"Oh, yes! Oh, yes!" she cried. "You are just as wonderful as you looked
when I turned and saw you under the trees. You almost make me afraid."
"Because I am wonderful?" said Betty. "Then I will not be wonderful any
more."
"It is not because I think you wonderful, but because other people will.
Would you rebuild a great house?" hesitatingly.
The fine line of Betty's black brows drew itself slightly together.
"No," she said.
"Wouldn't you?"
"How could the man who owned it persuade me that he was in earnest if he
said he loved me? How could I persuade him that I was worth caring for
and not a mere ambitious fool? There would be too much against us."
"Against you?" repeated Lady Anstruthers.
"I don't say I am fair," said Betty. "People who are proud are often not
fair. But we should both of us have seen and known too much."
"You have seen me now," said Lady Anstruthers in her listless voice, and
at the same moment dinner was announced and she got up from the sofa, so
that, luckily, there was no time for the impersonal answer it would have
been difficult to invent at a moment's notice. As they went into the
dining-room Betty was thinking restlessly. She remembered all the
material she had collected during her education in France and Germany,
and there was added to it the fact that she HAD seen Rosy, and having
her before her eyes she felt that there was small prospect of
her contemplating the rebuilding of any great house requiring
reconstruction.
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