Chapter XXXIII. For Lady Jane

The Shuttle

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

There is no one thing on earth of such interest as the study of
the laws of temperament, which impel, support, or entrap into folly
and danger the being they rule. As a child, not old enough to give a
definite name to the thing she watched and pondered on, in child
fashion, Bettina Vanderpoel had thought much on this subject. As she
had grown older, she had never been ignorant of the workings of her
own temperament, and she had looked on for years at the laws which
had wrought in her father's being--the laws of strength, executive
capacity, and that pleasure in great schemes, which is roused less
by a desire for gain than for a strongly-felt necessity for action,
resulting in success. She mentally followed other people on their
way, sometimes asking herself how far the individual was to be
praised or blamed for his treading of the path he seemed to choose.
And now there was given her the opportunity to study the workings of
the nature of Nigel Anstruthers, which was a curious thing.

He was not an individual to be envied. Never was man more
tormented by lack of power to control his special devil, at the right
moment of time, and therefore, never was there one so inevitably his
own frustration. This Betty saw after the passing of but a few days,
and wondered how far he was conscious or unconscious of the thing.
At times it appeared to her that he was in a state of unrest--that he
was as a man wavering between lines of action, swayed at one moment
by one thought, at another by an idea quite different, and that he
was harried because he could not hold his own with himself.

This was true. The ball at Dunholm Castle had been
enlightening, and had wrought some changes in his points of view.
Also other factors had influenced him. In the first place, the
changed atmosphere of Stornham, the fitness and luxury of his
surroundings, the new dignity given to his position by the altered
aspect of things, rendered external amiability more easy. To ride
about the country on a good horse, or drive in a smart phaeton, or
suitable carriage, and to find that people who a year ago had passed
him with the merest recognition, saluted him with polite intention,
was, to a certain degree, stimulating to a vanity which had been long
ill-fed. The power which produced these results should, of course,
have been in his own hands--his money-making father- in-law should
have seen that it was his affair to provide for that--but since he
had not done so, it was rather entertaining that it should be, for
the present, in the hands of this extraordinarily good-looking
girl.

He had begun by merely thinking of her in this manner-- as "this
extraordinarily good-looking girl," and had not, for a moment,
hesitated before the edifying idea of its not being impossible to
arrange a lively flirtation with her. She was at an age when, in his
opinion, girlhood was poised for flight with adventure, and his
tastes had not led him in the direction of youth which was
fastidious. His Riviera episode had left his vanity blistered and
requiring some soothing application. His life had worked evil with
him, and he had fallen ill on the hands of a woman who had treated
him as a shattered, useless thing whose day was done and with whom
strength and bloom could not be burdened. He had kept his illness a
hidden secret, on his return to Stornham, his one desire having been
to forget--even to disbelieve in it, but dreams of its suggestion
sometimes awakened him at night with shudders and cold sweat. He was
hideously afraid of death and pain, and he had had monstrous
pain--and while he had lain battling with it, upon his bed in the
villa on the Mediterranean, he had been able to hear, in the garden
outside, the low voices and laughter of the Spanish dancer and the
healthy, strong young fool who was her new adorer.

When he had found himself face to face with Betty in the avenue,
after the first leap of annoyance, which had suddenly died down into
perversely interested curiosity, he could have laughed outright at
the novelty and odd unexpectedness of the situation. The
ill-mannered, impudently-staring, little New York beast had developed
into this! Hang it! No man could guess what the embryo female
creature might result in. His mere shakiness of physical condition
added strength to her attraction. She was like a young goddess of
health and life and fire; the very spring of her firm foot upon the
moss beneath it was a stimulating thing to a man whose nerves sprung
secret fears upon him. There were sparks between the sweep of her
lashes, but she managed to carry herself with the air of being as
cool as a cucumber, which gave spice to the effort to "upset" her.
If she did not prove suitably amenable, there would be piquancy in
getting the better of her --in stirring up unpleasant little things,
which would make it easier for her to go away than remain on the
spot--if one should end by choosing to get rid of her. But, for the
moment, he had no desire to get rid of her. He wanted to see what
she intended to do--to see the thing out, in fact. It amused him to
hear that Mount Dunstan was on her track. There exists for persons
of a certain type a pleasure full-fed by the mere sense of having
"got even" with an opponent. Throughout his life he had made a point
of "getting even" with those who had irritatingly crossed his path,
or much disliked him. The working out of small or large plans to
achieve this end had formed one of his most agreeable recreations.
He had long owed Mount Dunstan a debt, which he had always meant to
pay. He had not intended to forget the episode of the nice little
village girl with whom Tenham and himself had been getting along so
enormously well, when the raging young ass had found them out, and
made an absurdly exaggerated scene, even going so far as threatening
to smash the pair of them, marching off to the father and mother, and
setting the vicar on, and then scratching together--God knows
how--money enough to pack the lot off to America, where they had
since done well. Why should a man forgive another who had made him
look like a schoolboy and a fool? So, to find Mount Dunstan rushing
down a steep hill into this thing, was edifying. You cannot take
much out of a man if you never encounter him. If you meet him, you
are provided by Heaven with opportunities. You can find out what he
feels most sharply, and what he will suffer most by being deprived
of. His impression was that there was a good deal to be got out of
Mount Dunstan. He was an obstinate, haughty devil, and just the
fellow to conceal with a fury of pride a score of tender places in
his hide.

