“Now that you have ceased to forswear the world,” he said as his wife approached, “I hope we shall see you at Stornham.  Your visits must not cease because we cannot offer you G. Selden any longer.”

He had his own reasons for giving the invitation—­several of them.  And there was a satisfaction in letting the fellow know, casually, that he was not in the ridiculous position of being unaware of what had occurred during his absence—­that there had been visits—­and also the objectionable episode of the American bounder.  That the episode had been objectionable, he knew he had adroitly conveyed by mere tone and manner.

Mount Dunstan thanked him in the usual formula, and then spoke to Betty.

“G.  Selden left us tremulous and fevered with ecstatic anticipation.  He carried your kind letter to Mr. Vanderpoel, next to his heart.  His brain seemed to whirl at the thought of what ‘the boys’ would say, when he arrived with it in New York.  You have materialised the dream of his life!”

“I have interested my father,” Betty answered, with a brilliant smile.  “He liked the romance of the Reuben S. Vanderpoel who rewarded the saver of his life by unbounded orders for the Delkoff.”

. . . . .

As their carriage drove away, Sir Nigel bent forward to look out of the window, and having done it, laughed a little.

“Mount Dunstan does not play the game well,” he remarked.

It was annoying that neither Betty nor his wife inquired what the game in question might be, and that his temperament forced him into explaining without encouragement.

“He should have ‘stood motionless with folded arms,’ or something of the sort, and ‘watched her equipage until it was out of sight.’”

“And he did not?” said Betty

“He turned on his heel as soon as the door was shut.”

“People ought not to do such things,” was her simple comment.  To which it seemed useless to reply.

CHAPTER XXXIII

FOR LADY JANE

There is no one thing on earth of such interest as the study of the laws of temperament, which impel, support, or entrap into folly and danger the being they rule.  As a child, not old enough to give a definite name to the thing she watched and pondered on, in child fashion, Bettina Vanderpoel had thought much on this subject.  As she had grown older, she had never been ignorant of the workings of her own temperament, and she had looked on for years at the laws which had wrought in her father’s being—­the laws of strength, executive capacity, and that pleasure in great schemes, which is roused less by a desire for gain than for a strongly-felt necessity for action, resulting in success.  She mentally followed other people on their way, sometimes asking herself how far the individual was to be praised or blamed for his treading of the path he seemed to choose.  And now there was given her the opportunity to study the workings of the nature of Nigel Anstruthers, which was a curious thing.