The Colonel was playing on his violin as Betty entered the sitting-room, and what he had chosen was the sad old air of “Love Not, Love Not, Ye Hapless Sons of Men.” He laid down his violin, and noticed that Betty’s face was pale, in spite of the sharp winter air, and that she spoke with suppressed fury in her voice.

“Grandfather,” she said, “it is all over between Mr. Fortescue and me. Please don’t ask me about it. We didn’t disagree about a trifle, but about something important. We are perfectly friendly, and mean to keep so, because we don’t want the people in the county talking about us and worrying us with questions. But it is all over, quite over.”

The Colonel started and studied Betty closely. He knew the resolute character, the stubborn pride, that lay beneath all of Betty’s frivolities. She could do things as foolish as any girl of her age, but she could suffer more than most. The Colonel sighed as he looked at her pale, unsmiling face, her eyes full of angry light. He understood the sharp pain of those who have not learned the awful lesson of life, the haughty attitude of the young who have never known defeat, the sufferings of mortified pride and wounded vanity, and, above all, he had an inward conviction that Betty in her heart loved Fortescue. Man-like, the Colonel was not so sure of Fortescue, and a resentment, grim and stern, rose within him. Until the young officer appeared, Betty had been quite happy and satisfied at Holly Lodge. In time, she would have married some one in the county perhaps, and would have led that peaceful life on the sunny side of the wall, which only the quiet lives know. But with Fortescue’s appearance had come the disturbing vision of a possible return to Rosehill, of a life in the great outside world, going from place to place, of the breaking of all the old ties. Betty had asked him not to question her, but the Colonel felt justified in asking precisely one question.

“Elizabeth, has Mr. Fortescue acted dishonorably?” he inquired, straightening up his old figure, still soldierly.

“No,” replied Betty promptly. “Mr. Fortescue couldn’t do anything dishonorable.”

“I am glad to hear it,” answered the Colonel grimly. “If he had, I should have felt called upon to chastise him according to the code in which I was reared and have lived and shall die.”

Betty’s heart was quivering, her pride was up in arms, the whole world seemed full of tears; but when the Colonel talked about chastising Fortescue’s young strength, her sense of humor overwhelmed her pain, and she suddenly laughed a little. She did not tell the Colonel the cause of her ripple of laughter, and in another minute her eyes grew sombre and her heart once more hardened against Fortescue.

“You may be quite satisfied, Grandfather,” she said. “All that has happened was my own act.”

Betty turned and went out of the room. Being Christmas time, and there being no household tasks awaiting her, no sewing to do, because she had planned that this Christmas time should be one of perfect leisure, that she might be free to entertain her great guest, First Love, there was nothing for her to do. She went aimlessly up to her room. Then, suddenly, she felt a sharp headache. Her mental suffering produced a physical pain. She was rather glad of it, as it gave her an excuse for keeping to her room and lying down. The little room was flooded with winter sunshine, and a pretty fire was smouldering on the hearth. Betty drew the curtains, glancing meanwhile toward Rosehill. Her keen eyes caught sight of Fortescue crossing the lawn rapidly. A great buzzard was wheeling majestically over the Rosehill house, and a group of the servants, one of the men with a gun, was standing on the edge of the lawn, prepared to fire at the bird. Fortescue walked up and, taking the gun, sighted and fired, and the buzzard fell upon the roof of the house. This little act wrung Betty’s heart.

“How little he cares!” she thought bitterly. “Any trifle can distract him. Well, it was better to find it out in time.”

Then, for the first time, Betty turned her eyes away as the Colonel turned his away from Rosehill. She loved the place, and deep in her heart had grown the wish to preside there once more, as Fortescue’s wife. It was impossible, quite impossible, now. She could not forget Fortescue—Betty was honest enough with herself to know that, and honorable enough to respect her own affection. Love is not killed in an hour or even a day. The great stretch of life ahead of her loomed before Betty’s eyes as one stands on the edge of a parched desert and thinks of the weary journey across it. For Betty Beverley, the coquette, was the soul of constancy. These thoughts and many others and a racking headache drove Betty to her bed. She threw herself on it, with all the sunshine shut out of her room, just as it had been shut suddenly out of her life.

At the midday dinner, Kettle, who had almost supplanted Uncle Cesar as butler, came up, and, opening Betty’s door and putting in his little woolly head, said softly:

“Miss Betty, dinner done ready.”

“I can’t come down to dinner,” answered Betty. “Tell the Colonel that I have a bad headache. It will be better to-night, and I am going to the party just the same. But when dinner is over, Kettle, you may bring me up some tea and toast.”

