“When I marry, I shall ask something in exchange for what I have to give.”

“If the exchange is to be equal, you must ask a great deal,” he answered.  “That is why you must be protected from such fellows as Mount Dunstan.”

“If it becomes necessary, perhaps I shall be able to protect myself,” she said.

“Ah!” regretfully, “I am afraid I have annoyed you—­and that you need protection more than you suspect.”  If she were flesh and blood, she could scarcely resist resenting the implication contained in this.  But resist it she did, and with a cool little smile which stirred him to sudden, if irritated, admiration.

She paused a second, and used the touch of gentle regret herself.

“You have wounded my vanity by intimating that my admirers do not love me for myself alone.”

He paused, also, and, narrowing his eyes again, looked straight between her lashes.

“They ought to love you for yourself alone,” he said, in a low voice.  “You are a deucedly attractive girl.”

“Oh, Betty,” Rosy had pleaded, “don’t make him angry—­don’t make him angry.”

So Betty lifted her shoulders slightly without comment.

“Shall we go back to the house now?” she said.  “Rosalie will naturally be anxious to hear that what has been done in your absence has met with your approval.”

In what manner his approval was expressed to Rosalie, Betty did not hear this morning, at least.  Externally cool though she had appeared, the process had not been without its results, and she felt that she would prefer to be alone.

“I must write some letters to catch the next steamer,” she said, as she went upstairs.

When she entered her room, she went to her writing table and sat down, with pen and paper before her.  She drew the paper towards her and took up the pen, but the next moment she laid it down and gave a slight push to the paper.  As she did so she realised that her hand trembled.

“I must not let myself form the habit of falling into rages—­or I shall not be able to keep still some day, when I ought to do it,” she whispered.  “I am in a fury—­a fury.”  And for a moment she covered her face.

She was a strong girl, but a girl, notwithstanding her powers.  What she suddenly saw was that, as if by one movement of some powerful unseen hand, Rosy, who had been the centre of all things, had been swept out of her thought.  Her anger at the injustice done to Rosy had been as nothing before the fire which had flamed in her at the insult flung at the other.  And all that was undue and unbalanced.  One might as well look the thing straightly in the face.  Her old child hatred of Nigel Anstruthers had sprung up again in ten-fold strength.  There was, it was true, something abominable about him, something which made his words more abominable than they would have been if another man had uttered them—­but, though it was inevitable that his method should rouse one, where those of one’s own blood were concerned, it was not enough to fill one with raging flame when his malignity was dealing with those who were almost strangers.  Mount Dunstan was almost a stranger—­she had met Lord Westholt oftener.  Would she have felt the same hot beat of the blood, if Lord Westholt had been concerned?  No, she answered herself frankly, she would not.