At the ball he had seen that the girl's effect had been of a
kind which even money and good looks uncombined with another thing
might not have produced. And she had the other thing--whatsoever it
might be. He observed the way in which the Dunholms met and greeted
her, he marked the glance of the royal personage, and his manner,
when after her presentation he conversed with and detained her, he
saw the turning of heads and exchange of remarks as she moved through
the rooms. Most especially, he took in the bearing of the very grand
old ladies, led by Lady Alanby of Dole. Barriers had thrown
themselves down, these portentous, rigorous old pussycats admired
her, even liked her.

"Upon my word," he said to himself. "She has a way with her,
you know. She is a combination of Ethel Newcome and Becky Sharp.
But she is more level-headed than either of them, There's a touch of
Trix Esmond, too."

The sense of the success which followed her, and the gradually-
growing excitement of looking on at her light whirls of dance, the
carnation of her cheek, and the laughter and pleasure she drew about
her, had affected him in a way by which he was secretly a little
exhilarated. He was conscious of a rash desire to force his way
through these laughing, vaunting young idiots, juggle or snatch their
dances away from them, and seize on the girl himself. He had not for
so long a time been impelled by such agreeable folly that he had
sometimes felt the stab of the thought that he was past it. That it
should rise in him again made him feel young. There was nothing
which so irritated him against Mount Dunstan as his own rebelling
recognition of the man's youth, the strength of his fine body, his
high-held head and clear eye.

These things and others it was which swayed him, as was plain to
Betty in the time which followed, to many changes of mood.

"Are you sorry for a man who is ill and depressed," he asked one
day, "or do you despise him?"

"I am sorry."

"Then be sorry for me."

He had come out of the house to her as she sat on the lawn,
under a broad, level-branched tree, and had thrown himself upon a rug
with his hands clasped behind his head.

"Are you ill?"

"When I was on the Riviera I had a fall." He lied simply. "I
strained some muscle or other, and it has left me rather lame.
Sometimes I have a good deal of pain."

"I am very sorry," said Betty. "Very."

A woman who can be made sorry it is rarely impossible to manage.
To dwell with pathetic patience on your grievances, if she is weak
and unintelligent, to deplore, with honest regret, your faults and
blunders, if she is strong, are not bad ideas.

He looked at her reflectively.

"Yes, you are capable of being sorry," he decided. For a few
moments of silence his eyes rested upon the view spread before him.
To give the expression of dignified reflection was not a bad idea
either.

"Do you know," he said at length, "that you produce an
extraordinary effect upon me, Betty?"

She was occupying herself by adding a few stitches to one of
Rosy's ancient strips of embroidery, and as she answered, she laid it
flat upon her knee to consider its effect

"Good or bad?" she inquired, with delicate abstraction.

He turned his face towards her again--this time quickly.

"Both," he answered. "Both."

His tone held the flash of a heat which he felt should have
startled her slightly. But apparently it did not.

"I do not like `both,' " with composed lightness. "If you had
said that you felt yourself develop angelic qualities when you were
near me, I should feel flattered, and swell with pride. But `both'
leaves me unsatisfied. It interferes with the happy little conceit
that one is an all-pervading, beneficent power. One likes to
contemplate a large picture of one's self-- not plain, but
coloured--as a wholesale reformer."

