w," she broke forth at last, trying to make her voice
heard in the storm. "I never understood. I knew something made you
hate me, but I didn't know you were angry about money." She laughed
tremulously and wildly. "I would have given it to you--father would have
given you some--if you had been good to me." The laugh became hysterical
beyond her management. Peal after peal broke from her, she shook all
over with her ghastly merriment, sobbing at one and the same time.

"Oh! oh! oh!" she shrieked. "You see, I thought you were so
aristocratic. I wouldn't have dared to think of such a thing. I thought
an English gentleman--an English gentleman--oh! oh! to think it was
all because I did not give you money--just common dollars and cents
that--that I daren't offer to a decent American who could work for
himself."

Sir Nigel sprang at her. He struck her with his open hand upon the
cheek, and as she reeled she held up her small, feverish, shaking hand,
laughing more wildly than before.

"You ought not to strike me," she cried. "You oughtn't! You don't know
how valuable I am. Perhaps----" with a little, crazy scream--"perhaps I
might have a son."

She fell in a shuddering heap, and as she dropped she struck heavily
against the protruding end of an oak chest and lay upon the floor, her
arms flung out and limp, as if she were a dead thing.

CHAPTER V

ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC

In the course of twelve years the Shuttle had woven steadily and--its
movements lubricated by time and custom--with increasing rapidity.
Threads of commerce it caught up and shot to and fro, with threads of
literature and art, threads of life drawn from one shore to the other
and back again, until they were bound in the fabric of its weaving.
Coldness there had been between both lands, broad divergence of taste
and thought, argument across seas, sometimes resentment, but the web in
Fate's hands broadened and strengthened and held fast. Coldness faintly
warmed despite itself, taste and thought drawn into nearer contact,
reflecting upon their divergences, grew into tolerance and the knowledge
that the diverging, seen more clearly, was not so broad; argument
coming within speaking distance reasoned itself to logical and practical
conclusions. Problems which had stirred anger began to find solutions.
Books, in the first place, did perhaps more than all else. Cheap,
pirated editions of English works, much quarrelled over by authors and
publisher