"Esther, Betty has everlastingly been saying that you had a perfectly determined passion for sacrificing yourself. Please get it out of your head at once that I have the faintest idea of taking Mistress Betty home with me. For if ever you needed her in all your life it seems to me you will need her in the next few years. And as long as half your effort is being made for her sake don't you think that she might at least be allowed to stand shoulder to shoulder with you? The Princess is rather a nice person, you know, Esther, in spite of us, and I don't believe that all the pleading in the world that I could do would persuade her to desert you."
"But it must," Esther replied so solemnly that Richard Ashton stared at her in fresh astonishment. For now that they were talking of Betty and not of herself she was looking directly at him.
"You see, it is for just this reason that I wanted to talk to you alone," Esther went on hurriedly. "Of course I may be mistaken or perhaps I have not exactly the right to interfere, but I am awfully afraid, Dick, that Betty is learning to care for that young German fellow, Carl von Reuter. Oh, I can understand that you may consider it absurd of me to be so suspicious, because Betty has been having dozens of admirers ever since we came to Germany. But I am sure this affair is quite different. In the first place the man himself is so much more attractive. He is heir to an old title and——"
"But Betty could not be such an utter goose as to care about a title," Dick interrupted; "and this fellow is as poor as a church mouse and she has only known him a few weeks. Don't you think it is rather looking for trouble? Why, I shouldn't dream of allowing Betty to consider the fellow seriously. I'll tell him not to come to the house again, as I did that other youth, if you say the word. Anyhow, I'll give Betty a piece of my mind tonight."
"You won't do any such a thing, Richard Ashton," Esther remarked firmly, actually shaking the young man's arm to express her scorn of his stupidity, "for if you do you will involve us all in a great deal of discomfort if nothing worse. In the first place I don't think Betty yet dreams that she is beginning to care seriously for this young German and perhaps she won't if no one says anything to her. But from what Polly and I have seen she does like him a great deal already and she tries to see him by himself without Polly or me. And you know that isn't in the least like the Princess. But she is awfully interested in her Camp Fire club in the village and perhaps if you take her home pretty soon nothing serious will happen. Lieutenant von Reuter is awfully poor, I know, and everybody says he simply has to marry a rich girl. But I don't know which I should hate the most: to have Betty care for him and he not return her affection or to have them both care and——"
"For goodness' sake, don't say another word, Esther, or I shall take the next train back home and sit and watch every breath Betty draws for the rest of the day," Dick answered miserably. "Please remember that I have a particularly hard lecture on anatomy in another hour. But I shall meet you on the train going out this afternoon and perhaps we can think up some plan of campaign together."
CHAPTER XIV
Betty's Strange Disappearance
When Dick and Esther returned home just before dusk on that same afternoon, Betty was not there. They found Mrs. Ashton in tears from nervousness and fright, Polly O'Neill divided between anger and solicitude, and only Miss Adams sufficiently composed to have been making the necessary investigations.