"
"It is not the awful truth now," said Betty, and she rose to her feet
and stood looking before her, but with a look which did not rest on
chairs and tables. She remained so, standing for a few moments of dead
silence.
"What a fool he was!" she said at last. "And what a villain! But a
villain is always a fool."
She bent, and taking Rosy's face between her hands, kissed it with a
kiss which seemed like a seal. "That will do," she said. "Now I know.
One must know what is in one's hands and what is not. Then one need not
waste time in talking of miserable things. One can save one's strength
for doing what can be done."
"I believe you would always think about DOING things," said Lady
Anstruthers. "That is American, too."
"It is a quality Americans inherited from England," lightly; "one of the
results of it is that England covers a rather large share of the map
of the world. It is a practical quality. You and I might spend hours in
talking to each other of what Nigel has done and what you have done, of
what he has said, and of what you have said. We might give some hours, I
daresay, to what the Dowager did and said. But wiser people than we are
have found out that thinking of black things past is living them again,
and it is like poisoning one's blood.
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