“She is enjoying herself.  Why not?  She has the spirit of the huntress.  I don’t think she talks nonsense about friendship to the captives of her bow and spear.  She knows she can always get what she wants.  A girl like that must have an arrogance of mind.  And she is not a young saint.  She is one of the women born with the look in her eyes.  I own I should not like to be in the place of any primeval poor brute who really went mad over her—­and counted her millions as so much dirt.”

Mount Dunstan answered with a shrug of his big shoulders: 

“Apparently he would seem as remote from the reason of to-day as the men who lived on the land when Hengist and Horsa came—­or when Caesar landed at Deal.”

“He would seem as remote to her,” with a shrug also.  “I should not like to contend that his point of view would not interest her or that she would particularly discourage him.  Her eyes would call him—­without malice or intention, no doubt, but your early Briton ceorl or earl would be as well understood by her.  Your New York beauty who has lived in the market place knows principally the prices of things.”

He was not ill pleased with himself.  He was putting it well and getting rather even with her.  If this fellow with his shut mouth had a sore spot hidden anywhere he was giving him “to think.”  And he would find himself thinking, while, whatsoever he thought, he would be obliged to continue to keep his ugly mouth shut.  The great idea was to say things without saying them, to set your hearer’s mind to saying them for you.

“What strikes one most is a sort of commercial brilliance in her,” taking up his thread again after a smilingly reflective pause.  “It quite exhilarates one by its novelty.  There’s spice in it.  We English have not a look-in when we are dealing with Americans, and yet France calls us a nation of shopkeepers.  My impression is that their women take little inventories of every house they enter, of every man they meet.  I heard her once speaking to my wife about this place, as if she had lived in it.  She spoke of the closed windows and the state of the gardens—­of broken fountains and fallen arches.  She evidently deplored the deterioration of things which represented capital.  She has inventoried Dunholm, no doubt.  That will give Westholt a chance.  But she will do nothing until after her next year’s season in London—­that I’d swear.  I look forward to next year.  It will be worth watching.  She has been training my wife.  A sister who has married an Englishman and has at least spent some years of her life in England has a certain established air.  When she is presented one knows she will be a sensation.  After that——­” he hesitated a moment, smiling not too pleasantly.

“After that,” said Mount Dunstan, “the Deluge.”

“Exactly.  The Deluge which usually sweeps girls off their feet—­but it will not sweep her off hers.  She will stand quite firm in the flood and lose sight of nothing of importance which floats past.”