suggested query to a man of affairs.  Thus, it had been natural that the letters should speak of him.  What she had written had recalled to him certain rumours of the disgraceful old scandal.  Yes, they had been a bad lot.  He arranged to put a casual-sounding question or so to certain persons who knew English society well.  What he gathered was not encouraging.  The present Lord Mount Dunstan was considered rather a surly brute, and lived a mysterious sort of life which might cover many things.  It was bad blood, and people were naturally shy of it.  Of course, the man was a pauper, and his place a barrack falling to ruin.  There had been something rather shady in his going to America or Australia a few years ago.

Good looking?  Well, so few people had seen him.  The lady, who was speaking, had heard that he was one of those big, rather lumpy men, and had an ill-tempered expression.  She always gave a wide berth to a man who looked nasty-tempered.  One or two other persons who had spoken of him had conveyed to Mr. Vanderpoel about the same amount of vaguely unpromising information.  The episode of G. Selden had been interesting enough, with its suggestions of picturesque contrasts and combinations.  Betty’s touch had made the junior salesman attracting.  It was a good type this, of a young fellow who, battling with the discouragements of a hard life, still did not lose his amazing good cheer and patience, and found healthy sleep and honest waking, even in the hall bedroom.  He had consented to Betty’s request that he would see him, partly because he was inclined to like what he had heard, and partly for a reason which Betty did not suspect.  By extraordinary chance G. Selden had seen Mount Dunstan and his surroundings at close range.  Mr. Vanderpoel had liked what he had gathered of Mount Dunstan’s attitude towards a personality so singularly exotic to himself.  Crude, uneducated, and slangy, the junior salesman was not in any degree a fool.  To an American father with a daughter like Betty, the summing-up of a normal, nice-natured, common young denizen of the United States, fresh from contact with the effete, might be subtly instructive, and well worth hearing, if it was unconsciously expressed.  Mr. Vanderpoel thought he knew how, after he had overcome his visitor’s first awkwardness—­if he chanced to be self-conscious—­he could lead him to talk.  What he hoped to do was to make him forget himself and begin to talk to him as he had talked to Betty, to ingenuously reveal impressions and points of view.  Young men of his clean, rudimentary type were very definite about the things they liked and disliked, and could be trusted to reveal admiration, or lack of it, without absolute intention or actual statement.  Being elemental and undismayed, they saw things cleared of the mists of social prejudice and modification.  Yes, he felt he should be glad to hear of Lord Mount Dunstan and the Mount Dunstan estate from G. Selden in a happy moment of unawareness.