These amazing, oddly practical people had evolved it-- planned it, perhaps, bought--figuratively speaking--the architects and material to design and build it--bought them in whatever country they found them, England, France, Italy Germany--pocketing them coolly and carrying them back home to develop, complete, and send forth into the world when their invention was a perfected thing.Struck by the humour of his fancy, Lord Dunholm found himself smiling into the Irish-blue eyes.They smiled back at him in a way which warmed his heart.There were no pauses in the conversation which followed.In times past, calls at Stornham had generally held painfully blank moments.Lady Dunholm was as pleased as her husband.A really charming girl was an enormous acquisition to the neighbourhood.
Westholt, his father saw, had found even more than the story of old Doby's pipe had prepared him to expect.
Country calls were not usually interesting or stimulating, and this one was.Lord Dunholm laid subtly brilliant plans to lead Miss Vanderpoel to talk of her native land and her views of it.He knew that she would say things worth hearing.
Incidentally one gathered picturesque detail.To have vibrated between the two continents since her thirteenth year, to have spent a few years at school in one country, a few years in another, and yet a few years more in still another, as part of an arranged educational plan; to have crossed the Atlantic for the holidays, and to have journeyed thousands of miles with her father in his private car; to make the visits of a man of great schemes to his possessions of mines, railroads, and lands which were almost principalities--these things had been merely details of her life, adding interest and variety, it was true, but seeming the merely normal outcome of existence.
They were normal to Vanderpoels and others of their class who were abnormalities in themselves when compared with the rest of the world.
Her own very lack of any abnormality reached, in Lord Dunholm's mind, the highest point of illustration of the phase of life she beautifully represented--for beautiful he felt its rare charms were.
When they strolled out to look at the gardens he found talk with her no less a stimulating thing.She told her story of Kedgers, and showed the chosen spot where thickets of lilies were to bloom, with the giants lifting white archangel trumpets above them in the centre.
"He can be trusted," she said."I feel sure he can be trusted.He loves them.He could not love them so much and not be able to take care of them." And as she looked at him in frank appeal for sympathy, Lord Dunholm felt that for the moment she looked like a tall, queenly child.
But pleased as he was, he presently gave up his place at her side to Westholt.He must not be a selfish old fellow and monopolise her.He hoped they would see each other often, he said charmingly.He thought she would be sure to like Dunholm, which was really a thoroughly English old place, marked by all the features she seemed so much attracted by.There were some beautiful relics of the past there, and some rather shocking ones--certain dungeons, for instance, and a gallows mount, on which in good old times the family gallows had stood.This had apparently been a working adjunct to the domestic arrangements of every respectable family, and that irritating persons should dangle from it had been a simple domestic necessity, if one were to believe old stories.
"It was then that nobles were regarded with respect," he said, with his fine smile."In the days when a man appeared with clang of arms and with javelins and spears before, and donjon keeps in the background, the attitude of bent knees and awful reverence were the inevitable results.When one could hang a servant on one's own private gallows, or chop off his hand for irreverence or disobedience--obedience and reverence were a rule.Now, a month's notice is the extremity of punishment, and the old pomp of armed servitors suggests comic opera.But we can show you relics of it at Dunholm."He joined his wife and began at once to make himself so delightful to Rosy that she ceased to be afraid of him, and ended by talking almost gaily of her London visit.
Betty and Westholt walked together.The afternoon being lovely, they had all sauntered into the park to look at certain views, and the sun was shining between the trees.Betty thought the young man almost as charming as his father, which was saying much.She had fallen wholly in love with Lord Dunholm--with his handsome, elderly face, his voice, his erect bearing, his fine smile, his attraction of manner, his courteous ease and wit.He was one of the men who stood for the best of all they had been born to represent.
Her own father, she felt, stood for the best of all such an American as himself should be.Lord Westholt would in time be what his father was.He had inherited from him good looks, good feeling, and a sense of humour.Yes, he had been given from the outset all that the other man had been denied.
She was thinking of Mount Dunstan as "the other man," and spoke of him.
"You know Lord Mount Dunstan?" she said.
Westholt hesitated slightly.
"Yes--and no," he answered, after the hesitation."No one knows him very well.You have not met him?" with a touch of surprise in his tone.
"He was a passenger on the Meridiana when I last crossed the Atlantic.There was a slight accident and we were thrown together for a few moments.Afterwards I met him by chance again.I did not know who he was."Lord Westholt showed signs of hesitation anew.In fact, he was rather disturbed.She evidently did not know anything whatever of the Mount Dunstans.She would not be likely to hear the details of the scandal which had obliterated them, as it were, from the decent world.
The present man, though he had not openly been mixed up with the hideous thing, had borne the brand because he had not proved himself to possess any qualities likely to recommend him.It was generally understood that he was a bad lot also.