Kettle had never known Betty to have an ache or a pain since he had been established at Holly Lodge, and the sight of her pale face, and the weariness in her voice, frightened him. He began to argue with Betty:

“Miss Betty, you better come down ter dinner. Aunt Tulip, she done cook some of the bes’ sweet ’taters you ever see in your life, Miss Betty—got sugar on ’em, an’ butter too.”

“I don’t care for any, thank you,” said Betty, her heart far away from sweet potatoes with sugar and butter.

Kettle paused for a minute in order to think of some other inducement.

“Aunt Tulip, she got a rice pudden’ wid gre’t big raisins in it, mos’ as big as my fist,” urged Kettle.

“No, thank you,” replied Betty absently.

But Kettle’s sympathy could not be bottled up.

“Miss Betty,” pleaded Kettle, “lemme go out an’ crack you up some wun’nuts,” by which Kettle meant walnuts.

Betty’s patience was giving out.

“No, Kettle,” she said sharply. “I don’t want anything except tea and toast, as I told you.”

“But, Miss Betty,” persisted Kettle, edging toward the door, “I got a big bag o’ chestnuts, an’ they mighty good roasted on the kitchen shovel.”

Betty’s nerves and her temper could stand no more.

“Go away, Kettle,” she cried impatiently. “Go downstairs this minute and serve the Colonel’s soup.”

The tone could not be mistaken, and Kettle went out of the door as if shot out of a gun. Once outside, however, his little faithful heart was still torn for Betty, and he was prepared to take great risks. He turned the door-knob noiselessly, and, putting his round, black head in the door, whispered:

“Miss Betty, Miss Betty, when I bring up yo’ tea, lemme bring you up a hard b’iled aig!”

Betty’s answer was to throw a pillow at Kettle, who dodged it and went clattering downstairs.

What a strange, unnatural day it was for Betty! Here in the brilliant afternoon, when she was wont to be her brightest and best, she lay huddled up in her bed, racked with physical and mental pain. Her sunny room was dark, and her active little feet felt like lead. The prospect of a party, the music, the dancing, the bright interchange of looks and words that was the wine of life to Betty’s pleasure-loving temperament, seemed to her now a dreadful ordeal, to be gone through with courage, and by a stupendous effort to let no one suspect the agony of her mind. Never before had she felt humiliated in the presence of any man, but she felt a sharp humiliation at the thought that in the first encounter of her will with Fortescue’s, she had been defeated; whether by her own unreason or his, was equally painful. But there was no back-down in Betty, and she never dreamed of staying away from the party or giving up the fight because of an aching heart.

The old Colonel downstairs in the sitting-room felt his heart wrung for his little Betty. Too soon had come to her those shocks and disappointments against which youth rebels. The young demand happiness of life, and are in despair when they first find they cannot secure it.

Kettle, after having taken up Betty’s tea, came downstairs again, and, instead of going into the kitchen, where he belonged, came into the sitting-room and, perching his small, black, and miserable self upon a little cricket, fixed his eyes upon the Colonel’s grave, gray face, outlined against the window-pane. The boy sat so still and silent that the Colonel at last roused himself and asked kindly:

“What’s the matter, Kettle?”

“Ain’ nothin’ ’tall matter wid me, suh, but sumpin’ is the matter wid Miss Betty, an’ it kinder makes me feel bad.”

The Colonel sighed; it made him feel bad, too.

All the afternoon, Kettle sat there until it was time to milk old Bossy, a duty which he had monopolized for some time past. Then there was wood and water to be brought, and all the other duties which Aunt Tulip had devised for him. But when they were over Kettle crept softly upstairs and seated himself on the top step close to Betty’s door. At seven o’clock, Betty opened the door that she might call down to Aunt Tulip to assist her in getting into her gown. She almost fell over Kettle.

“What are you doing here, Kettle?”

“Jes’ waitin’ ter see ef you don’ want nothin’,” was Kettle’s excuse.

The boy’s inarticulate sympathy touched Betty’s heart in the midst of her own unhappiness.

“I do want something,” she said kindly. “I want you to tell Aunt Tulip to come here, and to bring up some more wood, and to do all sorts of things that nobody can do for me except you, Kettle.”

Kettle’s black face beamed. He ran downstairs after Aunt Tulip, and then began bringing wood, toiling up the stairs with as much as he could carry.

Although Betty was dressed as gaily as usual for a party, and took as much pains with her beautiful brown hair and the wreath of ivy-leaves upon it, Kettle’s sharp eyes were not deceived. Something was wrong with Miss Betty.

When old Whitey pulled the rockaway up to the door, Betty came down to show herself as usual to the Colonel. The unspoken pity in his eyes moved Betty.

“Don’t be afraid, Grandfather,” she said. “I haven’t any more cowardice in me than there is in you. I intend to be just as happy to-night as ever I was, and to dance and laugh and sing as I always do.”

