Betty herself wore a changed face when she came down. A cloud had passed over her blooming, as clouds pass over a morning sky and dim it. Rosalie asked herself if she had not noticed something like this before. She began to think she had. Yes, she was sure that at intervals there had been moments when she had glanced at the brilliant face with an uneasy and yet half-unrealising sense of looking at a glowing light temporarily waning. The feeling had been unrealisable, because it was not to be explained. Betty was never ill, she was never low-spirited, she was never out of humour or afraid of things—that was why it was so wonderful to live with her. But—yes, it was true— there had been days when the strong, fine light of her had waned. Lady Anstruthers’ comprehension of it arose now from her memory of the look she had seen the night before in the eyes which suddenly had gazed straight before her, as into an unknown place.
“Yes, I know—I know—I know!” And the tone in the girl’s voice had been one Rosy had not heard before.
Slight wonder—if you KNEW—at any outward change which showed itself, though in your own most desperate despite. It would be so even with Betty, who, in her sister’s eyes, was unlike any other creature. But perhaps it would be better to make no comment. To make comment would be almost like asking the question she had been forbidden to ask.
While the servants were in the room during breakfast they talked of common things, resorting even to the weather and the news of the village. Afterwards they passed into the morning room together, and Betty put her arm around Rosalie and kissed her.
“Nigel has suddenly gone away, I hear,” she said. “Do you know where he has gone?”
“He came to my dressing-room to tell me.” Betty felt the whole slim body stiffen itself with a determination to seem calm. “He said he was going to find out where the old Duke of Broadmorlands was staying at present.”
“There is some forethought in that,” was Betty’s answer. “He is not on such terms with the Duke that he can expect to be received as a casual visitor. It will require apt contrivance to arrange an interview. I wonder if he will be able to accomplish it?”
“Yes, he will,” said Lady Anstruthers. “I think he can always contrive things like that.” She hesitated a moment, and then added: “He said also that he wished to find out certain things about Mr. Ffolliott—`trifling data,’ he called it—that he might be able to lay his hands on things if father came. He told me to explain to you.”
“That was intended for a taunt—but it’s a warning,” Betty said, thinking the thing over. “We are rather like ladies left alone to defend a besieged castle. He wished us to feel that.” She tightened her enclosing arm. “But we stand together— together. We shall not fail each other. We can face siege until father comes.”
“You wrote to him last night?”
“A long letter, which I wish him to receive before he sails. He might decide to act upon it before leaving New York, to advise with some legal authority he knows and trusts, to prepare our mother in some way—to do some wise thing we cannot foresee the value of. He has known the outline of the story, but not exact details—particularly recent ones. I have held back nothing it was necessary he should know. I am going out to post the letter myself. I shall send a cable asking him to prepare to come to us after he has reflected on what I have written.”
Rosalie was very quiet, but when, having left the room to prepare to go to the village, Betty came back to say a last word, her sister came to her and laid her hand on her arm.
“I have been so weak and trodden upon for years that it would not be natural for you to quite trust me,” she said. “But I won’t fail you, Betty—I won’t.”
The winter was drawing in, the last autumn days were short and often grey and dreary; the wind had swept the leaves from the trees and scattered them over park lands and lanes, where they lay a mellow-hued, rustling carpet, shifting with each chill breeze that blew. The berried briony garlands clung to the bared hedges, and here and there flared scarlet, still holding their red defiantly until hard frosts should come to shrivel and blacken them. The rare hours of sunshine were amber hours instead of golden.
As she passed through the park gate Betty was thinking of the first morning on which she had walked down the village street between the irregular rows of red-tiled cottages with the ragged little enclosing gardens. Then the air and sunshine had been of the just awakening spring, now the sky was brightly cold, and through the small-paned windows she caught glimpses of fireglow. A bent old man walking very slowly, leaning upon two sticks, had a red- brown woollen muffler wrapped round his neck. Seeing her, he stopped and shuffled the two sticks into one hand that he might leave the other free to touch his wrinkled forehead stiffly, his face stretching into a slow smile as she stopped to speak to him.
“Good-morning, Marlow,” he said. “How is the rheumatism to-day?”
He was a deaf old man, whose conversation was carried on principally by guesswork, and it was easy for him to gather that when her ladyship’s handsome young sister had given him greeting she had not forgotten to inquire respecting the “rheumatics,” which formed the greater part of existence.
“Mornin’, miss—mornin’,” he answered in the high, cracked voice of rural ancientry. “Winter be nigh, an’ they damp days be full of rheumatiz. ‘T’int easy to get about on my old legs, but I be main thankful for they warm things you sent, miss. This ‘ere,” fumbling at his red-brown muffler proudly, ” ‘tis a comfort on windy days, so ‘tis, and warmth be a good thing to a man when he be goin’ down hill in years.”
“All of you who are not able to earn your own fires shall be warm this winter,” her ladyship’s handsome sister said, speaking closer to his ear. “You shall all be warm. Don’t be afraid of the cold days coming.”
He shuffled his sticks and touched his forehead again, looking up at her admiringly and chuckling.
” ‘T’will be a new tale for Stornham village,” he cackled. ” ‘T’will be a new tale. Thank ye, miss. Thank ye.”
As she nodded smilingly and passed on, she heard him cackling still under his breath as he hobbled on his slow way, comforted and elate. How almost shamefully easy it was; a few loads of coal and faggots here and there, a few blankets and warm garments whose cost counted for so little when one’s hands were full, could change a gruesome village winter into a season during which labour-stiffened and broken old things, closing their cottage doors, could draw their chairs round the hearth and hover luxuriously over the red glow, which in its comforting fashion of seeming to have understanding of the dull dreams in old eyes, was more to be loved than any human friend.
But she had not needed her passing speech with Marlow to stimulate realisation of how much she had learned to care for the mere living among these people, to whom she seemed to have begun to belong, and whose comfortably lighting faces when they met her showed that they knew her to be one who might be turned to in any hour of trouble or dismay. The centuries which had trained them to depend upon their “betters” had taught the slowest of them to judge with keen sight those who were to be trusted, not alone as power and wealth holders, but
