irst uncertainty of
himself had arisen at the Dunholm ball, when he had suddenly realised
that he was detesting men who, being young and free, were at liberty to
pay gallant court to the new beauty.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing to him had been his consciousness of
his sudden leap of antagonism towards Mount Dunstan, who, despite his
obvious lack of chance, somehow especially roused in him the rage of
warring male instinct. There had been admissions he had been forced,
at length, to make to himself. You could not, it appeared, live in the
house with a splendid creature like this one--with her brilliant eyes,
her beauty of line and movement before you every hour, her bloom, her
proud fineness holding themselves wholly in their own keeping--without
there being the devil to pay. Lately he had sometimes gone hot and cold
in realising that, having once told himself that he might choose to
decide to get rid of her, he now knew that the mere thought of her
sailing away of her own choice was maddening to him. There WAS the devil
to pay! It sometimes brought back to him that hideous shakiness of nerve
which had been a feature of his illness when he had been on the Riviera
with Teresita.

Of all this Betty only knew the outward signs which, taken at their
exterior significance, were detestable enough, and drove her hard as she
mentally dwelt on them in connection with other things. How easy, if she
stood alone, to defy his evil insolence to do its worst, and leaving the
place at an hour's notice, to sail away to protection, or, if she chose
to remain in England, to surround herself with a bodyguard of the people
in whose eyes his disrepute relegated a man such as Nigel Anstruthers
to powerless nonentity. Alone, she could have smiled and turned her back
upon him. But she was here to take care of Rosy. She occupied a position
something like that of a woman who remains with a man and endures
outrage because she cannot leave her child. That thought, in itself,
brought Ughtred to her mind. There was Ughtred to be considered as
well as his mother. Ughtred's love for and faith in her were deep and
passionate things. He fed on her tenderness for him, and had grown
stronger because he spent hours of each day talking, reading, and
driving with her. The simple truth was that neither she nor Rosalie
could desert Ughtred, and so long as Nigel managed cleverly enough, the
law would give the boy to his father.

"You are obliged to prove