"I see. Thank you," stiffly and flushing. "You do not believe
me."

Her effect upon him was such that, for the moment, he found
himself choosing to believe that he was in earnest. His desire to
impress her with his mood had actually led to this result. She ought
to have been rather moved--a little fluttered, perhaps, at hearing
that she disturbed his equilibrium.

"You set yourself against me, as a child, Betty," he said. "And
you set yourself against me now. You will not give me fair play.
You might give me fair play." He dropped his voice at the last
sentence, and knew it was well done. A touch of hopelessness is not
often lost on a woman.

"What would you consider fair play?" she inquired.

"It would be fair to listen to me without prejudice--to let me
explain how it has happened that I have appeared to you a--a
blackguard--I have no doubt you would call it--and a fool." He threw
out his hand in an impatient gesture--impatient of himself--his
fate--the tricks of bad fortune which it implied had made of him a
more erring mortal than he would have been if left to himself, and
treated decently.

"Do not put it so strongly," with conservative politeness.

"I don't refuse to admit that I am handicapped by a devil of a
temperament. That is an inherited thing."

"Ah!" said Betty. "One of the temperaments one reads about--for
which no one is to be blamed but one's deceased relatives. After
all, that is comparatively easy to deal with. One can just go on
doing what one wants to do--and then condemn one's grandparents
severely."

A repellent quality in her--which had also the trick of
transforming itself into an exasperating attraction--was that she
deprived him of the luxury he had been most tenacious of throughout
his existence. If the injustice of fate has failed to bestow upon a
man fortune, good looks or brilliance, his exercise of the power to
disturb, to enrage those who dare not resent, to wound and take the
nonsense out of those about him, will, at all events, preclude the
possibility of his being passed over as a factor not to be
considered. If to charm and bestow gives the sense of power, to
thwart and humiliate may be found not wholly unsatisfying.

But in her case the inadequacy of the usual methods had forced
itself upon him. It was as if the dart being aimed at her, she
caught it in her hand in its flight, broke off its point and threw it
lightly aside without comment. Most women cannot resist the
temptation to answer a speech containing a sting or a reproach. It
was part of her abnormality that she could let such things go by in a
detached silence, which did not express even the germ of comment or
opinion upon them. This, he said, was the result of her beastly
sense of security, which, in its turn, was the result of the
atmosphere of wealth she had breathed since her birth. There had
been no obstacle which could not be removed for her, no law of
limitation had laid its rein on her neck. She had not been taught by
her existence the importance of propitiating opinion. Under such
conditions, how was fear to be learned? She had not learned it. But
for the devil in the blue between her lashes, he realised that he
should have broken loose long ago.

"I suppose I deserved that for making a stupid appeal to
sympathy," he remarked. "I will not do it again."

If she had been the woman who can be gently goaded into reply,
she would have made answer to this. But she allowed the observation
to pass, giving it free flight into space, where it lost itself after
the annoying manner of its kind.

"Have you any objection to telling me why you decided to come to
England this year?" he inquired, with a casual air, after the pause
which she did not fill in.

The bluntness of the question did not seem to disturb her. She
was not sorry, in fact, that he had asked it. She let her work lie
upon her knee, and leaned back in her low garden chair, her hands
resting upon its wicker arms. She turned on him a clear unprejudiced
gaze.

"I came to see Rosy. I have always been very fond of her. I
did not believe that she had forgotten how much we had loved her, or
how much she had loved us. I knew that if I could see her again I
should understand why she had seemed to forget us."

"And when you saw her, you, of course, decided that I had
behaved, to quote my own words--like a blackguard and a fool."

"It is, of course, very rude to say you have behaved like a
fool, but--if you'll excuse my saying so--that is what has impressed
me very much. Don't you know," with a moderation, which singularly
drove itself home, "that if you had been kind to her, and had made
her happy, you could have had anything you wished for--without
trouble?"

This was one of the unadorned facts which are like bullets.
Disgustedly, he found himself veering towards an outlook which forced
him to admit that there was probably truth in what she said, and he
knew he heard more truth as she went on.

"She would have wanted only what you wanted, and she would not
have asked much in return. She would not have asked as much as I
should. What you did was not business- like." She paused a moment
to give thought to it. "You paid too high a price for the luxury of
indulging the inherited temperament. Your luxury was not to control
it. But it was a bad investment."

