hetic and sweet.

"He is not a pretty child," sighed Mrs. Vanderpoel. "I should have
thought Rosy would have had pretty babies. Ughtred is more like his
father than his mother."

She spoke to her husband later, of what Betty had said.

"What do you think she has in her mind, Reuben?" she asked.

"What Betty has in her mind is usually good sense," was his response.
"She will begin to talk to me about it presently. I shall not ask
questions yet. She is probably thinking: things over."

She was, in truth, thinking things over, as she had been doing for some
time. She had asked questions on several occasions of English people she
had met abroad. But a schoolgirl cannot ask many questions, and though
she had once met someone who knew Sir Nigel Anstruthers, it was a person
who did not know him well, for the reason that she had not desired
to increase her slight acquaintance. This lady was the aunt of one
of Bettina's fellow pupils, and she was not aware of the girl's
relationship to Sir Nigel. What Betty gathered was that her
brother-in-law was regarded as a decidedly bad lot, that since his
marriage to some American girl he had seemed to have money which he
spent in riotous living, and that the wife, who was said to be a silly
creature, was kept in the country, either because her husband did not
want her in London, or because she preferred to stay at Stornham. About
the wife no one appeared to know anything, in fact.

"She is rather a fool, I believe, and Sir Nigel Anstruthers is the kind
of man a simpleton would be obliged to submit to," Bettina had heard the
lady say.

Her own reflections upon these comments had led her through various
paths of thought. She could recall Rosalie's girlhood, and what
she herself, as an unconsciously observing child, had known of her
character. She remembered the simple impressionability of her mind. She
had been the most amenable little creature in the world. Her yielding
amiability could always be counted upon as a factor by the calculating;
sweet-tempered to weakness, she could be beguiled or distressed into any
course the desires of others dictated. An ill-tempered or self-pitying
person could alter any line of conduct she herself wished to pursue.

"She was neither clever nor strong-minded," Betty said to herself. "A
man like Sir Nigel Anstruthers could make what he chose of her. I wonder
what he has done to her?"

Of one thing she thought she was sure. This was that Rosalie's