the precautions one should never lose sight of where a woman was concerned—­the precautions which provided for one’s holding a good taut rein in one’s own hands.