As the sunny autumn succeeded the enchanted summer, it seemed to Betty as if a new and lovely light were over the world. Fortescue’s letters, his constant gifts, the books which came often, and the music he sent her, and which Betty played and sang to her harp, were so many messages of love. Fortescue wrote that he had applied for leave, and that by making close connections he would be able to spend ten whole days at Rosehill. He meant to give a ball on Christmas Eve at Rosehill, and, as he wrote Betty, she could practise her future rÔle as mistress of Rosehill. Fortescue could not manage the ball as well as the county people managed their Christmas balls. All he could do was to order the music and the supper and everything from Baltimore, but when Betty presided at Rosehill things could be done better and in true Virginia style. He hoped to arrive some days before Christmas.

Then Betty began the pleasant process of counting the days. This she confided to the Colonel, for Betty understood, as few young things do, the yearning of the old for the confidence of the young, the delicacy felt by an old man lest he intrude upon the secrets of the young.

The two, Betty and the Colonel, tried very hard to dovetail the wishes and duties and interests of the triangle. Fortescue was the third angle.

“Any way,” Betty cried, when they had reasoned out that she could not desert the Colonel, nor could she refuse to marry her lover, nor could Fortescue abandon his profession, nor could Betty abandon the idea of presiding at Rosehill—“Any way, Granddaddy, it will only be thirty-five years now before Jack is retired, and then we can all three settle down at Rosehill.”

The preparations for Christmas gaieties began early, and the same round of dances and hunts and dinners and teas and festivities of all sorts was arranged.

It was the third day before Christmas, and Betty, with her skirts pinned up, her sleeves turned back to her elbows, and a red silk handkerchief of the Colonel’s tied around her head, was preparing the icing for the Christmas cake, when she saw Fortescue passing the window. There was no time to escape. The next minute he was in the little sitting-room, and Betty was clasped to his heart. After the first rapture of meeting, Betty made numerous apologies, unpinned her skirts, pulled down her sleeves, and removed the handkerchief from her shining hair, but Fortescue told her she did not look half so pretty as before. It was a happy hour, one of those little glimpses of the Elysian fields of the soul which come only to the young and the pure. Luckily, the Colonel was taking his afternoon stroll supported by his stick, and with Kettle as aide-de-camp in attendance. The lovers had a full hour to themselves in the violet dusk, the room only lighted by the wood fire and the pale glow of the wintry sunset. Presently, the Colonel came in and shook hands cordially with Fortescue. It was the hour when Betty sang to her harp the old songs the Colonel loved. Fortescue thought he had never seen so sweet a picture as Betty playing and singing to the harp, while the Colonel, leaning forward on his stick, listened with his soul in his eyes. Kettle, squatting tailor-fashion on the hearth, fixed his round eyes on Betty, and his little woolly black head was motionless while she was singing.

Of course Fortescue stayed to supper, and Uncle Cesar was reinforced by Kettle, who was chief batter-cake server, and brought from the kitchen the numerous relays of hot batter-cakes, hot waffles, and hot biscuits of which the well known Virginia formula is, “Take two and butter them while they are hot.” Afterward, when Kettle had had his supper, he was sent for to exhibit his accomplishments with the fiddle. Kettle played dances and sang simultaneously, his merry music delighting Fortescue, whose musical education was not above rag-time. Fortescue told about the arrangements he had made for the Christmas Eve ball at Rosehill, and Betty thought them ineffably grand.

When Kettle had been sent away, there was much talk about armies and soldiers between Fortescue and the Colonel, whose heart was ever with the fighting men. Betty listened with delight to this modern Froissart’s Chronicle, and said presently:

“How glad I am to be a soldier’s daughter!”

“And that’s why you will make a glorious wife for a soldier,” replied Fortescue impudently, at which Betty blushed all over her face and neck.

When Fortescue was walking back to Rosehill, he saw over his shoulder the lights shining from Betty’s dormer windows. He went direct to his own room as soon as he reached Rosehill, and after a while saw the lights go out in Betty’s windows. Fortescue, who, like most soldiers, believed in God and respected Him as the Great Commander, knew that Betty was saying her simple, earnest prayers for him, and the thought that the prayers of the innocent were heard gave him a reverent thankfulness. To Betty, in her little white bed in the darkened room, with the curtain drawn wide so that she could watch the lights at Rosehill as long as they burned, it was as if the world were growing too beautiful. Deep in her heart was the old Greek superstition that one cannot walk the airy heights of happiness long without a precipice opening beneath one’s feet. The thought oppressed her and kept her awake long after the windows of Rosehill were dark. Something like a presentiment stole into her heart.

“Whatever happens, though,” she thought, “nothing can come between Jack and me. We understand each other too well.”

Suddenly the melancholy cry of a nightbird resounded outside in the darkness. It was strange to hear that cry at midnight in the dead of winter and it made Betty shiver.

The next day the gaieties began with great vigor. The county was full of visitors, and the whirl of dancing feet was everywhere.

Early the next day, Fortescue came over to Holly Lodge. He sat awhile in the sitting-room, talking pleasantly to the Colonel, who, in the old days before the continent was linked by railways, had travelled through the far-off country beyond the Rocky Mountains. Betty was congratulating herself upon the extreme good fortune that Fortescue and her grandfather had so much in common. But even that brought a little chill to her heart, for blessings have their price, and Betty was superstitious.

