" Mrs. Worthington said to Bettina.
"How pleased Lady Anstruthers and Sir Nigel must be at the idea of
seeing you with them after so long."

"I can scarcely tell you how I am looking forward to it," Betty
answered.

She sat in her corner among her cushions looking at the dark water
which seemed to sweep past the ship, and listening to the throb of the
engines. She was not gay. She was wondering how far the plans she had
made would prove feasible. Mrs. Worthington was not aware that her visit
to Stornham Court was to be unannounced. It had not been necessary to
explain the matter. The whole affair was simple and decorous enough.
Miss Vanderpoel was to bid good-bye to her friends and go at once to her
sister, Lady Anstruthers, whose husband's country seat was but a short
journey from London. Bettina and her father had arranged that the fact
should be kept from the society paragraphist. This had required some
adroit management, but had actually been accomplished.

As the waves swished past her, Bettina was saying to herself, "What
will Rosy say when she sees me! What shall I say when I see Rosy? We are
drawing nearer to each other with every wave that passes."

A fog which swept up suddenly sent them all below rather early. The
Worthingtons laughed and talked a little in their staterooms, but
presently became quiet and had evidently gone to bed. Bettina was
restless and moved about her room alone after she had sent away her
maid. She at last sat down and finished a letter she had been writing to
her father.

"As I near the land," she wrote, "I feel a sort of excitement. Several
times to-day I have recalled so distinctly the picture of Rosy as I saw
her last, when we all stood crowded upon the wharf at New York to see
her off. She and Nigel were leaning upon the rail of the upper deck.
She looked such a delicate, airy little creature, quite like a pretty
schoolgirl with tears in her eyes. She was laughing and crying at the
same time, and kissing both her hands to us again and again. I was
crying passionately myself, though I tried to conceal the fact, and I
remember that each time I looked from Rosy to Nigel's heavy face the
poignancy of my anguish made me break forth again. I wonder if it was
because I was a child, that he looked such a contemptuous brute, even
when he pretended to smile. It is twelve years since then. I wonder--how
I wonder, what I shall find."

She stopped writing and sat a few moments, her chin u