"The figure of speech is rather commercial," coldly.

"It is curious that most things are, as a rule. There is always
the parallel of profit and loss whether one sees it or not. The
profits are happiness and friendship--enjoyment of life and
approbation. If the inherited temperament supplies one with all one
wants of such things, it cannot be called a loss, of course."

"You think, however, that mine has not brought me much?"

"I do not know. It is you who know."

"Well," viciously, "there has been a sort of luxury in it in
lashing out with one's heels, and smashing things--and in knowing
that people prefer to keep clear."

She lifted her shoulders a little.

"Then perhaps it has paid."

"No," suddenly and fiercely, "damn it, it has not!"

And she actually made no reply to that.

"What do you mean to do?" he questioned as bluntly as before.
He knew she would understand what he meant.

"Not much. To see that Rosy is not unhappy any more. We can
prevent that. She was out of repair--as the house was. She is being
rebuilt and decorated. She knows that she will be taken care of."

"I know her better than you do," with a laugh. "She will not go
away. She is too frightened of the row it would make-- of what I
should say. I should have plenty to say. I can make her shake in
her shoes."

Betty let her eyes rest full upon him, and he saw that she was
softly summing him up--quite without prejudice, merely in interested
speculation upon the workings of type.

"You are letting the inherited temperament run away with you at
this moment," she reflected aloud--her quiet scrutiny almost
abstracted. "It was foolish to say that."

He had known it was foolish two seconds after the words had left
his lips. But a temper which has been allowed to leap hedges,
unchecked throughout life, is in peril of forming a habit of taking
them even at such times as a leap may land its owner in a ditch.
This last was what her interested eyes were obviously saying. It
suited him best at the moment to try to laugh.

"Don't look at me like that," he threw off. "As if you were
calculating that two and two make four."

"No prejudice of mine can induce them to make five or six--or
three and a half," she said. "No prejudice of mine-- or of
yours."

The two and two she was calculating with were the likelihoods
and unlikelihoods of the inherited temperament, and the practical
powers she could absolutely count on if difficulty arose with regard
to Rosy.

He guessed at this, and began to make calculations himself.

But there was no further conversation for them, as they were
obliged to rise to their feet to receive visitors. Lady Alanby of
Dole and Sir Thomas, her grandson, were being brought out of the
house to them by Rosalie.

He went forward to meet them--his manner that of the graceful
host. Lady Alanby, having been welcomed by him, and led to the most
comfortable, tree-shaded chair, found his bearing so elegantly
chastened that she gazed at him with private curiosity. To her
far-seeing and highly experienced old mind it seemed the bearing of a
man who was "up to something." What special thing did he chance to
be "up to"? His glance certainly lurked after Miss Vanderpoel oddly.
Was he falling in unholy love with the girl, under his stupid little
wife's very nose?

She could not, however, give her undivided attention to him, as
she wished to keep her eye on her grandson and--outrageously enough
fit happened that just as tea was brought out and Tommy was beginning
to cheer up and quite come out a little under the spur of the
activities of handing bread and butter and cress sandwiches, who
should appear but the two Lithcom girls, escorted by their aunt, Mrs.
Manners, with whom they lived. As they were orphans without money,
if the Manners, who were rather well off, had not taken them in, they
would have had to go to the workhouse, or into genteel amateur shops,
as they were not clever enough for governesses.

Mary, with her turned-up nose, looked just about as usual, but
Jane had a new frock on which was exactly the colour of the big,
appealing eyes, with their trick of following people about. She
looked a little pale and pathetic, which somehow gave her a specious
air of being pretty, which she really was not at all. The swaying
young thinness of those very slight girls whose soft summer muslins
make them look like delicate bags tied in the middle with fluttering
ribbons, has almost invariably a foolish attraction for burly young
men whose characters are chiefly marked by lack of forethought, and
Lady Alanby saw Tommy's robust young body give a sort of jerk as the
party of three was brought across the grass. After it he pulled
himself together hastily, and looked stiff and pink, shaking hands as
if his elbow joint was out of order, being at once too loose and too
rigid. He began to be clumsy with the bread and butter, and, ceasing
his talk with Miss Vanderpoel, fell into silence. Why should he go
on talking? he thought. Miss Vanderpoel was a cracking handsome
girl, but she was too clever for him, and he had to think of all
sorts of new things to say when he talked to her. And-- well, a
fellow could never imagine himself stretched out on the grass,
puffing happily away at a pipe, with a girl like that sitting near
him, smiling--the hot turf smelling almost like hay, the hot blue sky
curving overhead, and both the girl and himself perfectly
happy--chock full of joy--though neither of them were saying anything
at all. You could imagine it with some girls--you did imagine it
when you wakened early on a summer morning, and lay in luxurious
stillness listening to the birds singing like mad.

