Till then we won’t go into detail.  You trust me, I know, when I tell you that you shall hold Rosy in your arms very soon.  We may have something of a fight, but there can only be one end to it in a country as decent as England.  Anstruthers isn’t exactly what I should call an Englishman.  Men rather like him are to be found in two or three places.”  His good-looking, shrewd, elderly face lighted with a fine smile.  “My handsome Betty has saved us a good deal by carrying out her fifteen-year-old plan of going to find her sister,” he ended.

Before they landed they had decided that Mrs. Vanderpoel should be comfortably established in a hotel in London, and that after this was arranged, her husband should go to Stornham Court alone.  If Sir Nigel could be induced to listen to logic, Rosalie, her child, and Betty should come at once to town.

“And, if he won’t listen to logic,” added Mr. Vanderpoel, with a dry composure, “they shall come just the same, my dear.”  And his wife put her arms round his neck and kissed him because she knew what he said was quite true, and she admired him—­as she had always done—­greatly.

But when the pilot came on board and there began to stir in the ship the agreeable and exciting bustle of the delivery of letters and welcoming telegrams, among Mr. Vanderpoel’s many yellow envelopes he opened one the contents of which caused him to stand still for some moments—­so still, indeed, that some of the bystanders began to touch each other’s elbows and whisper.  He certainly read the message two or three times before he folded it up, returned it to its receptacle, and walked gravely to his wife’s sitting-room.

“Reuben!” she exclaimed, after her first look at him, “have you bad news?  Oh, I hope not!”

He came and sat down quietly beside her, taking her hand.

“Don’t be frightened, Annie, my dear,” he said.  “I have just been reminded of a verse in the Bible—­about vengeance not belonging to mere human beings.  Nigel Anstruthers has had a stroke of paralysis, and it is not his first.  Apparently, even if he lies on his back for some months thinking of harm, he won’t be able to do it.  He is finished.”

When he was carried by the express train through the country, he saw all that Betty had seen, though the summer had passed, and there were neither green trees nor hedges.  He knew all that the long letters had meant of stirred emotion and affection, and he was strongly moved, though his mind was full of many things.  There were the farmhouses, the square-towered churches, the red-pointed hop oasts, and the village children.  How distinctly she had made him see them!  His Betty—­his splendid Betty!  His heart beat at the thought of seeing her high, young black head, and holding her safe in his arms again.  Safe!  He resented having used the word, because there was a shock in seeming to admit the possibility that anything in the universe could do wrong to her.  Yet one man had been villain enough to mean her harm, and to threaten her with it.  He slightly shuddered as he thought of how the man was finished—­done for.