Making a tremendous effort to attain her usual dignity, Betty opened wide her gray eyes, stared, tried to get up out of her chair, and then finding her feet tangled in the blue shawl, stumbled and would have fallen except for the newcomer's outstretched arm.
Yet even when he had restored her to her usual equilibrium she did not immediately recognize their visitor, although she found herself looking up into a pair of clear hazel eyes and at the strong, clean outline of a typical American face. The young man must have been about twenty-three or four years old. He had dark hair, resolutely forbidden to curl, and curiously brilliant skin; but the contour of his face was almost too lean and the expression of his lips and chin too set and firm for so young a fellow.
"Miss Ashton," he began unsmilingly, "am I always to have to tell you who I am each time we meet?"
And then, just as she had once several years before, Betty held out both hands in a surprised and happy greeting.
"Why, it is Anthony Graham! But you must please forgive me, because how in the world could I ever have dreamed of seeing you here? What in the wide world has brought you to Germany?"
And as Anthony did not answer at once, Dick Ashton walked away, coming back a moment later with two porch chairs, which he placed near his sister's larger one.
"Sit down again, please, Betty," he asked. "I realize that we have very little time, but I think it better that you should hear at once what Mr. Graham has come all the way across the ocean to tell you." And Dick's face was so queer that it was quite impossible to tell what his emotions might be, so that Betty clutched the sides of her chair, white and frightened.
"Yes, please, if it is bad news, tell me at once," she whispered.
Anthony Graham's smile, appearing now for the first time, was immediately reassuring.
"But it is not bad news and we should not have frightened you," he began at once. "It is news that almost anybody in the world would be more than happy to hear. Judge Maynard has left you the greatest part of his fortune, which will amount to about fifty thousand dollars, I believe, and as he made me his executor, I have come over to try and make matters clear to you and your mother and brother."