International marriages ceased to be a novelty.  As Bettina Vanderpoel grew up, she grew up, so to speak, in the midst of them.  She saw her country, its people, its newspapers, its literature, innocently rejoiced by the alliances its charming young women contracted with foreign rank.  She saw it affectionately, gleefully, rubbing its hands over its duchesses, its countesses, its miladies.  The American Eagle spread its wings and flapped them sometimes a trifle, over this new but so natural and inevitable triumph of its virgins.  It was of course only “American” that such things should happen.  America ruled the universe, and its women ruled America, bullying it a little, prettily, perhaps.  What could be more a matter of course than that American women, being aided by adoring fathers, brothers and husbands, sumptuously to ship themselves to other lands, should begin to rule these lands also?  Betty, in her growing up, heard all this intimated.  At twelve years old, though she had detested Rosalie’s marriage, she had rather liked to hear people talk of the picturesqueness of places like Stornham Court, and of the life led by women of rank in their houses in town and country.  Such talk nearly always involved the description of things and people, whose colour and tone had only reached her through the medium of books, most frequently fiction.

She was, however, of an unusually observing mind, even as a child, and the time came when she realised that the national bird spread its wings less proudly when the subject of international matches was touched upon, and even at such times showed signs of restlessness.  Now and then things had not turned out as they appeared to promise; two or three seemingly brilliant unions had resulted in disaster.  She had not understood all the details the newspapers cheerfully provided, but it was clear to her that more than one previously envied young woman had had practical reasons for discovering that she had made an astonishingly bad bargain.  This being the case, she used frequently to ponder over the case of Rosy—­Rosy! who had been swept away from them and swallowed up, as it seemed, by that other and older world.  She was in certain ways a silent child, and no one but herself knew how little she had forgotten Rosy, how often she pondered over her, how sometimes she had lain awake in the night and puzzled out lines of argument concerning her and things which might be true.

The one grief of poor Mrs. Vanderpoel’s life had been the apparent estrangement of her eldest child.  After her first six months in England Lady Anstruthers’ letters had become fewer and farther between, and had given so little information connected with herself that affectionate curiosity became discouraged.  Sir Nigel’s brief and rare epistles revealed so little desire for any relationship with his wife’s family that gradually Rosy’s image seemed to fade into far distance and become fainter with the passing of each month.  It seemed almost an incredible