Lady Jane was a nicely-behaved girl, and she tried to keep her
following blue eyes fixed on the grass, or on Lady Anstruthers, or
Miss Vanderpoel, but there was something like a string, which
sometimes pulled them in another direction, and once when this had
happened--quite against her will--she was terrified to find Lady
Alanby's glass lifted and fixed upon her.

As Lady Alanby's opinion of Mrs. Manners was but a poor one, and
as Mrs. Manners was stricken dumb by her combined dislike and awe of
Lady Alanby, a slight stiffness might have settled upon the gathering
if Betty had not made an effort. She applied herself to Lady Alanby
and Mrs. Manners at once, and ended by making them talk to each
other. When they left the tea table under the trees to look at the
gardens, she walked between them, playing upon the primeval
horticultural passions which dominate the existence of all
respectable and normal country ladies, until the gulf between them
was temporarily bridged. This being achieved, she adroitly passed
them over to Lady Anstruthers, who, Nigel observed with some
curiosity, accepted the casual responsibility without manifest
discomfiture.

To the aching Tommy the manner in which, a few minutes later, he
found himself standing alone with Jane Lithcom in a path of clipped
laurels was almost bewilderingly simple. At the end of the laurel
walk was a pretty peep of the country, and Miss Vanderpoel had
brought him to see it. Nigel Anstruthers had been loitering behind
with Jane and Mary. As Miss Vanderpoel turned with him into the
path, she stooped and picked a blossom from a clump of speedwell
growing at the foot of a bit of wall.

"Lady Jane's eyes are just the colour of this flower," she
said.

"Yes, they are," he answered, glancing down at the lovely little
blue thing as she held it in her hand. And then, with a thump of the
heart, "Most people do not think she is pretty, but I--" quite
desperately--"I do." His mood had become rash.

"So do I," Betty Vanderpoel answered.

Then the others joined them, and Miss Vanderpoel paused to talk
a little--and when they went on she was with Mary and Nigel
Anstruthers, and he was with Jane, walking slowly, and somehow the
others melted away, turning in a perfectly natural manner into a side
path. Their own slow pace became slower. In fact, in a few moments,
they were standing quite still between the green walls. Jane turned
a little aside, and picked off some small leaves, nervously. He saw
the muslin on her chest lift quiveringly.

"Oh, little Jane!" he said in a big, shaky whisper. The
following eyes incontinently brimmed over. Some shining drops fell
on the softness of the blue muslin.

"Oh, Tommy," giving up, "it's no use--talking at all."

"You mustn't think--you mustn't think--anything," he falteringly
commanded, drawing nearer, because it was impossible not to do it.

What he really meant, though he did not know how decorously to
say it, was that she must not think that he could be moved by any
tall beauty, towards the splendour of whose possessions his revered
grandmother might be driving him.

"I am not thinking anything," cried Jane in answer. "But she is
everything, and I am nothing. Just look at her--and then look at me,
Tommy."

"I'll look at you as long as you'll let me," gulped Tommy, and
he was boy enough and man enough to put a hand on each of her
shoulders, and drown his longing in her brimming eyes.

  .  .  .  .  .

Mary and Miss Vanderpoel were
talking with a curious intimacy, in another part of the garden, where
they were together alone, Sir Nigel having been reattached to Lady
Alanby.

"You have known Sir Thomas a long time?" Betty had just said.

"Since we were children. Jane reminded me at the Dunholms' ball
that she had played cricket with him when she was eight."

"They have always liked each other?" Miss Vanderpoel
suggested.

Mary looked up at her, and the meeting of their eyes was frank
to revelation. But for the clear girlish liking for herself she saw
in Betty Vanderpoel's, Mary would have known her next speech to be of
imbecile bluntness. She had heard that Americans often had a queer,
delightful understanding of unconventional things. This splendid
girl was understanding her.

