that she had not apparently been so guilty, but it was evident that
there were moments when Mrs. Vanderpoel was uneasy and disposed to ask
anxious questions. When this occurred he destroyed the letters, and as a
result of this precaution on his part her motherly queries seemed to be
ignored, and she several times shed tears in the belief that Rosy had
grown so patrician that she was capable of snubbing her mother in
her resentment at feeling her privacy intruded upon and an unrefined
effusiveness shown.

"I just feel as if she was beginning not to care about us at all,
Betty," she said. "I couldn't have believed it of Rosy. She was always
such an affectionate girl."

"I don't believe it now," replied Betty sharply. "Rosy couldn't grow
hateful and stuck up. It's that nasty Nigel I know it is."

Sir Nigel's intention was that there should be as little intercourse
between Fifth Avenue and Stornham Court as was possible. Among other
things, he did not intend that a lot of American relations should come
tumbling in when they chose to cross the Atlantic. He would not have it,
and took discreet steps to prevent any accident of the sort. He wrote
to America occasionally himself, and knowing well how to make himself
civilly repellent, so subtly chilled his parents-in-law as to discourage
in them more than once their half-formed plan of paying a visit to their
child in her new home. He opened, read and reclosed all epistles to
and from New York, and while Mrs. Vanderpoel was much hurt to find
that Rosalie never condescended to make any response to her tentatives
concerning her possible visit, Rosalie herself was mystified by the fact
that the journey "to Europe" was never spoken of.