wered Mr. Vanderpoel, "you are not. I like you, Mr. Selden. My
daughter liked you. I do not mean to lose sight of you. We will begin,
however, with the territory, and the Delkoff. I don't think there will
be any difficulty about it."

. . . . .

Ten minutes later G. Selden was walking down Fifth Avenue, wondering
if there was any chance of his being arrested by a policeman upon the
charge that he was reeling, instead of walking steadily. He hoped he
should get back to the hall bedroom safely. Nick Baumgarten and Jem
Bolter both "roomed" in the house with him. He could tell them both.
It was Jem who had made up the yarn about one of them saving Reuben S.
Vanderpoel's life. There had been no life-saving, but the thing had come
true.

"But, if it hadn't been for Lord Mount Dunstan," he said, thinking it
over excitedly, "I should never have seen Miss Vanderpoel, and, if it
hadn't been for Miss Vanderpoel, I should never have got next to Reuben
S. in my life. Both sides of the Atlantic Ocean got busy to do a good
turn to Little Willie. Hully gee!"

In his study Mr. Vanderpoel was rereading Betty's letters. He felt that
he had gained a certain knowledge of Lord Mount Dunstan.

CHAPTER XXXIX

ON THE MARSHES

THE marshes stretched mellow in the autumn sun, sheep wandered about,
nibbling contentedly, or lay down to rest in groups, the sky reflecting
itself in the narrow dykes gave a blue colour to the water, a scent of
the sea was in the air as one breathed it, flocks of plover rose, now
and then, crying softly. Betty, walking with her dog, had passed a heron
standing at the edge of a pool.

From her first discovery of them, she had been attracted by the marshes
with their English suggestion of the Roman Campagna, their broad expanse
of level land spread out to the sun and wind, the thousands of white
sheep dotted or clustered as far as eye could reach, the hues of the
marsh grass and the plants growing thick at the borders of the strips
of water. Its beauty was all its own and curiously aloof from the
softly-wooded, undulating world about it. Driving or walking along the
high road--the road the Romans had built to London town long centuries
ago--on either side of one were meadows, farms, scattered cottages, and
hop gardens, but beyond and below stretched the marsh land, golden and
grey, and always alluring one by its silence.

"I never pass it without wanting to go to it--to take solitary walks
over it, to be on