Westholt hesitated slightly.
“Yes—and no,” he answered, after the hesitation. “No one knows him very well. You have not met him?” with a touch of surprise in his tone.
“He was a passenger on the Meridiana when I last crossed the Atlantic. There was a slight accident and we were thrown together for a few moments. Afterwards I met him by chance again. I did not know who he was.”
Lord Westholt showed signs of hesitation anew. In fact, he was rather disturbed. She evidently did not know anything whatever of the Mount Dunstans. She would not be likely to hear the details of the scandal which had obliterated them, as it were, from the decent world.
The present man, though he had not openly been mixed up with the hideous thing, had borne the brand because he had not proved himself to possess any qualities likely to recommend him. It was generally understood that he was a bad lot also. To such a man the allurements such a young woman as Miss Vanderpoel would present would be extraordinary. It was unfortunate that she should have been thrown in his way. At the same time it was not possible to state the case clearly during one’s first call on a beautiful stranger.
“His going to America was rather spirited,” said the mellow voice beside him. “I thought only Americans took their fates in their hands in that way. For a man of his class to face a rancher’s life means determination. It means the spirit–-” with a low little laugh at the leap of her imagination—”of the men who were Mount Dunstans in early days and went forth to fight for what they meant to have. He went to fight. He ought to have won. He will win some day.”
“I do not know about fighting,” Lord Westholt answered. Had the fellow been telling her romantic stories? “The general impression was that he went to America to amuse himself.”
“No, he did not do that,” said Betty, with simple finality. “A sheep ranch is not amusing–-” She stopped short and stood still for a moment. They had been walking down the avenue, and she stopped because her eyes had been caught by a figure half sitting, half lying in the middle of the road, a prostrate bicycle near it. It was the figure of a cheaply dressed young man, who, as she looked, seemed to make an ineffectual effort to rise.
“Is that man ill?” she exclaimed. “I think he must be.” They went towards him at once, and when they reached him he lifted a dazed white face, down which a stream of blood was trickling from a cut on his forehead. He was, in fact, very white indeed, and did not seem to know what he was doing.
“I am afraid you are hurt,” Betty said, and as she spoke the rest of the party joined them. The young man vacantly smiled, and making an unconscious-looking pass across his face with his hand, smeared the blood over his features painfully. Betty kneeled down, and drawing out her handkerchief, lightly wiped the gruesome smears away. Lord Westholt saw what had happened, having given a look at the bicycle.
“His chain broke as he was coming down the incline, and as he fell he got a nasty knock on this stone,” touching with his foot a rather large one, which had evidently fallen from some cartload of building material.
The young man, still vacantly smiling, was fumbling at his breast pocket. He began to talk incoherently in good, nasal New York, at the mere sound of which Lady Anstruthers made a little yearning step forward.
“Superior any other,” he muttered. “Tabulator spacer— marginal release key—call your ‘tention—instantly —’justable —Delkoff—no equal on market.” And having found what he had fumbled for, he handed a card to Miss Vanderpoel and sank unconscious on her breast.
“Let me support him, Miss Vanderpoel,” said Westholt, starting forward.
“Never mind, thank you,” said Betty. “If he has fainted I suppose he must be laid flat on the ground. Will you please to read the card.
It was the card Mount Dunstan had read the day before.
J. BURRIDGE & SON, DELKOFF TYPEWRITER CO. BROADWAY, NEW YORK. G. SELDEN.
“He is probably G. Selden,” said Westholt. “Travelling in the interests of his firm, poor chap. The clue is not of much immediate use, however.”
They were fortunately not far from the house, and Westholt went back quickly to summon servants and send for the village doctor. The Dunholms were kindly sympathetic, and each of the party lent a handkerchief to staunch the bleeding. Lord Dunholm helped Miss Vanderpoel to lay the young man down carefully.
“I am afraid,” he said; “I am really afraid his leg is broken. It was twisted under him. What can be done with him?”
Miss Vanderpoel looked at her sister.
“Will you allow him to be carried to the house temporarily, Rosy?” she asked. “There is apparently nothing else to be done.”
“Yes, yes,” said Lady Anstruthers. “How could one send him away, poor fellow! Let him be carried to the house.”
Miss Vanderpoel smiled into Lord Dunholm’s much approving, elderly eyes.
“G. Selden is a compatriot,” she said. “Perhaps he heard I was here and came to sell me a typewriter.”
Lord Westholt returning with two footmen and a light mattress, G. Selden was carried with cautious care to the house. The afternoon sun, breaking through the branches of the ancestral oaks, kindly touched his keen-featured, white young face. Lord Dunholm and Lord Westholt each lent a friendly hand, and Miss Vanderpoel, keeping near, once or twice wiped away an insistent trickle of blood which showed itself from beneath the handkerchiefs. Lady Dunholm followed with Lady Anstruthers.
Afterwards, during his convalescence, G. Selden frequently felt with regret that by his unconsciousness of the dignity of his cortege at the moment he had missed feeling himself to be for once in a position he would have designated as “out of sight” in the novelty of its importance. To have beheld him, borne by nobles and liveried menials, accompanied by ladies of title, up the avenue of an English park on his way to be cared for in baronial halls, would, he knew, have added a joy to the final moments of his grandmother, which the consolations of religion could scarcely have met equally in competition. His own point of view, however, would not, it is true, have been that of the old woman in the black net cap and purple ribbons, but of a less reverent nature. His enjoyment, in fact, would have been based upon that transatlantic sense of humour, whose soul is glee at the incompatible, which would have been full fed by the incongruity of “Little Willie being yanked along by a bunch of earls, and Reuben S. Vanderpoel’s daughters following the funeral.” That he himself should have been unconscious of the situation seemed to him like “throwing away money.”
