livery was not a sufficiently well-trained and experienced domestic to make any effort to keep his eyes from her.  He was young enough to be excited by an innovation so unusual as the presence of a young and beautiful person surrounded by an unmistakable atmosphere of ease and fearlessness.  He had been talking of her below stairs and felt that he had failed in describing her.  He had found himself barely supported by the suggestion of a housemaid that sometimes these dresses that looked plain had been made in Paris at expensive places and had cost “a lot.”  He furtively examined the dress which looked plain, and while he admitted that for some mysterious reason it might represent expensiveness, it was not the dress which was the secret of the effect, but a something, not altogether mere good looks, expressed by the wearer.  It was, in fact, the thing which the second-class passenger, Salter, had been at once attracted and stirred to rebellion by when Miss Vanderpoel came on board the Meridiana.

Betty did not look too small for her high-backed chair, and she did not forget herself when she talked.  In spite of all she had found, her imagination was stirred by the surroundings.  Her sense of the fine spaces and possibilities of dignity in the barren house, her knowledge that outside the windows there lay stretched broad views of the park and its heavy-branched trees, and that outside the gates stood the neglected picturesqueness of the village and all the rural and—­to her—­interesting life it slowly lived—­this pleased and attracted her.

If she had been as helpless and discouraged as Rosalie she could see that it would all have meant a totally different and depressing thing, but, strong and spirited, and with the power of full hands, she was remotely rejoicing in what might be done with it all.  As she talked she was gradually learning detail.  Sir Nigel was on the Continent.  Apparently he often went there; also it revealed itself that no one knew at what moment he might return, for what reason he would return, or if he would return at all during the summer.  It was evident that no one had been at any time encouraged to ask questions as to his intentions, or to feel that they had a right to do so.

This she knew, and a number of other things, before they left the table.  When they did so they went out to stroll upon the moss-grown stone terrace and listened to the nightingales throwing ’m into the air silver fountains of trilling song.  When Bettina paused, leaning against the balustrade of the terrace that she might hear all the beauty of it, and feel all the beauty of the warm spring night, Rosy went on making her effort to talk.

“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.