And then poor Betty laughed a laugh so forced, so full of pain, so unlike her usual rippling laughter, that the Colonel’s heart was wrung more than ever. But he knew better than to offer Betty pity.

“Stiffen up, my dear,” he said. “Life is full of disappointments. Fortescue is not the man you took him for, that is all. Put him out of your mind.”

“I will,” replied Betty stoutly, without the slightest ability to keep her word in the matter.

Driving along the hard country road in the wintry night, Betty thought of all those things she might do by which a headstrong, proud, and deeply sensitive girl may inflict pain upon herself as well as another. She would, of course, give Fortescue back his ring that night, and the next day there were to be returned a few trifles other than books and flowers that he had sent her. The ring was a simple thing, a little ruby heart surrounded with small pearls. She had never worn it in public, for fear it might attract attention—people in the country are observant of trifles. But she loved the little ring as a symbol.

That night the party was at Red Plains, and Betty knew she would meet the whole county. There was no hall for dancing at Red Plains, but the drawing-room was cleared of furniture, and there the dancing went on. As Betty entered the drawing-room, almost the first person she saw was Fortescue dancing vigorously with Sally Carteret. Betty was besieged with partners, and immediately whirled off with one of them. When the music stopped, she found herself close to Fortescue, near the great fireplace in which the Christmas fire burned. They both spoke cordially and smiling, but as Betty withdrew her hand from Fortescue’s grasp, she left in it the little ring. Fortescue was exasperated, as any man would be, by the promptness of this stab, and, while talking gaily with Betty, dropped the ring into the open fire, unseen by any except her. Betty’s heart gave a great throb of pain. She loved her little ring, and it seemed to her an insult that Fortescue should destroy it before her eyes.

They danced together, and talked so merrily that no one suspected the gulf which they themselves had dug between them, so great is the folly, the rashness, the headlong pride, of youth. Each had a fierce pride which prevented them from showing their self-inflicted wounds to the world, or making an outcry at that dreadful, gratuitous and unnecessary pain which the young inflict upon themselves. As Betty danced, she thought about the poor princess who had to walk upon burning plough-shares. If she were a real princess, Betty thought, she smiled bravely during her agony.

The merriment, the dancing, the pretty Christmas observances, that Betty had loved so much, all seemed now to her wearisome and joyless. She longed for the time to come when the ball would be over, and she could be alone, and thought with distaste of the half a dozen parties ahead of her. This was very much increased by the news spread abroad that a ball was to be given at Rosehill on Christmas Eve. Fortescue invited everybody cordially and pleasantly to his ball, saying he could not hope to do things as picturesquely as they did them, but he would do his best. Everybody had accepted his invitation with alacrity. He had made himself popular in a community where newcomers were usually looked upon askant, and the prospect of Rosehill being once more opened at Christmas time pleased the young people immensely.

“Of course, Miss Betty, you will come,” said Fortescue cordially, his heart hardening against Betty as he spoke.

“Certainly, I will,” she answered, with a brilliant smile. “I shall be glad to see Rosehill gay once more.”

When the ball was over, in the early hours of the morning, with the earth still wrapped in pitch darkness, and Betty was driving home, a faint moan escaped her lips. It was bad enough to have to meet Fortescue constantly, but to go to Rosehill—— She might, it is true, deceive everybody in the county on a pretense of illness, but she could not deceive Fortescue, the person whom she most wished to deceive. She would go, no matter what it cost her.

The ball at Rosehill was a torturing thing to Betty. By that time, as it is with the wild hearts of youth, she had a settled and burning resentment against Fortescue, which she concealed from the world with pretty smiles and gay words. Fortescue, as he said, could not do things as the county people did, but with well meant generosity he did everything well at his ball so far as money could go. There was a profusion of flowers ordered from Baltimore, along with the conventional supper, totally unlike what the county people had, and a band of music beside which the fiddles of Isaac Minkins and Uncle Cesar and the “lap organ” paled. These novelties pleased everybody except Betty, who walked through the rooms where she had spent nineteen years of her short life, and looked around her with a supercilious smile that infuriated Fortescue.

The ball kept up late. Fortescue was an admirable host, and his guests enjoyed themselves. It was quite five o’clock before the last guest had left, and during the night there had been a fall of snow. The lights were out, and Fortescue, in his bedroom, which had once been Betty’s, was smoking his last cigar, and cursing the treachery of a woman—of Betty Beverley, who had won his brave and honest heart, and then, through sheer unreason and heartlessness, had cast him off. He threw the stump of his cigar savagely into the fire, and, going to the window which looked toward Holly Lodge, put it up to inhale the cold, clear air. The blackness and darkness had given way to a pale gray, which preceded the dawn, and by the ghostly half-light, he saw from the roof of Holly Lodge a great cloud of black smoke ascend, and little tongues of flame leaping wickedly.