The inordinately rich little girls, who had most of them pretty and spiritual or pretty and piquant faces, ate a great many bon bons and chattered a great deal in high unmodulated voices about the parties their sisters and other relatives went to and the dresses they wore.Some of them were nice little souls, who in the future would emerge from their chrysalis state enchanting women, but they used colloquialisms freely, and had an ingenuous habit of referring to the prices of things.Bettina Vanderpoel, who was the richest and cleverest and most promisingly handsome among them, was colloquial to slanginess, but she had a deep, mellow, child voice and an amazing carriage.
She could not endure Sir Nigel Anstruthers, and, being an American child, did not hesitate to express herself with force, if with some crudeness."He's a hateful thing," she said, "I loathe him.He's stuck up and he thinks you are afraid of him and he likes it."Sir Nigel had known only English children, little girls who lived in that discreet corner of their parents' town or country houses known as "the schoolroom," apparently emerging only for daily walks with governesses; girls with long hair and boys in little high hats and with faces which seemed curiously made to match them.Both boys and girls were decently kept out of the way and not in the least dwelt on except when brought out for inspection during the holidays and taken to the pantomime.
Sir Nigel had not realised that an American child was an absolute factor to be counted with, and a "youngster" who entered the drawing-room when she chose and joined fearlessly in adult conversation was an element he considered annoying.
It was quite true that Bettina talked too much and too readily at times, but it had not been explained to her that the opinions of eight years are not always of absorbing interest to the mature.It was also true that Sir Nigel was a great fool for interfering with what was clearly no affair of his in such a manner as would have made him an enemy even had not the child's instinct arrayed her against him at the outset.
"You American youngsters are too cheeky," he said on one of the occasions when Betty had talked too much."If you were my sister and lived at Stornham Court, you would be learning lessons in the schoolroom and wearing a pinafore.
Nobody ever saw my sister Emily when she was your age.""Well, I'm not your sister Emily," retorted Betty, "and I guess I'm glad of it."It was rather impudent of her, but it must be confessed that she was not infrequently rather impudent in a rude little-girl way, but she was serenely unconscious of the fact.
Sir Nigel flushed darkly and laughed a short, unpleasant laugh.If she had been his sister Emily she would have fared ill at the moment, for his villainous temper would have got the better of him.
"I `guess' that I may be congratulated too," he sneered.
"If I was going to be anybody's sister Emily," said Betty, excited a little by the sense of the fray, "I shouldn't want to be yours.""Now Betty, don't be hateful," interposed Rosalie, laughing, and her laugh was nervous."There's Mina Thalberg coming up the front steps.Go and meet her."Rosalie, poor girl, always found herself nervous when Sir Nigel and Betty were in the room together.She instinctively recognised their antagonism and was afraid Betty would do something an English baronet would think vulgar.Her simple brain could not have explained to her why it was that she knew Sir Nigel often thought New Yorkers vulgar.She was, however, quite aware of this but imperfectly concealed fact, and felt a timid desire to be explanatory.
When Bettina marched out of the room with her extraordinary carriage finely manifest, Rosy's little laugh was propitiatory.
"You mustn't mind her," she said."She's a real splendid little thing, but she's got a quick temper.It's all over in a minute.""They wouldn't stand that sort of thing in England,"said Sir Nigel."She's deucedly spoiled, you know."He detested the child.He disliked all children, but this one awakened in him more than mere dislike.The fact was that though Betty herself was wholly unconscious of the subtle truth, the as yet undeveloped intellect which later made her a brilliant and captivating personality, vaguely saw him as he was, an unscrupulous, sordid brute, as remorseless an adventurer and swindler in his special line, as if he had been engaged in drawing false cheques and arranging huge jewel robberies, instead of planning to entrap into a disadvantageous marriage a girl whose gentleness and fortune could be used by a blackguard of reputable name.The man was cold-blooded enough to see that her gentle weakness was of value because it could be bullied, her money was to be counted on because it could be spent on himself and his degenerate vices and on his racked and ruined name and estate, which must be rebuilt and restocked at an early date by someone or other, lest they tumbled into ignominious collapse which could not be concealed.Bettina of the accusing eyes did not know that in the depth of her yet crude young being, instinct was summing up for her the potentialities of an unusually fine specimen of the British blackguard, but this was nevertheless the interesting truth.When later she was told that her sister had become engaged to Sir Nigel Anstruthers, a flame of colour flashed over her face, she stared silently a moment, then bit her lip and burst into tears.
"Well, Bett," exclaimed Rosalie, "you are the queerest thing I ever saw."Bettina's tears were an outburst, not a flow.She swept them away passionately with her small handkerchief.
"He'll do something awful to you," she said."He'll nearly kill you.I know he will.I'd rather be dead myself."She dashed out of the room, and could never be induced to say a word further about the matter.She would indeed have found it impossible to express her intense antipathy and sense of impending calamity.She had not the phrases to make herself clear even to herself, and after all what controlling effort can one produce when one is only eight years old?
