"I want to tell you something I never have mentioned, Anthony," Betty said gravely. "I want to thank you for coming to Germany to bring me the good news of my inheritance. Oh, it is not that I could not have waited longer to have heard, but that if the news had not come just when it did, I might have been the unconscious cause of making the two people I love almost best in the world unhappy all their lives. For you see I did not dream that Dick cared for Esther or she for him. So I kept on urging Esther to devote herself to her music, when all the time she and Dick wanted to be married, and Esther was only going on with her music because she wanted to earn money for me and for father. As though either one of us wished her to sacrifice herself!"
"Still, your brother was a brave fellow to ask a girl to give up such a future," Anthony Graham returned. "I don't think I could have done it."
Betty frowned at him. "Why not?" she demanded.
Turning toward her, Anthony now looked at her so steadfastly that the girl's white lids drooped.
"Well, once I cared for a girl who was miles and miles above me in family, position, beauty, brains, oh, everything that is worth having, except one thing!" he explained. "Neither she nor her people had money; they had lost it through misfortune. So I used to work and dream that some day I might be able to climb that one hill. But before I was even halfway up my hill—oh, I can't talk in figures of speech, I must speak plain English—why the girl inherited a lot of money. So now she has everything and I have nothing worth while to offer her. Yet I don't wish her to think that I have ever ceased caring for her or ever will."
"Anthony," Betty replied unexpectedly, "I always wear that little enameled pin representing a pine tree that you sent me by Polly a long time ago. But I have been thinking lately that perhaps you did not remember that one of the meanings of the pine tree is faithfulness."
Then she moved away toward the cabin and, as the young man walked along beside her without speaking, she said half to herself and half to him, "Not long ago I had one person declare that he cared for me because I had inherited a fortune. And here is another person who has ceased caring because I have money. Yet, if I have to choose between the two, I believe I like the American way best."
"You don't mean that you like me, do you, Betty?" Anthony pleaded.
The Princess shook her head. "I don't mean anything—yet, Anthony," she answered.
Inside the living room on their return they found at least a dozen friends urging Esther to sing. To Margaret Adams' request she finally yielded. For Miss Adams had lately come to Woodford to spend the week with Polly O'Neill's family. And now Polly was standing with her arm slipped caressingly through her friend's.