"Betty, I sometimes wonder if you have told Mr. Emory the truth about
myself--"
"Certainly not. Why should I tell Mr. Emory--or anyone else?"
"Well, he is so kind to me and we have become such friends, I thought
perhaps you would think he ought to know."
"That is pure nonsense. Do you suppose I tell my friends everything I
know? No friend is so close as to demand to know more than you choose
to tell him."
"All right, honey; but I am always afraid he will see my finger-nails
when he is helping me with my lessons--"
"He is very near-sighted; and I doubt if anyone would notice those
faint blue marks unless they were looking for them."
"Of course they seem the most conspicuous things I've got, to me."
"Are you happy here, Harriet?" asked Betty, gently. Harriet nodded and
looked at her benefactor with glowing eyes. "Oh, yes," she said.
"Yes--yes. It is like heaven, in spite of the hard work they make me do.
I'm right down afraid of that old Frenchman, and when Professor Morrow
shuts his eyes and groans, 'Door--d-o-o-r, Miss Walker, _not_
d-o-u-g-h,' I could cry. But I'm happy all the same, and I forgot
_that_ for a whole week."
"Well, forget it altogether. And remember to have a thin travelling
dress and a lot of summer things made. And of all people do not confide
in Jack Emory or Sally Carter--or any other Southerner."
_Part II_
_Senator North, Miss Betty Madison, and several other Characters in
this History go in search of a Mountain Lake and find an Ocean._
I
Betty never denied that she enjoyed her visit to California, despite
the several thousand miles between the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts,
and Senator North's rooted aversion to writing letters. She received
exactly three brief epistles from him in almost as many months, but in
one he said that he missed her even in the North, in another that
Washington was not Washington without her, and in the third that he
looked forward with pleasure to the cool Adirondacks and herself. And a
woman can live on less than that. Betty read and re-read these simple
and possibly perfunctory statements until they were weighted with love.
And although she visited all the wonders of the most wonderful State in
the Union, and was deeply grateful to them, they never pushed the man
from the forefront of her mind for a moment. The egoism of love reduces
scenery to a setting and the splendours of sunset to a background.
Betty thought of him by day and by night, in company and in solitude,
but even the agony of longing to which her imagination sometimes rose
contained no heartbreak. For the future was all over there, on the far
side of the continent; its grave-clothes were deep under lavender and
rosemary. To think of him was a luxury and a delight, and would remain
so until Imagination had been pushed aside by the contradictory details
of Reality. Sometimes she wept pleasurably, but she smiled oftener. And
still, although she laid no reins on her imagination, she refused to
look beyond the summer among the Adirondack pines, the frequent and
more frequent hours at the close of busy days. If pressed, she would
doubtless have answered that she must bow to Circumstance, but that in
Thought he was wholly hers.