At the close of a long, warm afternoon Betty Vanderpoel came out upon the square stone terrace overlooking the gardens, and that part of the park which, enclosing them, caused them, as they melted into its greenness, to lose all limitations and appear to be only a more blooming bit of the landscape.  
Upon the garden Betty's eyes dwelt, as she stood still for some minutes taking in their effect thoughtfully.
 
Kedgers had certainly accomplished¹ much. His close-trimmed lawns did him credit, his flower beds were flushed and azured, purpled and snowed with bloom. Sweet tall spires², hung with blue or white or rosy³ flower bells, lifted their heads above the colour of lower growths. Only the fervent⁴ affection, the fasting and prayer of a Kedgers could have done such wonders with new things and old. The old ones he had cherished and allured⁵ into a renewal⁷ of existence—the new ones he had so coaxed⁸ out of their earthen pots into the soil, luxuriously⁹ prepared for their reception, and had afterwards so nourished and bedewed with soft waterings, so supported, watched over and adored that they had been almost unconscious of their transplanting. Without assistants he could have done nothing, but he had been given a sufficient number of under gardeners, and had even managed to inspire them with something of his own ambition and solicitude¹⁰. The result was before Betty's eyes in an aspect which, to such as knew the gardens well,—the Dunholms, for instance,—was astonishing in its success.
 
“I've had privileges, miss, and so have the flowers,” Kedgers had said warmly, when Miss Vanderpoel had reported to him, for his encouragement, Dunholm Castle's praise. “Not one of 'em has ever had to wait for his food and drink, nor to complain of his bed not being what he was accustomed to. They've not had to wait for rain, for we've given it to 'em from watering cans, and, thank goodness, the season's been kind to 'em.”
 
Betty, descending¹¹ the terrace steps, wandered down the paths between the flower beds, glancing about her as she went. The air of neglect and desolation had been swept away. Buttle and Tim Soames had been given as many privileges as Kedgers. The chief points impressed upon them had been that the work must be done, not only thoroughly¹², but quickly. As many additional workmen as they required, as much solid material as they needed, but there must be a despatch¹³ which at first it staggered them to contemplate¹⁴. They had not known such methods before. They had been accustomed to work under money limitation throughout their lives, and, when work must be done with insufficient¹⁵ aid, it must be done slowly. Economy had been the chief factor in all calculations, speed had not entered into them, so leisureliness¹⁶ had become a fixed¹⁷ habit. But it seemed American to sweep leisureliness away into space with a free gesture.
 
“It must be done QUICKLY,” Miss Vanderpoel had said. “If ten men cannot do it quickly enough, you must have twenty—or as many more as are needed. It is time which must be saved just now.”
 
Time more than money, it appeared. Buttle's experience had been that you might take time, if you did not charge for it. When time began to mean money, that was a different matter. If you did work by the job, you might drive in a few nails, loiter, and return without haste; if you worked by the hour, your absence would be inquired into. In the present case no one could loiter. That was realised early. The tall girl, with the deep straight look at you, made you realise that without spoken words. She expected energy something like her own. She was a new force and spurred them. No man knew how it was done, but, when she appeared among them—even in the afternoon—“lookin' that womany,” holding up her thin dress over lace petticoats, the like of which had not been seen before, she looked on with just the same straight, expecting eyes. They did not seem to doubt in the least that she would find that great advance had been made.
 
So advance had been made, and work accomplished. As Betty walked from one place to another she saw the signs of it with gratification. The place was not the one she had come to a few months ago. Hothouses, outbuildings, stables were in repair. Work was still being done in different places. In the house itself carpenters or decorators were enclosed in some rooms, and at their business, but exterior¹⁹ order prevailed. In the courtyard stablemen were at work, and her own groom²⁰ came forward touching²¹ his forehead. She paid a visit to the horses. They were fine creatures, and, when she entered their stalls, made room for her and whinnied gently, in well-founded expectation of sugar and bread which were kept in a cupboard awaiting her visits. She smoothed velvet²² noses and patted satin sides, talking to Mason a little before she went her way.
 
