harp. But she is more
level-headed than either of them, There's a touch of Trix Esmond, too."

The sense of the success which followed her, and the gradually-growing
excitement of looking on at her light whirls of dance, the carnation
of her cheek, and the laughter and pleasure she drew about her, had
affected him in a way by which he was secretly a little exhilarated. He
was conscious of a rash desire to force his way through these laughing,
vaunting young idiots, juggle or snatch their dances away from them, and
seize on the girl himself. He had not for so long a time been impelled
by such agreeable folly that he had sometimes felt the stab of the
thought that he was past it. That it should rise in him again made
him feel young. There was nothing which so irritated him against
Mount Dunstan as his own rebelling recognition of the man's youth, the
strength of his fine body, his high-held head and clear eye.

These things and others it was which swayed him, as was plain to Betty
in the time which followed, to many changes of mood.

"Are you sorry for a man who is ill and depressed," he asked one day,
"or do you despise him?"

"I am sorry."

"Then be sorry for me."

He had come out of the house to her as she sat on the lawn, under a
broad, level-branched tree, and had thrown himself upon a rug with his
hands clasped behind his head.

"Are you ill?"

"When I was on the Riviera I had a fall." He lied simply. "I strained
some muscle or other, and it has left me rather lame. Sometimes I have a
good deal of pain."

"I am very sorry," said Betty. "Very."

A woman who can be made sorry it is rarely impossible to manage. To
dwell with pathetic patience on your grievances, if she is weak and
unintelligent, to deplore, with honest regret, your faults and blunders,
if she is strong, are not bad ideas.

He looked at her reflectively.

"Yes, you are capable of being sorry," he decided. For a few moments
of silence his eyes rested upon the view spread before him. To give the
expression of dignified reflection was not a bad idea either.

"Do you know," he said at length, "that you produce an extraordinary
effect upon me, Betty?"

She was occupying herself by adding a few stitches to one of Rosy's
ancient strips of embroidery, and as she answered, she laid it flat upon
her knee to consider its effect.

"Good or bad?" she inquired, with delicate abstraction.

He turned his face towards her again--this time quickly.