head of a great house, so to speak—­the American parallel of what a great house is in non-republican countries.  The power of it counted for great things, not in America alone, but throughout the world.  As international intimacies increased, the influence of such houses might end in aiding in the making of history.  Enormous constantly increasing wealth and huge financial schemes could not confine their influence, but must reach far.  The man whose hand held the lever controlling them was doing well when he thought of them gravely.  Such a man had to do with more than his own mere life and living.  This man had confronted many problems as the years had passed.  He had seen men like himself die, leaving behind them the force they had controlled, and he had seen this force—­controlled no longer—­let loose upon the world, sometimes a power of evil, sometimes scattering itself aimlessly into nothingness and folly, which wrought harm.  He was not an ambitious man, but—­perhaps because he was not only a man of thought, but a Vanderpoel of the blood of the first Reuben—­these were things he did not contemplate without restlessness.  When Rosy had gone away and seemed lost to them, he had been glad when he had seen Betty growing, day by day, into a strong thing.  Feminine though she was, she sometimes suggested to him the son who might have been his, but was not.  As the closeness of their companionship increased with her years, his admiration for her grew with his love.  Power left in her hands must work for the advancement of things, and would not be idly disseminated—­if no antagonistic influence wrought against her.  He had found himself reflecting that, after all was said, the marriage of such a girl had a sort of parallel in that of some young royal creature, whose union might make or mar things, which must be considered.  The man who must inevitably strongly colour her whole being, and vitally mark her life, would, in a sense, lay his hand upon the lever also.  If he brought sorrow and disorder with him, the lever would not move steadily.  Fortunes such as his grow rapidly, and he was a richer man by millions than he had been when Rosalie had married Nigel Anstruthers.  The memory of that marriage had been a painful thing to him, even before he had known the whole truth of its results.  The man had been a common adventurer and scoundrel, despite the facts of good birth and the air of decent breeding.  If a man who was as much a scoundrel, but cleverer—­it would be necessary that he should be much cleverer—­made the best of himself to Betty——!  It was folly to think one could guess what a woman—­or a man, either, for that matter—­would love.  He knew Betty, but no man knows the thing which comes, as it were, in the dark and claims its own—­whether for good or evil.  He had lived long enough to see beautiful, strong-spirited creatures do strange things, follow strange gods, swept away into seas of pain by strange waves.

“Even Betty,” he had said to himself, now and then.  “Even my Betty.  Good God—­who knows!”