"Oh! You see!" she broke out. "You left them together on
purpose!"

"Yes, I did." And there was a comprehension so deep in her look
that Mary knew it was deeper than her own, and somehow founded on
some subtler feeling than her own. "When two people want so
much--care so much to be together," Miss Vanderpoel added quite
slowly--even as if the words rather forced themselves from her, "it
seems as if the whole world ought to help them--everything in the
world-- the very wind, and rain, and sun, and stars--oh, things have
no right to keep them apart."

Mary stared at her, moved and fascinated. She scarcely knew
that she caught at her hand.

"I have never been in the state that Jane is," she poured forth.
"And I can't understand how she can be such a fool, but--but we care
about each other more than most girls do-- perhaps because we have
had no people. And it's the kind of thing there is no use talking
against, it seems. It's killing the youngness in her. If it ends
miserably, it will be as if she had had an illness, and got up from
it a faded, done-for spinster with a stretch of hideous years to
live. Her blue eyes will look like boiled gooseberries, because she
will have cried all the colour out of them. Oh! You understand! I
see you do."

Before she had finished both Miss Vanderpoel's hands were
holding hers.

"I do! I do," she said. And she did, as a year ago she had not
known she could. "Is it Lady Alanby?" she ventured.

"Yes. Tommy will be helplessly poor if she does not leave him
her money. And she won't if he makes her angry. She is very
determined. She will leave it to an awful cousin if she gets in a
rage. And Tommy is not clever. He could never earn his living.
Neither could Jane. They could never marry. You can't defy
relatives, and marry on nothing, unless you are a character in a
book."

"Has she liked Lady Jane in the past?" Miss Vanderpoel asked, as
if she was, mentally, rapidly going over the ground, that she might
quite comprehend everything.

"Yes. She used to make rather a pet of her. She didn't like
me. She was taken by Jane's meek, attentive, obedient ways. Jane
was born a sweet little affectionate worm. Lady Alanby can't hate
her, even now. She just pushes her out of her path."

"Because?" said Betty Vanderpoel.

Mary prefaced her answer with a brief, half-embarrassed
laugh.

"Because of you."

"Because she thinks----?"

"I don't see how she can believe he has much of a chance. I
don't think she does--but she will never forgive him if he doesn't
make a try at finding out whether he has one or not."

"It is very businesslike," Betty made observation.

Mary laughed.

"We talk of American business outlook," she said, "but very few
of us English people are dreamy idealists. We are of a coolness and
a daring--when we are dealing with questions of this sort. I don't
think you can know the thing you have brought here. You descend on a
dull country place, with your money and your looks, and you simply
stay and amuse yourself by doing extraordinary things, as if there
was no London waiting for you. Everyone knows this won't last. Next
season you will be presented, and have a huge success. You will be
whirled about in a vortex, and people will sit on the edge, and cast
big strong lines, baited with the most glittering things they can get
together. You won't be able to get away. Lady Alanby knows there
would be no chance for Tommy then. It would be too idiotic to expect
it. He must make his try now."

Their eyes met again, and Miss Vanderpoel looked neither shocked
nor angry, but an odd small shadow swept across her face. Mary, of
course, did not know that she was thinking of the thing she had
realised so often--that it was not easy to detach one's self from the
fact that one was Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughter. As a result of it
here one was indecently and unwillingly disturbing the lives of
innocent, unassuming lovers.

"And so long as Sir Thomas has not tried--and found out-- Lady
Jane will be made unhappy?"

"If he were to let you escape without trying, he would not be
forgiven. His grandmother has had her own way all her life."

"But suppose after I went away someone else came?"

Mary shook her head.

"People like you don't happen in one neighbourhood twice in a
lifetime. I am twenty-six and you are the first I have seen."

"And he will only be safe if?"

Mary Lithcom nodded.

"Yes--if," she answered. "It's silly--and frightful--but it is
true."

Miss Vanderpoel looked down on the grass a few moments, and then
seemed to arrive at a decision.

"He likes you? You can make him understand things?" she
inquired.

"Yes."

"Then go and tell him that if he will come here and ask me a
direct question, I will give him a direct answer--which will satisfy
Lady Alanby."

Lady Mary caught her breath.

"Do you know, you are the most wonderful girl I ever saw!" she
exclaimed. "But if you only knew what I feel about Janie!" And
tears rushed into her eyes.

