When she took part in the dancing on the lawn, he looked on delightedly.He walked about the gardens with her, and it was plain to see that their conversation was not the ordinary polite effort to accord, usually marking the talk between a mature man and a merely pretty girl.Lord Dunholm sometimes laughed with unfeigned delight, and sometimes the two seemed to talk of grave things.
"Such occasions as these are a sort of yearly taking of the social census of the county," Lord Dunholm explained."One invites ALL one's neighbours and is invited again.It is a friendly duty one owes.""I do not see Lord Mount Dunstan," Betty answered."Is he here?"She had never denied to herself her interest in Mount Dunstan, and she had looked for him.Lord Dunholm hesitated a second, as his son had done at Miss Vanderpoel's mention of the tabooed name.But, being an older man, he felt more at liberty to speak, and gave her a rather long kind look.
"My dear young lady," he said, "did you expect to see him here?""Yes, I think I did," Betty replied, with slow softness.
"I believe I rather hoped I should."
"Indeed! You are interested in him?"
"I know him very little.But I am interested.I will tell you why."She paused by a seat beneath a tree, and they sat down together.She gave, with a few swift vivid touches, a sketch of the red-haired second-class passenger on the Meridiana, of whom she had only thought that he was an unhappy, rough-looking young man, until the brief moment in which they had stood face to face, each comprehending that the other was to be relied on if the worst should come to the worst.She had understood his prompt disappearance from the scene, and had liked it.When she related the incident of her meeting with him when she thought him a mere keeper on his own lands, Lord Dunholm listened with a changed and thoughtful expression.The effect produced upon her imagination by what she had seen, her silent wandering through the sad beauty of the wronged place, led by the man who tried stiffly to bear himself as a servant, his unintended self-revelations, her clear, well-argued point of view charmed him.She had seen the thing set apart from its county scandal, and so had read possibilities others had been blind to.He was immensely touched by certain things she said about the First Man.
"He is one of them," she said."They find their way in the end--they find their way.But just now he thinks there is none.He is standing in the dark--where the roads meet.""You think he will find his way?" Lord Dunholm said.
"Why do you think so? "
"Because I KNOW he will," she answered."But I cannot tell you WHY I know.""What you have said has been interesting to me, because of the light your own thought threw upon what you saw.It has not been Mount Dunstan I have been caring for, but for the light you saw him in.You met him without prejudice, and you carried the light in your hand.You always carry a light, my impression is," very quietly."Some women do.""The prejudice you speak of must be a bitter thing for a proud man to bear.Is it a just prejudice? What has he done?"Lord Dunholm was gravely silent for a few moments.
"It is an extraordinary thing to reflect,"--his words came slowly--"that it may NOT be a just prejudice._I_ do not know that he has done anything--but seem rather sulky, and be the son of his father, and the brother of his brother.""And go to America," said Betty."He could have avoided doing that--but he cannot be called to account for his relations.
If that is all--the prejudice is NOT just.""No, it is not," said Lord Dunholm, "and one feels rather awkward at having shared it.You have set me thinking again, Miss Vanderpoel."