The Shuttle | Page 7

time almost unknown territory. One may rest
assured Sir Nigel Anstruthers said nothing whatsoever in New York of
an interview he had had before sailing with an intensely disagreeable
great-aunt, who was the wife of a Bishop. She was a horrible old
woman with a broad face, blunt features and a raucous voice, whose
tones added acridity to her observations when she was indulging in her
favourite pastime of interfering with the business of her acquaintances
and relations.
"I do not know what you are going chasing off to America for, Nigel,"
she commented. "You can't afford it and it is perfectly ridiculous of you
to take it upon yourself to travel for pleasure as if you were a man of
means instead of being in such a state of pocket that Maria tells me you
cannot pay your tailor. Neither the Bishop nor I can do anything for
you and I hope you don't expect it. All I can hope is that you know
yourself what you are going to America in search of, and that it is
something more practical than buffaloes. You had better stop in New
York. Those big shopkeepers' daughters are enormously rich, they say,

and they are immensely pleased by attentions from men of your class.
They say they'll marry anything if it has an aunt or a grandmother with
a title. You can mention the Marchioness, you know. You need not
refer to the fact that she thought your father a blackguard and your
mother an interloper, and that you have never been invited to
Broadmere since you were born. You can refer casually to me and to
the Bishop and to the Palace, too. A Palace--even a Bishop's--ought to
go a long way with Americans. They will think it is something royal."
She ended her remarks with one of her most insulting snorts of laughter,
and Sir Nigel became dark red and looked as if he would like to knock
her down.
It was not, however, her sentiments which were particularly revolting
to him. If she had expressed them in a manner more flattering to
himself he would have felt that there was a good deal to be said for
them. In fact, he had put the same thing to himself some time
previously, and, in summing up the American matter, had reached
certain thrifty decisions. The impulse to knock her down surged within
him solely because he had a brutally bad temper when his vanity was
insulted, and he was furious at her impudence in speaking to him as if
he were a villager out of work whom she was at liberty to bully and
lecture.
"For a woman who is supposed to have been born of gentle people," he
said to his mother afterwards, "Aunt Marian is the most vulgar old
beast I have ever beheld. She has the taste of a female costermonger."
Which was entirely true, but it might be added that his own was no
better and his points of view and morals wholly coincided with his
taste.
Naturally Rosalie Vanderpoel knew nothing of this side of the matter.
She had been a petted, butterfly child, who had been pretty and admired
and indulged from her infancy; she had grown up into a petted,
butterfly girl, pretty and admired and surrounded by inordinate luxury.
Her world had been made up of good-natured, lavish friends and
relations, who enjoyed themselves and felt a delight in her girlish
toilettes and triumphs. She had spent her one season of belledom in

being whirled from festivity to festivity, in dancing in rooms festooned
with thousands of dollars' worth of flowers, in lunching or dining at
tables loaded with roses and violets and orchids, from which ballrooms
or feasts she had borne away wonderful "favours" and gifts, whose
prices, being recorded in the newspapers, caused a thrill of delight or
envy to pass over the land. She was a slim little creature, with
quantities of light feathery hair like a French doll's. She had small
hands and small feet and a small waist--a small brain also, it must be
admitted, but she was an innocent, sweet-tempered girl with a childlike
simpleness of mind. In fine, she was exactly the girl to find Sir Nigel's
domineering temperament at once imposing and attractive, so long as it
was cloaked by the ceremonies of external good breeding.
Her sister Bettina, who was still a child, was of a stronger and less
susceptible nature. Betty--at eight--had long legs and a square but
delicate small face. Her well-opened steel- blue eyes were noticeable
for rather extravagant ink-black lashes and a straight young stare which
seemed to accuse if not to condemn. She was being educated at a
ruinously expensive school with a number of other inordinately rich
little girls,