ocks on the Hudson
River.

She returned to the hotel with an appetite for lunch and a new
expression in her eyes which made Ughtred stare at her.

"Mother," he said, "you look different. You look well. It isn't only
your new dress and your hair."

The new style of her attire had certainly done much, and the maid who
had been engaged to attend her was a woman who knew her duties. She had
been called upon in her time to make the most of hair offering much
less assistance to her skill than was supplied by the fine, fair
colourlessness she had found dragged back from her new mistress's
forehead. It was not dragged back now, but had really been done wonders
with. Rosalie had smiled a little when she had looked at herself in the
glass after the first time it was so dressed.

"You are trying to make me look as I did when mother saw me last,
Betty," she said. "I wonder if you possibly could."

"Let us believe we can," laughed Betty. "And wait and see."

It seemed wise neither to make nor receive visits. The time for such
things had evidently not yet come. Even the mention of the Worthingtons
led to the revelation that Rosalie shrank from immediate contact with
people. When she felt stronger, when she became more accustomed to the
thought, she might feel differently, but just now, to be luxuriously one
with the enviable part of London, to look on, to drink in, to drive here
and there, doing the things she liked to do, ordering what was required
at Stornham, was like the creating for her of a new heaven and a new
earth.

When, one night, Betty took her with Ughtred to the theatre, it was to
see a play written by an American, played by American actors, produced
by an American manager. They had even engaged in theatrical enterprise,
it seemed, their actors played before London audiences, London actors
played in American theatres, vibrating almost yearly between the two
continents and reaping rich harvests. Hearing rumours of this in the
past, Lady Anstruthers had scarcely believed it entirely true. Now the
practical reality was brought before her. The French, who were only
separated from the English metropolis by a mere few miles of Channel,
did not exchange their actors year after year in increasing numbers,
making a mere friendly barter of each other's territory, as though each
land was common ground and not divided by leagues of ocean travel.

"It seems so wonderful," Lady Anstruthers argued. "I have always felt as
if