He had been looking at the carpet reflectively, and now he looked at Bettina.

“What are you expecting to find, at the worst?” he asked her.  “The kind of thing which will need management while it is being looked into?”

“I do not know what I am expecting to find,” was her reply.  “We know absolutely nothing; but that Rosy was fond of us, and that her marriage has seemed to make her cease to care.  She was not like that; she was not like that!  Was she, father?”

“No, she wasn’t,” he exclaimed.  The memory of her in her short-frocked and early girlish days, a pretty, smiling, effusive thing, given to lavish caresses and affectionate little surprises for them all, came back to him vividly.  “She was the most affectionate girl I ever knew,” he said.  “She was more affectionate than you, Betty,” with a smile.

Bettina smiled in return and bent her head to put a kiss on his hand, a warm, lovely, comprehending kiss.

“If she had been different I should not have thought so much of the change,” she said.  “I believe that people are always more or less like themselves as long as they live.  What has seemed to happen has been so unlike Rosy that there must be some reason for it.”

“You think that she has been prevented from seeing us?”

“I think it so possible that I am not going to announce my visit beforehand.”

“You have a good head, Betty,” her father said.

“If Sir Nigel has put obstacles in our way before, he will do it again.  I shall try to find out, when I reach London, if Rosalie is at Stornham.  When I am sure she is there, I shall go and present myself.  If Sir Nigel meets me at the park gates and orders his gamekeepers to drive me off the premises, we shall at least know that he has some reason for not wishing to regard the usual social and domestic amenities.  I feel rather like a detective.  It entertains me and excites me a little.”

The deep blue of her eyes shone under the shadow of the extravagant lashes as she laughed.

“Are you willing that I should go, father?” she said next.

“Yes,” he answered.  “I am willing to trust you, Betty, to do things I would not trust other girls to try at.  If you were not my girl at all, if you were a man on Wall Street, I should know you would be pretty safe to come out a little more than even in any venture you made.  You know how to keep cool.”

Bettina picked up her fallen cloak and laid it over her arm.  It was made of billowy frills of Malines lace, such as only Vanderpoels could buy.  She looked down at the amazing thing and touched up the frills with her fingers as she whimsically smiled.