s the study of the laws
of temperament, which impel, support, or entrap into folly and danger
the being they rule. As a child, not old enough to give a definite name
to the thing she watched and pondered on, in child fashion, Bettina
Vanderpoel had thought much on this subject. As she had grown older, she
had never been ignorant of the workings of her own temperament, and she
had looked on for years at the laws which had wrought in her father's
being--the laws of strength, executive capacity, and that pleasure in
great schemes, which is roused less by a desire for gain than for a
strongly-felt necessity for action, resulting in success. She mentally
followed other people on their way, sometimes asking herself how far the
individual was to be praised or blamed for his treading of the path he
seemed to choose. And now there was given her the opportunity to study
the workings of the nature of Nigel Anstruthers, which was a curious
thing.

He was not an individual to be envied. Never was man more tormented by
lack of power to control his special devil, at the right moment of time,
and therefore, never was there one so inevitably his own frustration.
This Betty saw after the passing of but a few days, and wondered how far
he was conscious or unconscious of the thing. At times it appeared to
her that he was in a state of unrest--that he was as a man wavering
between lines of action, swayed at one moment by one thought, at another
by an idea quite different, and that he was harried because he could not
hold his own with himself.

This was true. The ball at Dunholm Castle had been enlightening, and
had wrought some changes in his points of view. Also other factors had
influenced him. In the first place, the changed atmosphere of Stornham,
the fitness and luxury of his surroundings, the new dignity given to his
position by the altered aspect of things, rendered external amiability
more easy. To ride about the country on a good horse, or drive in a
smart phaeton, or suitable carriage, and to find that people who a year
ago had passed him with the merest recognition, saluted him with polite
intention, was, to a certain degree, stimulating to a vanity which had
been long ill-fed. The power which produced these results should, of
course, have been in his own hands--his money-making father-in-law
should have seen that it was his affair to provide for that--but since
he had not done so, it was rather entertaining that it should be, f