"It is not much of a neighbourhood, Betty," she said."You are too accustomed to livelier places to like it.""That is my reason for feeling that I shall like it.I don't think I could be called a lively person, and I rather hate lively places.""But you are accustomed--accustomed----" Rosy harked back uncertainly.
"I have been accustomed to wishing that I could come to you," said Betty."And now I am here."Lady Anstruthers laid a hand on her dress.
"I can't believe it! I can't believe it!" she breathed.
"You will believe it," said Betty, drawing the hand around her waist and enclosing in her own arm the narrow shoulders.
"Tell me about the neighbourhood."
"There isn't any, really," said Lady Anstruthers."The houses are so far away from each other.The nearest is six miles from here, and it is one that doesn't count.
"Why?"
"There is no family, and the man who owns it is so poor.
It is a big place, but it is falling to pieces as this is.
"What is it called?"
"Mount Dunstan.The present earl only succeeded about three years ago.Nigel doesn't know him.He is queer and not liked.
He has been away."
"Where?"
"No one knows.To Australia or somewhere.He has odd ideas.The Mount Dunstans have been awful people for two generations.This man's father was almost mad with wickedness.
So was the elder son.This is a second son, and he came into nothing but debt.Perhaps he feels the disgrace and it makes him rude and ill-tempered.His father and elder brother had been in such scandals that people did not invite them.
"Do they invite this man?"
"No.He probably would not go to their houses if they did.And he went away soon after he came into the title.""Is the place beautiful?"
"There is a fine deer park, and the gardens were wonderful a long time ago.The house is worth looking at--outside.""I will go and look at it," said Betty.
"The carriage is out of order.There is only Ughtred's cart.""I am a good walker," said Betty.
"Are you? It would be twelve miles--there and back.When I was in New York people didn't walk much, particularly girls.""They do now," Betty answered."They have learned to do it in England.They live out of doors and play games.
They have grown athletic and tall."
As they talked the nightingales sang, sometimes near, sometimes in the distance, and scents of dewy grass and leaves and earth were wafted towards them.Sometimes they strolled up and down the terrace, sometimes they paused and leaned against the stone balustrade.Betty allowed Rosy to talk as she chose.She herself asked no obviously leading questions and passed over trying moments with lightness.Her desire was to place herself in a position where she might hear the things which would aid her to draw conclusions.Lady Anstruthers gradually grew less nervous and afraid of her subjects.In the wonder of the luxury of talking to someone who listened with sympathy, she once or twice almost forgot herself and made revelations she had not intended to make.She had often the manner of a person who was afraid of being overheard;sometimes, even when she was making speeches quite simple in themselves, her voice dropped and she glanced furtively aside as if there were chances that something she dreaded might step out of the shadow.
When they went upstairs together and parted for the night, the clinging of Rosy's embrace was for a moment almost convulsive.
But she tried to laugh off its suggestion of intensity.
"I held you tight so that I could feel sure that you were real and would not melt away," she said."I hope you will be here in the morning.""I shall never really go quite away again, now I have come,"Betty answered."It is not only your house I have come into.
I have come back into your life."
After she had entered her room and locked the door she sat down and wrote a letter to her father.It was a long letter, but a clear one.She painted a definite and detailed picture and made distinct her chief point.
"She is afraid of me," she wrote."That is the first and worst obstacle.She is actually afraid that I will do something which will only add to her trouble.She has lived under dominion so long that she has forgotten that there are people who have no reason for fear.Her old life seems nothing but a dream.The first thing I must teach her is that I am to be trusted not to do futile things, and that she need neither be afraid of nor for me."After writing these sentences she found herself leaving her desk and walking up and down the room to relieve herself.
She could not sit still, because suddenly the blood ran fast and hot through her veins.She put her hands against her cheeks and laughed a little, low laugh.
"I feel violent," she said."I feel violent and I must get over it.This is rage.Rage is worth nothing."It was rage--the rage of splendid hot blood which surged in answer to leaping hot thoughts.There would have been a sort of luxury in giving way to the sway of it.But the self-indulgence would have been no aid to future action.Rage was worth nothing.She said it as the first Reuben Vanderpoel might have said of a useless but glittering weapon."This gun is worth nothing," and cast it aside.
