The Shuttle | Page 9

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?

CHAPTER II
A LACK OF PERCEPTION
Mercantile as Americans were proclaimed to be, the opinion of Sir
Nigel Anstruthers was that they were, on some points, singularly
unbusinesslike. In the perfectly obvious and simple matter of the
settlement of his daughter's fortune, he had felt that Reuben Vanderpoel
was obtuse to the point of idiocy. He seemed to have none of the
ordinary points of view. Naturally there was to Anstruthers' mind but

one point of view to take. A man of birth and rank, he argued, does not
career across the Atlantic to marry a New York millionaire's daughter
unless he anticipates deriving some advantage from the alliance. Such a
man--being of Anstruthers' type--would not have married a rich woman
even in his own country with out making sure that advantages were to
accrue to himself as a result of the union. "In England," to use his own
words, "there was no nonsense about it." Women's fortunes as well as
themselves belonged to their husbands, and a man who was master in
his own house could make his wife do as he chose. He had seen girls
with money managed very satisfactorily by fellows who held a tight
rein, and were not moved by tears, and did not allow talking to
relations. If he had been desirous of marrying and could have afforded
to take a penniless wife, there were hundreds of portionless girls ready
to thank God for a decent chance to settle themselves for life, and one
need not stir out of one's native land to find them.
But Sir Nigel had not in the least desired to saddle himself with a
domestic encumbrance, in fact nothing would have induced him to
consider the step if he had not been driven hard by circumstances. His
fortunes had reached a stage where money must be forthcoming
somehow--from somewhere. He and his mother had been living from
hand to mouth, so to speak, for years, and they had also been obliged to
keep up appearances, which is sometimes embittering even to persons
of amiable tempers. Lady Anstruthers, it is true, had lived in the
country in as niggardly a manner as possible. She had narrowed her
existence to absolute privation, presenting at the same time a stern,
bold front to the persons who saw her, to the insufficient staff of
servants, to the village to the vicar and his wife, and the few far-distant
neighbours who perhaps once a year drove miles to call or leave a card.
She was an old woman sufficiently unattractive to find no difficulty in
the way of limiting her acquaintances. The unprepossessing wardrobe
she had gathered in the passing years was remade again and again by
the village dressmaker. She wore dingy old silk gowns and appalling
bonnets, and mantles dripping with rusty fringes and bugle beads, but
these mitigated not in the least the unflinching arrogance of her bearing,
or the simple, intolerant rudeness which she considered proper and
becoming in persons like herself. She did not of course allow