Yes, they had been a bad lot.He arranged to put a casual-sounding question or so to certain persons who knew English society well.What he gathered was not encouraging.The present Lord Mount Dunstan was considered rather a surly brute, and lived a mysterious sort of life which might cover many things.It was bad blood, and people were naturally shy of it.Of course, the man was a pauper, and his place a barrack falling to ruin.There had been something rather shady in his going to America or Australia a few years ago.
Good looking? Well, so few people had seen him.The lady, who was speaking, had heard that he was one of those big, rather lumpy men, and had an ill-tempered expression.She always gave a wide berth to a man who looked nasty-tempered.
One or two other persons who had spoken of him had conveyed to Mr.Vanderpoel about the same amount of vaguely unpromising information.The episode of G.Selden had been interesting enough, with its suggestions of picturesque contrasts and combinations.Betty's touch had made the junior salesman attracting.It was a good type this, of a young fellow who, battling with the discouragements of a hard life, still did not lose his amazing good cheer and patience, and found healthy sleep and honest waking, even in the hall bedroom.He had consented to Betty's request that he would see him, partly because he was inclined to like what he had heard, and partly for a reason which Betty did not suspect.
By extraordinary chance G.Selden had seen Mount Dunstan and his surroundings at close range.Mr.Vanderpoel had liked what he had gathered of Mount Dunstan's attitude towards a personality so singularly exotic to himself.Crude, uneducated, and slangy, the junior salesman was not in any degree a fool.
To an American father with a daughter like Betty, the summing-up of a normal, nice-natured, common young denizen of the United States, fresh from contact with the effete, might be subtly instructive, and well worth hearing, if it was unconsciously expressed.Mr.Vanderpoel thought he knew how, after he had overcome his visitor's first awkwardness--if he chanced to be self-conscious--he could lead him to talk.What he hoped to do was to make him forget himself and begin to talk to him as he had talked to Betty, to ingenuously reveal impressions and points of view.Young men of his clean, rudimentary type were very definite about the things they liked and disliked, and could be trusted to reveal admiration, or lack of it, without absolute intention or actual statement.
Being elemental and undismayed, they saw things cleared of the mists of social prejudice and modification.Yes, he felt he should be glad to hear of Lord Mount Dunstan and the Mount Dunstan estate from G.Selden in a happy moment of unawareness.
Why was it that it happened to be Mount Dunstan he was desirous to hear of? Well, the absolute reason for that he could not have explained, either.He had asked himself questions on the subject more than once.There was no well-founded reason, perhaps.If Betty's letters had spoken of Mount Dunstan and his home, they had also described Lord Westholt and Dunholm Castle.Of these two men she had certainly spoken more fully than of others.Of Mount Dunstan she had had more to relate through the incident of G.Selden.He smiled as he realised the importance of the figure of G.Selden.
It was Selden and his broken leg the two men had ridden over from Mount Dunstan to visit.But for Selden, Betty might not have met Mount Dunstan again.He was reason enough for all she had said.And yet----! Perhaps, between Betty and himself there existed the thing which impresses and communicates without words.Perhaps, because their affection was unusual, they realised each other's emotions.The half-defined anxiety he felt now was not a new thing, but he confessed to himself that it had been spurred a little by the letter the last steamer had brought him.It was NOT Lord Westholt, it definitely appeared.He had asked her to be his wife, and she had declined his proposal.
"I could not have LIKED a man any more without being in love with him," she wrote."I LIKE him more than I can say --so much, indeed, that I feel a little depressed by my certainty that I do not love him."If she had loved him, the whole matter would have been simplified.If the other man had drawn her, the thing would not be simple.Her father foresaw all the complications--and he did not want complications for Betty.Yet emotions were perverse and irresistible things, and the stronger the creature swayed by them, the more enormous their power.But, as he sat in his easy chair and thought over it all, the one feeling predominant in his mind was that nothing mattered but Betty--nothing really mattered but Betty.
In the meantime G.Selden was walking up Fifth Avenue, at once touched and exhilarated by the stir about him and his sense of home-coming.It was pretty good to be in little old New York again.The hurried pace of the life about him stimulated his young blood.There were no street cars in Fifth Avenue, but there were carriages, waggons, carts, motors, all pantingly hurried, and fretting and struggling when the crowded state of the thoroughfare held them back.The beautifully dressed women in the carriages wore no light air of being at leisure.It was evident that they were going to keep engagements, to do things, to achieve objects.
"Something doing.Something doing," was his cheerful self-congratulatory thought.He had spent his life in the midst of it, he liked it, and it welcomed him back.
The appointment he was on his way to keep thrilled him into an uplifted mood.Once or twice a half-nervous chuckle broke from him as he tried to realise that he had been given the chance which a year ago had seemed so impossible that its mere incredibleness had made it a natural subject for jokes.
He was going to call on Reuben S.Vanderpoel, and he was going because Reuben S.had made an appointment with him.