Chapter L. The Primeval Thing

When Mr. Vanderpoel landed in England his wife was with him. This quiet-faced woman, who was known to be on her way to join her daughter in England, was much discussed, envied, and glanced at, when she promenaded the deck with her husband, or sat in her chair softly wrapped in wonderful furs. Gradually, during the past months, she had been told certain modified truths connected with her elder daughter's marriage. They had been painful truths, but had been so softened and expurgated of their worst features that it had been possible to bear them, when one realised that they did not, at least, mean that Rosy had forgotten or ceased to love her mother and father, or wish to visit her home. The steady clearness of foresight and readiness of resource which were often spoken of as being specially characteristic of Reuben S. Vanderpoel, were all required, and employed with great tenderness, in the management of this situation. As little as it was possible that his wife should know, was the utmost she must hear and be hurt by. Unless ensuing events compelled further revelations, the rest of it should be kept from her. As further protection, her husband had frankly asked her to content herself with a degree of limited information.

"I have meant all our lives, Annie, to keep from you the unpleasant things a woman need not be troubled with," he had said. "I promised myself I would when you were a girl. I knew you would face things, if I needed your help, but you were a gentle little soul, like Rosy, and I never intended that you should bear what was useless. Anstruthers was a blackguard, and girls of all nations have married blackguards before. When you have Rosy safe at home, and know nothing can hurt her again, you both may feel you would like to talk it over. Till then we won't go into detail. You trust me, I know, when I tell you that you shall hold Rosy in your arms very soon. We may have something of a fight, but there can only be one end to it in a country as decent as England. Anstruthers isn't exactly what I should call an Englishman. Men rather like him are to be found in two or three places." His good-looking, shrewd, elderly face lighted with a fine smile. "My handsome Betty has saved us a good deal by carrying out her fifteen-year-old plan of going to find her sister," he ended.

Before they landed they had decided that Mrs. Vanderpoel should be comfortably established in a hotel in London, and that after this was arranged, her husband should go to Stornham Court alone. If Sir Nigel could be induced to listen to logic, Rosalie, her child, and Betty should come at once to town.

"And, if he won't listen to logic," added Mr. Vanderpoel, with a dry composure, "they shall come just the same, my dear." And his wife put her arms round his neck and kissed him because she knew what he said was quite true, and she admired him--as she had always done--greatly.

But