"I feel just the same thing about my sister," said Miss
Vanderpoel. "I think Rosy and Lady Jane are rather alike."

  .  .  .  .  .

When Tommy tramped across the grass
towards her he was turning red and white by turns, and looking
somewhat like a young man who was being marched up to a cannon's
mouth. It struck him that it was an American kind of thing he was
called upon to do, and he was not an American, but British from the
top of his closely-cropped head to the rather thick soles of his
boots. He was, in truth, overwhelmed by his sense of his inadequacy
to the demands of the brilliantly conceived, but unheard-of
situation. Joy and terror swept over his being in waves.

The tall, proud, wood-nymph look of her as she stood under a
tree, waiting for him, would have struck his courage dead on the spot
and caused him to turn and flee in anguish, if she had not made a
little move towards him, with a heavenly, every-day humanness in her
eyes. The way she managed it was an amazing thing. He could never
have managed it at all himself.

She came forward and gave him her hand, and really it was her
hand which held his own comparatively steady.

"It is for Lady Jane," she said. "That prevents it from being
ridiculous or improper. It is for Lady Jane. Her eyes," with a
soft-touched laugh, "are the colour of the blue speedwell I showed
you. It is the colour of babies' eyes. And hers look as theirs
do--as if they asked everybody not to hurt them."

He actually fell upon his knee, and bending his head over her
hand, kissed it half a dozen times with adoration. Good Lord, how
she saw and knew!

"If Jane were not Jane, and you were not you," the words rushed
from him, "it would be the most outrageous--the most impudent thing a
man ever had the cheek to do."

"But it is not." She did not draw her hand away, and oh, the
girlish kindness of her smiling, supporting look. "You came to ask
me if----"

"If you would marry me, Miss Vanderpoel," his head bending over
her hand again. "I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon. Oh Lord, I
do.'

"I thank you for the compliment you pay me," she answered. "I
like you very much, Sir Thomas--and I like you just now more than
ever--but I could not marry you. I should not make you happy, and I
should not be happy myself. The truth is----" thinking a moment,
"each of us really belongs to a different kind of person.

And each of knows the fact."

"God bless you," he said. "I think you know everything in the
world a woman can know--and remain an angel."

It was an outburst of eloquence, and she took it in the
prettiest way--with the prettiest laugh, which had in it no touch of
mockery or disbelief in him.

"What I have said is quite final--if Lady Alanby should
inquire," she said--adding rather quickly, "Someone is coming."

It pleased her to see that he did not hurry to his feet
clumsily, but even stood upright, with a shade of boyish dignity, and
did not release her hand before he had bent his head low over it
again.

Sir Nigel was bringing with him Lady Alanby, Mrs. Manners, and
his wife, and when Betty met his eyes, she knew at once that he had
not made his way to this particular garden without intention. He had
discovered that she was with Tommy, and it had entertained him to
break in upon them.

"I did not intend to interrupt Sir Thomas at his devotions," he
remarked to her after dinner. "Accept my apologies."

"It did not matter in the least, thank you," said Betty.

  .  .  .  .  .

"I am glad to be able to say,
Thomas, that you did not look an entire fool when you got up from
your knees, as we came into the rose garden." Thus Lady Alanby, as
their carriage turned out of Stornham village.

"I'm glad myself," Tommy answered.

"What were you doing there? Even if you were asking her to
marry you, it was not necessary to go that far. We are not in the
seventeenth century.

Then Tommy flushed.

"I did not intend to do it. I could not help it. She was
so--so nice about everything. That girl is an angel. I told her
so."

"Very right and proper spirit to approach her in," answered the
old woman, watching him keenly. "Was she angel enough to say she
would marry you?"

Tommy, for some occult reason, had the courage to stare back
into his grandmother's eyes, quite as if he were a man, and not a
hobbledehoy, expecting to be bullied.

"She does not want me," he answered. "And I knew she wouldn't.
Why should she? I did what you ordered me to do, and she answered me
as I knew she would. She might have snubbed me, but she has such a
way with her--such a way of saying things and understanding,
that--that--well, I found myself on one knee, kissing her hand--as if
I was being presented at court."

Old Lady Alanby looked out on the passing landscape.

"Well, you did your best," she summed the matter up at last, "if
you went down on your knees involuntarily. If you had done it on
purpose, it would have been unpardonable."