At the ball he had seen that the girl’s effect had been of a kind which even money and good looks uncombined with another thing might not have produced.  And she had the other thing—­whatsoever it might be.  He observed the way in which the Dunholms met and greeted her, he marked the glance of the royal personage, and his manner, when after her presentation he conversed with and detained her, he saw the turning of heads and exchange of remarks as she moved through the rooms.  Most especially, he took in the bearing of the very grand old ladies, led by Lady Alanby of Dole.  Barriers had thrown themselves down, these portentous, rigorous old pussycats admired her, even liked her.

“Upon my word,” he said to himself.  “She has a way with her, you know.  She is a combination of Ethel Newcome and Becky Sharp.  But she is more level-headed than either of them, There’s a touch of Trix Esmond, too.”

The sense of the success which followed her, and the gradually-growing excitement of looking on at her light whirls of dance, the carnation of her cheek, and the laughter and pleasure she drew about her, had affected him in a way by which he was secretly a little exhilarated.  He was conscious of a rash desire to force his way through these laughing, vaunting young idiots, juggle or snatch their dances away from them, and seize on the girl himself.  He had not for so long a time been impelled by such agreeable folly that he had sometimes felt the stab of the thought that he was past it.  That it should rise in him again made him feel young.  There was nothing which so irritated him against Mount Dunstan as his own rebelling recognition of the man’s youth, the strength of his fine body, his high-held head and clear eye.

These things and others it was which swayed him, as was plain to Betty in the time which followed, to many changes of mood.

“Are you sorry for a man who is ill and depressed,” he asked one day, “or do you despise him?”

“I am sorry.”

“Then be sorry for me.”

He had come out of the house to her as she sat on the lawn, under a broad, level-branched tree, and had thrown himself upon a rug with his hands clasped behind his head.

“Are you ill?”

“When I was on the Riviera I had a fall.”  He lied simply.  “I strained some muscle or other, and it has left me rather lame.  Sometimes I have a good deal of pain.”

“I am very sorry,” said Betty.  “Very.”

A woman who can be made sorry it is rarely impossible to manage.  To dwell with pathetic patience on your grievances, if she is weak and unintelligent, to deplore, with honest regret, your faults and blunders, if she is strong, are not bad ideas.

He looked at her reflectively.

“Yes, you are capable of being sorry,” he decided.  For a few moments of silence his eyes rested upon the view spread before him.  To give the expression of dignified reflection was not a bad idea either.