“Jane Lightfoot had them, too,” added Mrs. Ambler. “She used to say that to love hard went with them. 'The Lightfoot eyes are never disillusioned,' she once told me. I wonder if she remembered that afterwards, poor girl.”
Betty was silent for a moment.
“It sounds cruel,” she confessed, “but you know, I have sometimes thought that it may have been just a little bit her fault, mamma.”
Mrs. Ambler smiled. “Your grandpa used to say 'get a woman to judge a woman and there comes a hanging.'”
“Oh, I don't mean that,” responded Betty, blushing. “Jack Montjoy was a scoundrel, I suppose—but I think that even if Dan had been a scoundrel, instead of so big and noble—I could have made his life so much better just because I loved him; if love is only large enough it seems to me that all such things as being good and bad are swallowed up.”
“I don't know—your father was very good, and I loved him because of it. He was of the salt of the earth, as Mr. Blake wrote to me last year.”
“There has never been anybody like papa,” said Betty, her eyes filling. “Not even Dan—for I can't imagine papa being anything but what he was—and yet I know even if Dan were as wild as the Major once believed him to be, I could have gone with him not the least bit afraid. I was so sure of myself that if he had beaten me he could not have broken my spirit. I should always have known that some day he would need me and be sorry.”
Tender, pensive, bred in the ancient ways, Mrs. Ambler looked up at her and shook her head.
“You are very strong, my child,” she answered, “and I think it makes us all lean too much upon you.”
Taking her hand, Betty kissed each slender finger. “I lean on you for the best in life, mamma,” she answered, and then turned to the window. “It's my working time,” she said, “and there is poor Hosea trying to plough without horses. I wonder how he'll manage it.”