"I should not have known her," said Rosy."She has grown pretty.She wasn't a pretty child.""It's happiness--and the English climate--and Captain Dicky.They adore each other, and laugh at everything like a pair of children.They were immensely popular in New York last winter, when they visited Mina's people."The effect of the morning upon Lady Anstruthers was what Betty had hoped it might be.The curious drawing near of the two nations began to dawn upon her as a truth.Immured in the country, not sufficiently interested in life to read newspapers, she had heard rumours of some of the more important marriages, but had known nothing of the thousand small details which made for the weaving of the web.Mrs.Treat Hilyar driving in a leisurely, accustomed fashion down Bond Street, and smiling casually at her compatriots, whose "sailing" was as much part of the natural order of their luxurious lives as their carriages, gave a definiteness to the situation.Mina Thalberg, pulling down the embroidered frocks over the round legs of her English-looking children, seemed to narrow the width of the Atlantic Ocean between Liverpool and the docks on the Hudson River.
She returned to the hotel with an appetite for lunch and a new expression in her eyes which made Ughtred stare at her.
"Mother," he said, "you look different.You look well.
It isn't only your new dress and your hair."The new style of her attire had certainly done much, and the maid who had been engaged to attend her was a woman who knew her duties.She had been called upon in her time to make the most of hair offering much less assistance to her skill than was supplied by the fine, fair colourlessness she had found dragged back from her new mistress's forehead.It was not dragged back now, but had really been done wonders with.
Rosalie had smiled a little when she had looked at herself in the glass after the first time it was so dressed.
"You are trying to make me look as I did when mother saw me last, Betty," she said."I wonder if you possibly could.""Let us believe we can," laughed Betty."And wait and see."It seemed wise neither to make nor receive visits.The time for such things had evidently not yet come.Even the mention of the Worthingtons led to the revelation that Rosalie shrank from immediate contact with people.When she felt stronger, when she became more accustomed to the thought, she might feel differently, but just now, to be luxuriously one with the enviable part of London, to look on, to drink in, to drive here and there, doing the things she liked to do, ordering what was required at Stornham, was like the creating for her of a new heaven and a new earth.
When, one night, Betty took her with Ughtred to the theatre, it was to see a play written by an American, played by American actors, produced by an American manager.They had even engaged in theatrical enterprise, it seemed, their actors played before London audiences, London actors played in American theatres, vibrating almost yearly between the two continents and reaping rich harvests.Hearing rumours of this in the past, Lady Anstruthers had scarcely believed it entirely true.Now the practical reality was brought before her.The French, who were only separated from the English metropolis by a mere few miles of Channel, did not exchange their actors year after year in increasing numbers, making a mere friendly barter of each other's territory, as though each land was common ground and not divided by leagues of ocean travel.
"It seems so wonderful," Lady Anstruthers argued."Ihave always felt as if they hated each other.""They did once--but how could it last between those of the same blood--of the same tongue? If we were really aliens we might be a menace.But we are of their own." Betty leaned forward on the edge of the box, looking out over the crowded house, filled with almost as many Americans as English faces.She smiled, reflecting."We were children put out to nurse and breathe new air in the country, and now we are coming home, vigorous, and full-grown."She studied the audience for some minutes, and, as her glance wandered over the stalls, it took in more than one marked variety of type.Suddenly it fell on a face she delightedly recognised.
It was that of the nice, speculative-eyed Westerner they had seen enjoying himself in Bond Street.
"Rosy," she said, "there is the Western man we love.Near the end of the fourth row."Lady Anstruthers looked for him with eagerness.
"Oh, I see him! Next to the big one with the reddish hair."Betty turned her attention to the man in question, whom she had not chanced to notice.She uttered an exclamation of surprise and interest.
"The big man with the red hair.How lovely that they should chance to sit side by side--the big one is Lord Mount Dunstan!"The necessity of seeing his solicitors, who happened to be Messrs.Townlinson & Sheppard, had brought Lord Mount Dunstan to town.After a day devoted to business affairs, he had been attracted by the idea of going to the theatre to see again a play he had already seen in New York.It would interest him to observe its exact effect upon a London audience.
