the courage and honour had been lost in
ignoble modern vices, which no sense of dignity and reverence for race
and name had restrained--must be bitter--bitter! And in the role of a
servant to lead a stranger about among the ruins of what had been--that
must have been bitter, too. For a moment Betty felt the bitterness of it
herself and her red mouth took upon itself a grim line. The worst of it
for him was that he was not of that strain of his race who had been
the "bad lot." The "bad lot" had been the weak lot, the vicious, the
self-degrading. Scandals which had shut men out from their class
and kind were usually of an ugly type. This man had a strong jaw, a
powerful, healthy body, and clean, though perhaps hard, eyes. The First
Man of them, who hewed his way to the front, who stood fierce in the
face of things, who won the first lands and laid the first stones, might
have been like him in build and look.

"It's a disgusting thing," she said to herself, "to think of the corrupt
weaklings the strong ones dwindled down to. I hate them. So does he."

There had been many such of late years, she knew. She had seen them in
Paris, in Rome, even in New York. Things with thin or over-thick bodies
and receding chins and foreheads; things haunting places of amusement
and finding inordinate entertainment in strange jokes and horseplay. She
herself had hot blood and a fierce strength of rebellion, and she was
wondering how, if the father and elder brother had been the "bad lot,"
he had managed to stand still, looking on, and keeping his hands off
them.

The last gold of the sun was mellowing the grey stone of the terrace and
enriching the green of the weeds thrusting themselves into life between
the uneven flags when she reached Stornham, and passing through the
house found Lady Anstruthers sitting there. In sustenance of her effort
to keep up appearances, she had put on a weird little muslin dress and
had elaborated the dressing of her thin hair. It was no longer dragged
back straight from her face, and she looked a trifle less abject, even a
shade prettier. Bettina sat upon the edge of the balustrade and touched
the hair with light fingers, ruffling it a little becomingly.

"If you had worn it like this yesterday," she said, "I should have known
you."

"Should you, Betty? I never look into a mirror if I can help it, but
when I do I never know myself. The thing that stares back at me with its
pale eyes is not Rosy. But, of co