Then she strolled into the park. The park was always a pleasure. She was in a thoughtful mood, and the soft green shadowed silence lured⁶ her. The summer wind hus-s-shed the branches as it lightly waved them, the brown earth of the avenue was sun-dappled, there were bird notes and calls to be heard here and there and everywhere, if one only arrested one's attention a moment to listen. And she was in a listening and dreaming mood—one of the moods in which bird, leaf, and wind, sun, shade, and scent²³ of growing things have part.
 
And yet her thoughts were of mundane²⁴ things.
 
It was on this avenue that G. Selden had met with his accident. He was still at Dunstan vicarage, and yesterday Mount Dunstan, in calling, had told them that Mr. Penzance was applying himself with delighted interest to a study of the manipulation of the Delkoff.
 
The thought of Mount Dunstan brought with it the thought of her father. This was because there was frequently in her mind a connection between the two. How would the man of schemes, of wealth, and power almost unbounded, regard the man born with a load about his neck—chained to earth by it, standing²⁵ in the midst of his hungering and thirsting possessions, his hands empty of what would feed them and restore their strength? Would he see any solution of the problem? She could imagine his looking at the situation through his gaze at the man, and considering both in his summing up.
 
“Circumstances and the man,” she had heard him say. “But always the man first.”
 
Being no visionary, he did not underestimate the power of circumstance. This Betty had learned from him. And what could practically be done with circumstance such as this? The question had begun to recur²⁶ to her. What could she herself have done in the care of Rosy and Stornham, if chance had not placed in her hand the strongest lever? What she had accomplished had been easy—easy. All that had been required had been the qualities which control of the lever might itself tend to create in one. Given—by mere²⁷ chance again—imagination and initiative, the moving of the lever did the rest. If chance had not been on one's side, what then? And where was this man's chance? She had said to Rosy, in speaking of the wealth of America, “Sometimes one is tired of it.” And Rosy had reminded her that there were those who were not tired of it, who could bear some of the burden of it, if it might be laid on their own shoulders. The great beautiful, blind-faced house, awaiting its slow doom²⁸ in the midst of its lonely unfed lands—what could save it, and all it represented of race and name, and the stately history of men, but the power one professed²⁹ to call base and sordid—mere money? She felt a sudden impatience³⁰ at herself for having said she was tired of it. That was a folly³¹ which took upon itself the aspect of an affectation.
 
And, if a man could not earn money—or go forth³² to rob richer neighbours of it as in the good old marauding days—or accept it if it were offered to him as a gift—what could he do? Nothing. If he had been born a village labourer, he could have earned by the work of his hands enough to keep his cottage roof over him, and have held up his head among his fellows. But for such as himself there was no mere labour which would avail. He had not that rough honest resource. Only the decent living and orderly management of the generations behind him would have left to him fairly his own chance to hold with dignity the place in the world into which Fate had thrust him at the outset—a blind, newborn thing of whom no permission had been asked.
 
“If I broke stones upon the highway for twelve hours a day, I might earn two shillings,” he had said to Betty, on the previous day. “I could break stones well,” holding out a big arm, “but fourteen shillings a week will do no more than buy bread and bacon for a stonebreaker.”
 
He was ordinarily rather silent and stiff in his conversational³³ attitude towards his own affairs. Betty sometimes wondered how she herself knew so much about them—how it happened that her thoughts so often dwelt upon them. The explanation she had once made to herself had been half irony³⁴, half serious reflection.
 
“It is a result of the first Reuben Vanderpoel. It is because I am of the fighting commercial stock, and, when I see a business problem, I cannot leave it alone, even when it is no affair of mine.”
 
As an exposition of the type of the commercial fighting-stock she presented, as she paused beneath overshadowing trees, an aspect beautifully suggesting a far different thing.
 
She stood—all white from slim shoe to tilted³⁵ parasol,—and either the result of her inspection³⁶ of the work done by her order, or a combination of her summer-day mood with her feeling for the problem, had given her a special radiance. It glowed on lip and cheek, and shone in her Irish eyes.
 
