ty, was usually
somewhere in Europe--now on the Riviera, now in Rome, at Aix, in Madrid,
in London. She sometimes visited Paris, but seldom stayed long anywhere.
She professed to be fond of Beryl, but the truth was that Beryl was far
too good looking to be desirable as her companion. She loved her child
intensely--at a distance. Beryl was quite satisfied to be at a distance,
for she had a passion for independence. Her father gave her an ample
allowance. Her mother had long ago unearthed Fanny Cronin from some lair
in Philadelphia to be her official companion.

Braybrooke knew all this, knew about how much money Miss Van Tuyn had,
and about how much she would eventually have. Without being vulgarly
curious, he somehow usually got to know almost everything.

Beryl Van Tuyn would be just the wife for young Craven when she had
settled down. She was too independent, too original, too daring, and far
too conventional for Braybrooke's way of thinking. But he believed her
to be really quite all right. Modern Americans held views about personal
liberty which were not at all his, but that did not mean that they were
not entirely respectable. Beryl Van Tuyn was clever, beautiful, had
plenty of money. As a diplomatist's wife, when she had settled down,
she would be quite in her element. After some anxious thought he decided
that it was his duty to try to pull strings.

The ascertained fact that Craven had met Adela Sellingworth and Beryl
Van Tuyn on the same day and together, and that the woman of sixty had
evidently attracted him far more than the radiant girl of twenty-four,
did not deter Braybrooke from his enterprise. His long experience of
the world had led him to know that human beings can, and perpetually do,
interfere successfully in each other's affairs, help in making of
what are called destinies, head each other off from the prosecution of
designs, in fact play Providence and the Devil to each other.

His laudable intention was to play Providence.

On the following day he considered it his social duty to pay a call at
Number 18A, Berkeley Square. Dear Adela Sellingworth would certainly
wish to know how things were going in Paris. Although she now never went
there, and in fact never went anywhere, she still, thank God, had an
interest in what was going on in the world. It would be his pleasure to
gratify it.

He found her at home and alone. But before he was taken upstairs the
butler said he was not sure whether her