n the business
perspicuity of the first Reuben Vanderpoel, combining with the fiery,
wounded spirit of his young descendant, rendered Bettina brutal. She saw
certain unadorned facts with unsparing young eyes and wanted to state
them. After her frocks were lengthened, she learned how to state them
with more fineness of phrase, but even then she was sometimes still
rather unsparing.

In this case her companion, who was not fiery of temperament, only
coloured slightly.

"It was not quite that," she answered. "Gaston really is fond of her.
She amuses him, and he says she is far cleverer than he is."

But there were unions less satisfactory, and Bettina had opportunities
to reflect upon these also. The English and Continental papers did
not give enthusiastic, detailed descriptions of the marriages New York
journals dwelt upon with such delight. They were passed over with a
paragraph. When Betty heard them spoken of in France, Germany or Italy,
she observed that they were not, as a rule, spoken of respectfully. It
seemed to her that the bridegrooms were, in conversation, treated by
their equals with scant respect. It appeared that there had always been
some extremely practical reason for the passion which had led them to
the altar. One generally gathered that they or their estates were very
much out at elbow, and frequently their characters were not considered
admirable by their relatives and acquaintances. Some had been rather
cold shouldered in certain capitals on account of embarrassing little,
or big, stories. Some had spent their patrimonies in riotous living.
Those who had merely begun by coming into impoverished estates, and had
later attenuated their resources by comparatively decent follies, were
of the more desirable order. By the time she was nineteen, Bettina had
felt the blood surge in her veins more than once when she heard some
comments on alliances over which she had seen her compatriots glow with
affectionate delight.

"It was time Ludlow married some girl with money," she heard said of one
such union. "He had been playing the fool ever since he came into
the estate. Horses and a lot of stupid women. He had come some awful
croppers during the last ten years. Good-enough looking girl, they tell
me--the American he has married--tremendous lot of money. Couldn't
have picked it up on this side. English young women of fortune are not
looking for that kind of thing. Poor old Billy wasn't good enough."

Bettin