The morning was cold and clear, and after awhile Fortescue asked Betty to come out for a turn with him. Betty went willingly enough. The Colonel watched the two as they started off up the lane toward the belt of woodland that skirted the highway. Betty’s trim figure in black, with a little black hat on her shapely head, just came up to Fortescue’s shoulder. They were a good height, and walked well together, thought the Colonel, used to watching marchers.

Of course Betty and Fortescue had everything to tell each other, in spite of the long letters which had been exchanged weekly. But when they were once in the woodland, with the morning sun shining upon the tall and scattered cedars, Fortescue threw everything aside for the chief purpose he had in view.

“Now, Betty,” he said, “I have come here to have you fix the day when we shall be married. I don’t believe in long engagements, and never meant to have one. My special duty will end in the spring, and then we must be married.”

Betty’s eyes grew troubled. What should she say? How could she leave the Colonel? Something like this she stammered out. Fortescue met it impatiently. He believed in her doing her duty by the Colonel, but, man-like, he thought that Betty must do her duty by him first. There was no question of money. Fortescue had enough to do as he pleased.

“Make the Colonel comfortable any way you like,” he said. “Let him stay at Holly Lodge or go to Rosehill. My father has given me the place, and some day, when I am a retired major-general, Betty, we shall live there, you and I and our children. But we must come to a positive arrangement now.”

Fortescue’s tone displeased Betty. He was too confident, too much in the way of giving orders, a thing which Betty herself was accustomed to doing. It cannot be denied that Betty was a little spoiled and rather haughty. Her reply to Fortescue displeased him even more than his words had displeased her.

“I think,” she said coldly, “that you are taking too much for granted. Some one must be considered as well as yourself.”

This was a most unlucky speech. Fortescue’s reply was a retaliation. They were only twenty-one and twenty-six, and although they had far more of feeling, strength, depth, and steadiness of character than young persons usually have, they were no wiser or more experienced than most young things. Some words followed, impetuous and domineering on Fortescue’s part, exasperatingly cool on Betty’s. They were both keen of wit, and readily surmised the meaning of sharp phrases. Fortescue’s feelings were quick, and Betty had a tidy little temper of her own. Suddenly, they knew not how or when or why, but they were walking back toward Holly Lodge in the crisp winter morning, each with a resentful heart. Their first meeting as confessed sweethearts had developed into a serious quarrel. It was not about those trifling things that arise between young lovers, and which bring tears and reproaches, and then end in forgiveness, but it concerned a grave matter, the regulation of their future lives and their mutual obligations, one to the other. The question of what was to become of the Colonel had seemed so easy to settle when they had considered it on the far-off horizon. Now, when it came close to them, it assumed a dangerous aspect. The rash and inexperienced Betty thought that it must be settled according to her ideas, and that Fortescue must wait until the Colonel was coaxed into saying what he would do in the premises. Fortescue, with a much better idea of the vicissitudes of an officer’s life, saw that Betty’s plans and compromises and dovetailings of duty were impracticable, and told her so. The bitterest quarrels on earth are those between a man and a woman who love each other, and whose anger “doth work like madness in the brain.” It was the more intense because each felt to be in the right, and that the other must yield in the name of love and duty. But yielding was new and strange to each. Betty knew so little of the power of money that she resented Fortescue’s bringing that into the discussion, and, moreover, she was an arrogant little creature and a trifle too ready for a fight. Fortescue, who had seen the great outside world unknown to Betty, knew the Spanish proverb, “God is the general, but money is His lieutenant.” It took all of Betty’s self-command to hold back the tears and to keep her lips from trembling. If those tears had dropped upon her cheeks and her lovely mouth had quivered, all would have been well, but Fortescue, watching her sidewise, saw only her head in the air, her delicate face as firm as marble, and said to himself savagely:

“If she doesn’t care, why should I?”

All at once, a horrid doubt of Betty took possession of his mind. Once, he had laughed at her outrageous flattery of other men, her open cajolery, her pretty coquetries. Suppose, after all, she had no feeling, and was making sport of his honest heart? Perhaps she had never meant to marry him, and was only amusing herself. There might be another man—at this, Fortescue ground his teeth.

They walked the whole length of the lane without speaking. When they got to the paling surrounding the little lawn of Holly Lodge, Betty spoke, but her evil genius waited upon her tongue that day.

“Of course,” she said, “as we can’t agree, everything is over. But if we appear unfriendly, everybody will notice it, and I do so hate to have people gabbling about me!”

“So do I,” promptly assented Fortescue.

“Then,” said Betty, “we must be as friendly as ever while you are in the county. Luckily, nobody knows anything, except Grandfather, and he will, of course, keep quiet. People here don’t think as much of a man’s attentions to a girl as you do, and other men have danced with me quite as much as you have.”

“No doubt,” replied Fortescue sharply. “I think you were simply amusing yourself all the time. Well, then, I can play that game all right. Good morning.”

He was off, and Betty was walking soberly into the house. The fair day had grown dark, and her heart in her breast was like a stone. Woman-like, she began to defend herself against herself:

“If he is so dictatorial as all that, we never could have got on, so perhaps it is the best thing that we found it out immediately. If a woman gives in at once to a man and never remembers what is due anybody else, she might as well be a slave!”