She tried to escape, but her hand was in a grip of iron. "What do you mean? Tell me, Betty. Barbara—" His voice failed, but the passion of love that blazed in his eyes reassured her.
"I will not say another word. Please let me go and never, never tell Barbara what I said;" and as she wrenched her hand from him, and vanished from the balcony, her smiling face, white amidst the darkness, looked to Robert Sumner like an angel of hope. Could it be that she intended to give him hope of Barbara's love—that sweet young girl—when he was so much older? When she knew that he had once before loved? But what else could Betty have meant? Had he been blind all this time, and had Betty seen it? A hundred circumstances sprang into his remembrance, that, looked at in the light of her message, took on possible meanings.
Robert Sumner was a man of action. As soon as his sister retired to her own room, he followed, and then and there fully opened his heart to her. He told her all, from the first moment when Barbara began to monopolize his thoughts, and confessed his struggles against her usurpation of the place Margaret had so long held.
To say that Mrs. Douglas was astonished does not begin to express the truth. She listened in helpless wonder. As he went on, and it became evident to her what a strong hold on his affections Barbara had gained, the fear arose lest he might be on the brink of a direful disappointment. At last, when he ended, saying, "I shall tell her all to-morrow," she could only falter:—
"Is it best so soon, Robert?"
"Soon!" he cried. "It seems as if I have waited years! Say not one word against it, sister. My mind is made up!"
But he could not tell her the hope Bettina had given, which was singing joyfully in his heart all the time. And so Mrs. Douglas was tortured all through the night with miserable forebodings.
The next morning Bettina was troubled at the look of resolve she understood in Mr. Sumner's face, and almost trembled at the thought of what she had done. "But I am sure—I am sure," she kept repeating, to reassure herself.
A last visit to the Academy had been planned for the afternoon. They walked thither, as they often loved to do, through the narrow, still streets and across the little foot-bridges. Mrs. Douglas, with Margery and Miss Sherman, arrived first, and, after a few minutes' delay, Bettina and Malcom appeared.
"Uncle Robert has taken a gondola to the banker's to get our letters, mother," said Malcom, in such a peculiar voice that his mother gave him a quick look of interrogation.