“If I was going to be anybody’s sister Emily,” said Betty, excited a little by the sense of the fray, “I shouldn’t want to be yours.”

“Now Betty, don’t be hateful,” interposed Rosalie, laughing, and her laugh was nervous.  “There’s Mina Thalberg coming up the front steps.  Go and meet her.”

Rosalie, poor girl, always found herself nervous when Sir Nigel and Betty were in the room together.  She instinctively recognised their antagonism and was afraid Betty would do something an English baronet would think vulgar.  Her simple brain could not have explained to her why it was that she knew Sir Nigel often thought New Yorkers vulgar.  She was, however, quite aware of this but imperfectly concealed fact, and felt a timid desire to be explanatory.

When Bettina marched out of the room with her extraordinary carriage finely manifest, Rosy’s little laugh was propitiatory.

“You mustn’t mind her,” she said.  “She’s a real splendid little thing, but she’s got a quick temper.  It’s all over in a minute.”

“They wouldn’t stand that sort of thing in England,” said Sir Nigel.  “She’s deucedly spoiled, you know.”

He detested the child.  He disliked all children, but this one awakened in him more than mere dislike.  The fact was that though Betty herself was wholly unconscious of the subtle truth, the as yet undeveloped intellect which later made her a brilliant and captivating personality, vaguely saw him as he was, an unscrupulous, sordid brute, as remorseless an adventurer and swindler in his special line, as if he had been engaged in drawing false cheques and arranging huge jewel robberies, instead of planning to entrap into a disadvantageous marriage a girl whose gentleness and fortune could be used by a blackguard of reputable name.  The man was cold-blooded enough to see that her gentle weakness was of value because it could be bullied, her money was to be counted on because it could be spent on himself and his degenerate vices and on his racked and ruined name and estate, which must be rebuilt and restocked at an early date by someone or other, lest they tumbled into ignominious collapse which could not be concealed.  Bettina of the accusing eyes did not know that in the depth of her yet crude young being, instinct was summing up for her the potentialities of an unusually fine specimen of the British blackguard, but this was nevertheless the interesting truth.  When later she was told that her sister had become engaged to Sir Nigel Anstruthers, a flame of colour flashed over her face, she stared silently a moment, then bit her lip and burst into tears.

“Well, Bett,” exclaimed Rosalie, “you are the queerest thing I ever saw.”

Bettina’s tears were an outburst, not a flow.  She swept them away passionately with her small handkerchief.

“He’ll do something awful to you,” she said.  “He’ll nearly kill you.  I know he will.  I’d rather be dead myself.”