This lady was the aunt of one of Bettina's fellow pupils, and she was not aware of the girl's relationship to Sir Nigel.

What Betty gathered was that her brother-in-law was regarded as a decidedly bad lot, that since his marriage to some American girl he had seemed to have money which he spent in riotous living, and that the wife, who was said to be a silly creature, was kept in the country, either because her husband did not want her in London, or because she preferred to stay at Stornham.

About the wife no one appeared to know anything, in fact.
"She is rather a fool, I believe, and Sir Nigel Anstruthers is the kind of man a simpleton would be obliged to submit to," Bettina had heard the lady say.
Her own reflections upon these comments had led her through various paths of thought.

She could recall Rosalie's girlhood, and what she herself, as an unconsciously observing child, had known of her character.

She remembered the simple impressionability of her mind.