occasion. It was not at all surprising, people said to each other.
Nothing could have been more desirable for Lord Westholt. He combined
rank with fortune, and the Vanderpoel wealth almost constituted rank in
itself. Both Lord and Lady Dunholm seemed pleased with the girl. Lord
Dunholm showed her great attention. When she took part in the dancing
on the lawn, he looked on delightedly. He walked about the gardens
with her, and it was plain to see that their conversation was not the
ordinary polite effort to accord, usually marking the talk between a
mature man and a merely pretty girl. Lord Dunholm sometimes laughed with
unfeigned delight, and sometimes the two seemed to talk of grave things.

"Such occasions as these are a sort of yearly taking of the social
census of the county," Lord Dunholm explained. "One invites ALL one's
neighbours and is invited again. It is a friendly duty one owes."

"I do not see Lord Mount Dunstan," Betty answered. "Is he here?"

She had never denied to herself her interest in Mount Dunstan, and she
had looked for him. Lord Dunholm hesitated a second, as his son had done
at Miss Vanderpoel's mention of the tabooed name. But, being an older
man, he felt more at liberty to speak, and gave her a rather long kind
look.

"My dear young lady," he said, "did you expect to see him here?"

"Yes, I think I did," Betty replied, with slow softness. "I believe I
rather hoped I should."

"Indeed! You are interested in him?"

"I know him very little. But I am interested. I will tell you why."

She paused by a seat beneath a tree, and they sat down together.
She gave, with a few swift vivid touches, a sketch of the red-haired
second-class passenger on the Meridiana, of whom she had only thought
that he was an unhappy, rough-looking young man, until the brief moment
in which they had stood face to face, each comprehending that the other
was to be relied on if the worst should come to the worst. She had
understood his prompt disappearance from the scene, and had liked it.
When she related the incident of her meeting with him when she thought
him a mere keeper on his own lands, Lord Dunholm listened with a changed
and thoughtful expression. The effect produced upon her imagination by
what she had seen, her silent wandering through the sad beauty of the
wronged place, led by the man who tried stiffly to bear himself as a
servant, his unintended self-revelations, her clear, well-argued point
of view charm