She had paused to look at a man approaching down the avenue. He was not a labourer, and she did not know him. Men who were not labourers usually rode or drove, and this one was walking. He was neither young nor old, and, though at a distance his aspect was not attracting, she found that she regarded him curiously³⁷, and waited for him to draw nearer.
 
The man himself was glancing about him with a puzzled look and knitted forehead. When he had passed through the village he had seen things he had not expected to see; when he had reached the entrance gate, and—for reasons of his own—dismissed his station trap, he had looked at the lodge³⁸ scrutinisingly, because he was not prepared for its picturesque³⁹ trimness. The avenue was free from weeds and in order, the two gates beyond him were new and substantial. As he went on his way and reached the first, he saw at about a hundred yards distance a tall girl in white standing watching him. Things which were not easily explainable always irritated him. That this place—which was his own affair—should present an air of mystery, did not improve his humour, which was bad to begin with. He had lately been passing through unpleasant things, which had left him feeling himself tricked and made ridiculous—as only women can trick a man and make him ridiculous, he had said to himself. And there had been an acrid⁴⁰ consolation⁴¹ in looking forward to the relief of venting⁴² one's self on a woman who dare not resent.
 
“What has happened, confound it!” he muttered, when he caught sight of the girl. “Have we set up a house party?” And then, as he saw more distinctly, “Damn! What a figure!”
 
By this time Betty herself had begun to see more clearly. Surely this was a face she remembered—though the passing of years and ugly living had thickened and blurred⁴³, somewhat, its always heavy features. Suddenly she knew it, and the look in its eyes—the look she had, as a child, unreasoningly hated.
 
Nigel Anstruthers had returned from his private holiday.
 
As she took a few quiet steps forward to meet him, their eyes rested on each other. After a night or two in town his were slightly bloodshot, and the light in them was not agreeable.
 
It was he who spoke¹⁸ first, and it is possible that he did not quite intend to use the expletive which broke from him. But he was remembering things also. Here were eyes he, too, had seen before—twelve years ago in the face of an objectionable, long-legged child in New York. And his own hatred⁴⁴ of them had been founded in his own opinion on the best of reasons. And here they gazed at him from the face of a young beauty—for a beauty she was.
 
“Damn it!” he exclaimed; “it is Betty.”
 
“Yes,” she answered, with a faint, but entirely⁴⁵ courteous⁴⁶, smile. “It is. I hope you are very well.”
 
She held out her hand. “A delicious hand,” was what he said to himself, as he took it. And what eyes for a girl to have in her head were those which looked out at him between shadows. Was there a hint of the devil in them? He thought so—he hoped so, since she had descended⁴⁷ on the place in this way. But WHAT the devil was the meaning of her being on the spot at all? He was, however, far beyond the lack of astuteness⁴⁸ which might have permitted him to express this last thought at this particular juncture⁴⁹. He was only betrayed into stupid mistakes, afterwards to be regretted, when rage caused him utterly⁵⁰ to lose control of his wits. And, though he was startled and not exactly pleased, he was not in a rage now. The eyelashes and the figure gave an agreeable fillip to his humour. Howsoever she had come, she was worth looking at.
 
“How could one expect such a delightful⁵¹ thing as this?” he said, with a touch of ironic⁵² amiability⁵³. “It is more than one deserves.”
 
“It is very polite of you to say that,” answered Betty.
 
He was thinking rapidly as he stood and gazed at her. There were, in truth, many things to think of under circumstances so unexpected.
 
“May I ask you to excuse my staring at you?” he inquired with what Rosy had called his “awful, agreeable smile.” “When I saw you last you were a fierce nine-year-old American child. I use the word 'fierce' because—if you'll pardon my saying so—there was a certain ferocity about you.”
 
“I have learned at various educational institutions to conceal⁵⁴ it,” smiled Betty.
 
“May I ask when you arrived?”
 
“A short time after you went abroad.”
 
“Rosalie did not inform me of your arrival.&rdqu............