not had dignity of position.  He would not be held cheap in this matter, at least.  But sometimes, as he looked at the girl he turned hot and sick, as it was driven home to him that he was no longer young, that he had never been good-looking, and that he had cut the ground from under his feet twelve years ago, when he had married Rosalie!  If he could have waited—­if he could have done several other things—­perhaps the clever acting of a part, and his power of domination might have given him a chance.  Even that blackguard of a Mount Dunstan had a better one now.  He was young, at least, and free—­and a big strong beast.  He was forced, with bitter reluctance, to admit that he himself was not even particularly strong—­of late he had felt it hideously.

So he detested Mount Dunstan the more for increasing reasons, as he thought the matter over.  It would seem, perhaps, but a subtle pleasure to the normal mind, but to him there was pleasure—­support—­aggrandisement—­in referring to the ill case of the Mount Dunstan estate, in relating illustrative anecdotes, in dwelling upon the hopelessness of the outlook, and the notable unpopularity of the man himself.  A confiding young lady from the States was required, he said on one occasion, but it would be necessary that she should be a young person of much simplicity, who would not be alarmed or chilled by the obvious.  No one would realise this more clearly than Mount Dunstan himself.  He said it coldly and casually, as if it were the simplest matter of fact.  If the fellow had been making himself agreeable to Betty, it was as well that certain points should be—­as it were inadvertently—­brought before her.

Miss Vanderpoel was really rather fine, people said to each other afterwards, when she entered the ballroom at Dunholm Castle with her brother-in-law.  She bore herself as composedly as if she had been escorted by the most admirable and dignified of conservative relatives, instead of by a man who was more definitely disliked and disapproved of than any other man in the county whom decent people were likely to meet.  Yet, she was far too clever a girl not to realise the situation clearly, they said to each other.  She had arrived in England to find her sister a neglected wreck, her fortune squandered, and her existence stripped bare of even such things as one felt to be the mere decencies.  There was but one thing to be deduced from the facts which had stared her in the face.  But of her deductions she had said nothing whatever, which was, of course, remarkable in a young person.  It may be mentioned that, perhaps, there had been those who would not have been reluctant to hear what she must have had to say, and who had even possibly given her a delicate lead.  But the lead had never been taken.  One lady had even remarked that, on her part, she felt that a too great reserve verged upon secretiveness, which was not a desirable girlish quality.