He felt a certain curiosity about the _tete-a-tete._ So that when Betty left her companion and came tripping over the lawn to the house, the young man lifted his face and gave her a smiling nod, as though to invite her to come and visit him on the way. Betty came, and then as she stood in front of him delivered the home question already reported. "Am I nice?" repeated young Naseby. "Far from it. I have not been to church, and I have been reading a French novel of which I do not even propose to tell you the name." And he promptly slipped his volume into his pocket. "Which is worst?" said Betty, pensively: "to break the fourth Commandment or the ninth? Lady Kent, of course, has been trampling on them both. But the ninth is her particular victim. She calls it 'getting to the roots of things.'" "Whose roots has she been delving at this morning?" said Naseby. Betty looked behind her, saw that Lady Kent had gone into the house, and let herself drop into the corner of Naseby's bench with a sigh of fatigue. "One feels as though one were a sort of house-dog tussling with a burglar. I have been keeping her off all my friends' secrets by main force; so she had to fall back on George Tressady, and tell me ugly tales of his mamma." "George Tressady! Why on earth should she do him an ill turn? I don't believe she ever saw him before." Betty pressed her lips. She and Charlie Naseby had been friends since they wore round pinafores and sat on high nursery chairs side by side. "One needn't go to the roots of things," she said, severely, "but one should have eyes in one's head. Has it ever occurred to you that Ancoats has taken a special fancy to Sir George--that he sat talking to him last night till all hours, and that he has been walking about with him the whole of this morning, instead of walking about--well! with somebody else--as he was meant to do? Why do men behave in this ridiculous manner? Women, of course. But _men!_ It's like a trout that won't let itself be landed. And what's the good? It's only prolonging the agony." "Not at all," said Naseby, laughing. "There's always the chance of slipping the hook." Then his lively face became suddenly serious. "But it's time, I think," he added, almost with vehemence, "that Lady Kent stopped trying to land Ancoats. In the first place, it's no good. He won't be landed against his will. In the next--well, I only know," he broke off, "that if I had a sister in love with Ancoats at the present moment, I'd carry her off to the North Pole rather than let her be talked about with him!" Betty opened her eyes.