“Not?” repeated Betty, with an incredulous lifting of her brows.

“You are charming and clever, but I rather suspect you of being a vixen.  At all events you are a spirited young woman and quick-witted enough to understand the attraction you must have for the sordid herd.”

And then he became aware—­if not of an opening in her armour—­at least of a joint in it.  For he saw, near her ear, a deepening warmth.  That was it.  She was quick-witted, and she hid somewhere a hot pride.

“I confess, however,” he proceeded cheerfully, “that notwithstanding my own experience of the habits of the sordid herd, I saw one card I was surprised to find, though really”—­shrugging his shoulders—­“I ought to have been less surprised to find it than to find any other.  But it was bold.  I suppose the fellow is desperate.”

“You are speaking of——?” suggested Betty.

“Of Mount Dunstan.  Hang it all, it was bold!” As if in half-amused disgust.

As she had walked through the garden paths, Betty had at intervals bent and gathered a flower, until she held in one hand a loose, fair sheaf.  At this moment she stooped to break off a spire of pale blue campanula.  And she was—­as with a shock—­struck with a consciousness that she bent because she must—­because to do so was a refuge—­a concealment of something she must hide.  It had come upon her without a second’s warning.  Sir Nigel was right.  She was a vixen—­a virago.  She was in such a rage that her heart sprang up and down and her cheek and eyes were on fire.  Her long-trained control of herself was gone.  And her shock was a lightning-swift awakening to the fact that she felt all this—­she must hide her face—­because it was this one man—­just this one and no other—­who was being dragged into this thing with insult.

It was an awakening, and she broke off, rather slowly, one—­two—­three—­even four campanula stems before she stood upright again.

As for Nigel Anstruthers—­he went on talking in his low-pitched, disgusted voice.

“Surely he might count himself out of the running.  There will be a good deal of running, my dear Betty.  You fair Americans have learned that by this time.  But that a man who has not even a decent name to offer—­who is blackballed by his county—­should coolly present himself as a pretendant is an insolence he should be kicked for.”

Betty arranged her campanulas carefully.  There was no exterior reason why she should draw sword in Lord Mount Dunstan’s defence.  He had certainly not seemed to expect anything intimately interested from her.  His manner she had generally felt to be rather restrained.  But one could, in a measure, express one’s self.

“Whatsoever the ‘running,’” she remarked, “no pretendant has complimented me by presenting himself, so far—­and Lord Mount Dunstan is physically an unusually strong man.”

“You mean it would be difficult to kick him?  Is this partisanship?  I hope not.  Am I to understand,” he added with deliberation, “that Rosalie has received him here?”