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It was drawing near to a rustic little station, and, as it passed in, he saw a carriage standing outside, waiting on the road, and a footman in a long coat, glancing into each window as the train went by. Two or three country people were watching it intently. Miss Vanderpoel's father was coming up from London on it.
Now for her one frantic cry but before she could gather power to give it forth, the man who had stopped had flung himself from his saddle and was inside the garden speaking. A big voice and a clear one, with a ringing tone of authority. "What are you doing here? And what is the matter with Miss Vanderpoel's horse?" it called out.
"Miss Vanderpoel," he said low to the vicar, "Lady Anstruther's sister." Mr. Penzance, replacing his own hat, looked after her with surprised pleasure. "Really," he exclaimed, "Miss Vanderpoel! What a fine girl! How unusually handsome!" Selden turned with a gasp of delighted, amazed recognition. "Miss Vanderpoel," he burst forth, "Reuben Vanderpoel's daughter!
His costume and general aspect seemed to indicate that he was of the class one addressed as "my man," though there was something a little odd about him. "Thank you. That wasn't Miss Vanderpoel's eldest sister in that carriage, was it?" "Miss Vanderpoel's " Mrs. Brent hesitated. "Do you mean Lady Anstruthers?" "I'd forgotten her name.
She kissed Vanderpoel's lined cheek. "Have you had time to think much about Rosy?" she said. "I've not had time, but I've done it," he answered. "Anything that hurts your mother hurts me. Sometimes she begins to cry in her sleep, and when I wake her she tells me she has been dreaming that she has seen Rosy." "I have had time to think of her," said Bettina. "I have heard so much of these things.
Vanderpoel's heart quickened its beat. "You were so young when she married," she said. "I daresay you have forgotten her face." "Oh, no!" Milly protested effusively. "I remember her quite well. She was so pretty and pink and happy-looking, and her hair curled naturally. I used to pray every night that when I grew up I might have hair and a complexion like hers." Mrs.
But in ten years' time, when they were young women, some of them married, some of them court beauties, one of them recalled this speech to another, whom she encountered in an important house in St. Petersburg, the wife of the celebrated diplomat who was its owner being an American woman. Bettina Vanderpoel's education was a rather fine thing.
If it ends miserably, it will be as if she had had an illness, and got up from it a faded, done-for spinster with a stretch of hideous years to live. Her blue eyes will look like boiled gooseberries, because she will have cried all the colour out of them. Oh! You UNDERSTAND! I see you do." Before she had finished both Miss Vanderpoel's hands were holding hers. "I do! I do," she said.
In the course of time they were realised to the full, but in Rosalie Vanderpoel's nineteenth year they covered what was at that time almost unknown territory. One may rest assured Sir Nigel Anstruthers said nothing whatsoever in New York of an interview he had had before sailing with an intensely disagreeable great-aunt, who was the wife of a Bishop.
The Worthingtons took possession of such a suite in such a hotel. Bettina Vanderpoel's apartments faced the Embankment.
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