The winter slipped away, and in April the little camp was to be formed, and the officers were to remain for a couple of months. The thought of seeing Fortescue again, brought the eloquent blood to Betty’s delicate cheeks and a new brilliance to her sparkling eyes. The spring came early in that latitude, and the first day of April was deliciously mild. Betty was at work in the little old-fashioned garden of Holly Lodge. She had brought with her from Rosehill many rosebushes and a bed of cowslips and violets. With a garden trowel in her hand, her skirts pinned up, and a red Tam o’Shanter pushed back from her forehead, Betty was busy digging about the rosebushes. Kettle had been of the greatest service in making the garden. That morning he had been sent to the post-office for the mail, and Betty was watching out for him: he was likely to bring her a letter from Fortescue. Presently, Kettle appeared crossing the little lawn, and passed through the garden gate. His shrewd little mind had discovered that when he delivered to Betty a large, square envelope, addressed in a certain masculine handwriting, Betty was sure to smile and open the letter quickly. This happened again, but Kettle was amazed to see Betty’s dimple suddenly disappear, her bright eyes suddenly grow sombre, and the color drop swiftly out of her cheeks. She read the letter through slowly, and then stood with her eyes fixed upon the ground and her lips trembling. Fortescue was not coming with the other officers. He had just received orders to the other side of the continent. He had asked for twenty-four hours’ leave, which would give him a chance to see Betty for about two hours the next day. He did not know, however, whether he could get permission in time to make the boat or not, but he would do it if mortal man could. He hoped Betty would understand why he came. The girl knew well enough what he meant, but the thought of three thousand miles between them for a long time, brought its pang. The fair day suddenly lost its beauty for Betty. The vagrant breeze seemed to sigh farewell, and the sapphire sky above her would not be long the sky above Fortescue. She was roused from her painful dream by Kettle’s voice, and realized that the boy had stood motionless next her for a long time.

“Miss Betty,” he asked, “what’s the matter with you?”

“A great deal is the matter with me,” sighed Betty, putting the letter in her pocket, and resuming her digging and trimming. What did it matter whether the roses bloomed that June or not? And the violets and the cowslips could not console her for Fortescue.

Betty remained a long time in the garden that morning. Kettle followed her about like a dog, every now and then asking anxiously:

“Miss Betty, don’t you feel no better?”

In spite of her sadness and disappointment, Betty was roused out of herself by Kettle’s sympathy.

“I don’t feel any better now, Kettle,” she said. “Perhaps I shall to-morrow.”

But although Betty might show her chagrin and despondency before Kettle and the rosebushes and the violets and the cowslips, she had no intention whatever of letting anybody else see it. When she looked up and saw the Colonel coming out to take the air, pacing up and down the garden walk in the sunny spring day, Betty, who was a clever actress, put on her most smiling aspect. As the Colonel limped up and down for half an hour, his arm on Betty’s shoulder, he thought he had never known her more cheerful. She told him quite naturally that she had had a letter from Mr. Fortescue, and that he was ordered to the Northwest, but, if possible, he would be at Rosehill the next day for a short time, and would come over to see them. The Colonel’s emotions concerning Fortescue were very badly mixed and perplexing even to himself. He was not so selfish as to forget Betty’s happiness, and Fortescue was a fine, upstanding young fellow, quite after the Colonel’s heart. But there was something calculated to daunt the brave soul of the old man in the thought of his few remaining years without Betty. He had been called upon to resign the love of his youth, his only son, and Rosehill, and now this little one—— At the thought, the Colonel said to himself, as he had done many times in years past, amid the hail of bullets, with cannon thundering in his ears, or in snow and sleet and starvation, “Courage! Courage!”

All that day, Betty was in a dream. She knew very well the answer she would give Fortescue, but suddenly she looked into the stern face of Life, and saw what those dreams meant. How could she leave Holly Lodge and the Colonel and Aunt Tulip and Uncle Cesar and Kettle, and the young chickens, just hatched? Life was a practical affair with Betty, but, alas, sentiment and emotion were strong within her. She did not know how the next twenty-four hours passed, except that her eyes continually swept the narrow lane that led to the little gate of Holly Lodge. She would rather see Fortescue in the garden, and therefore dressed herself in her little pale yellow gown, and put on a great straw hat, trimmed with little yellow buds and green leaves, that was worthy of a dryad. The air was warm and soft at midday, and Betty was walking up and down the garden path, watching, watching, watching, and at last, just as she had turned her back to the gate and was walking the length of the little garden path, Fortescue was at her side. He looked so bronzed, so soldierly, so much the man, that Betty gave a little gasp of delight. There was a tall box-hedge in the little old garden which screened the walk from the windows of the house, so that Fortescue could take Betty’s hand and be unseen as they walked up and down in the pleasant spring noon. Then Fortescue told her all: that he had received his unexpected orders and must go, that it wrung his heart to leave her, but that he was hers forever, and that though his body might be in the far Northwest, his heart and soul would be at Holly Lodge. Betty’s eyes made answer to Fortescue, and her lips spoke the winged words that gave her to her lover. A pair of robins beginning housekeeping in the grape arbor at the end of the walk sang and trilled rapturously as they watched the lovers.

