Remembering his child bete noir of the long legs and square, audacious little face, Nigel Anstruthers found himself restraining a slight grin as he looked on at her dancing.  Partners flocked about her like bees, and Lady Alanby of Dole, and other very grand old or middle-aged ladies all found the evening more interesting because they could watch her.

“She is full of spirit,” said Lady Alanby, “and she enjoys herself as a girl should.  It is a pleasure to look at her.  I like a girl who gets a magnificent colour and stars in her eyes when she dances.  It looks healthy and young.”

It was Tommy Miss Vanderpoel was dancing with when her ladyship said this.  Tommy was her grandson and a young man of greater rank than fortune.  He was a nice, frank, heavy youth, who loved a simple county life spent in tramping about with guns, and in friendly hobnobbing with the neighbours, and eating great afternoon teas with people whose jokes were easy to understand, and who were ready to laugh if you tried a joke yourself.  He liked girls, and especially he liked Jane Lithcom, but that was a weakness his grandmother did not at all encourage, and, as he danced with Betty Vanderpoel, he looked over her shoulder more than once at a pair of big, unhappy blue eyes, whose owner sat against the wall.

Betty Vanderpoel herself was not thinking of Tommy.  In fact, during this brilliant evening she faced still further developments of her own strange case.  Certain new things were happening to her.  When she had entered the ballroom she had known at once who the man was who stood before the royal guest—­she had known before he bowed low and withdrew.  And her recognition had brought with it a shock of joy.  For a few moments her throat felt hot and pulsing.  It was true—­the things which concerned him concerned her.  All that happened to him suddenly became her affair, as if in some way they were of the same blood.  Nigel’s slighting of him had infuriated her; that Lord Dunholm had offered him friendship and hospitality was a thing which seemed done to herself, and filled her with gratitude and affection; that he should be at this place, on this special occasion, swept away dark things from his path.  It was as if it were stated without words that a conservative man of the world, who knew things as they were, having means of reaching truths, vouched for him and placed his dignity and firmness at his side.

And there was the gladness at the sight of him.  It was an overpoweringly strong thing.  She had never known anything like it.  She had not seen him since Nigel’s return, and here he was, and she knew that her life quickened in her because they were together in the same room.  He had come to them and said a few courteous words, but he had soon gone away.  At first she wondered if it was because of Nigel, who at the time was making himself rather ostentatiously amiable to her.  Afterwards she saw him dancing, talking, being presented to people,