There could be no question of their being married immediately, as Fortescue would be on the wing for the next four months, and he knew nothing of his new station or duties, except that both were trying and the conditions unsuited to a woman. But later, after he had seen what the conditions were, perhaps he could take Betty with him.

“I am asking a great deal of you, Betty,” he said. “The wife of a junior officer has to go from place to place, to be uprooted constantly. It is true that I am lucky in having money enough to make it as easy as it can be made, still, it is hard, hard, all the same. But if you love me——”

Betty said one little word which settled that point, though her eyes were grave.

“How can I leave my grandfather?” she asked suddenly.

“You need not leave him,” promptly replied Fortescue. “We can carry the old gentleman and the whole outfit around with us.”

But Betty shook her head.

“You don’t know my grandfather,” she said. “He has a very independent spirit. How could a man who has lived his life here for so many years go from place to place? He must live and die here.”

“He can go and live at Rosehill if he wants to,” answered Fortescue, who was disposed to brush away all obstacles. “My father is pretty good to me, and he will do anything I ask him about the place.”

“But Granddaddy would never consent to be a pensioner on anybody, I am sure,” continued Betty, with a doleful little smile. “So we can’t be married until you are retired, thirty-six years from now.”

Fortescue scouted this proposition, but he saw in Betty Beverley something that gave him pain and yet made him proud. This was a fixed loyalty to her duty. It was that which made Fortescue, who could have led a life of idle luxury, lead the stern life of a soldier. He would not have loved Betty half so well if she had shown too much willingness to cast off the old ties for the new. But, as Fortescue told himself and Betty, there are a great many troublesome questions coming up all the time concerning human beings, horses, cows, gardens, and everything else. There was one small scrap of comfort. It was:

“And the only thing is, Betty,” he said, “that we shall love each other and stand by each other, and some way out of it will be found.”

It was possible that in December, when the great Northwest was snow-bound, Fortescue might get a month’s leave. If he came to Virginia and back, it would give him a week, perhaps ten days, at Rosehill. Of course, he would have to spend a day or two with his father and brothers but they could meet him somewhere on the way.

“I’ve got a fine old dad,” Fortescue said, “and he is always saying that the men of to-day have no devotion to women; so the old gentleman wouldn’t think me game if I didn’t spend most of my leave with you, eh, Betty?”

It seemed to them but a little space of time that they had been in the garden together, when Fortescue, suddenly looking at his watch, found that he had barely time to go into the house and speak to the Colonel and then catch the boat at the landing. The friendly hedge that had screened the lovers witnessed the last throbbing kiss. Outwardly serene, but inwardly palpitating, they went quickly into the house. Betty had warned Fortescue, as they ran down the garden path, to say nothing to her grandfather.

“It will only distress him and keep him awake at night, and I will choose a time to tell him.”

“All right,” answered Fortescue. “Just give me notice, and I will write him the conventional letter. But to tell you the truth, Betty, I would just as soon be out of the way when the Colonel turns those pathetic eyes on you, as you talk about getting married.”

Colonel Beverley had seen so many young men walking up and down the garden path with Betty, and had watched the rise and fall of so many flirtations, that he attached little consequence to Fortescue’s visit. He was sorry that the young officer would not be among the party in the camp, and added with a grim smile that no doubt the young ladies in the county would miss him extremely and would be forced to take comfort in other second lieutenants, just as it had been in his day. Then with best wishes and a handshake, and a soft pressure of Betty’s fingers, Fortescue was gone.

“A fine, personable youngster,” said the Colonel to Betty. “Very creditable of him, serving in the army, and he the son of a rich man. He could be, if he wished, of the idle rich.”

“If he were an idle rich man, I don’t think I should care much about him,” said Betty significantly.