But Betty shook her head.
“You don’t know my grandfather,” she said. “He has a very independent spirit. How could a man who has lived his life here for so many years go from place to place? He must live and die here.”
“He can go and live at Rosehill if he wants to,” answered Fortescue, who was disposed to brush away all obstacles. “My father is pretty good to me, and he will do anything I ask him about the place.”
“But Granddaddy would never consent to be a pensioner on anybody, I am sure,” continued Betty, with a doleful little smile. “So we can’t be married until you are retired, thirty-six years from now.”
Fortescue scouted this proposition, but he saw in Betty Beverley something that gave him pain and yet made him proud. This was a fixed loyalty to her duty. It was that which made Fortescue, who could have led a life of idle luxury, lead the stern life of a soldier. He would not have loved Betty half so well if she had shown too much willingness to cast off the old ties for the new. But, as Fortescue told himself and Betty, there are a great many troublesome questions coming up all the time concerning human beings, horses, cows, gardens, and everything else. There was one small scrap of comfort. It was:
“And the only thing is, Betty,” he said, “that we shall love each other and stand by each other, and some way out of it will be found.”
It was possible that in December, when the great Northwest was snow-bound, Fortescue might get a month’s leave. If he came to Virginia and back, it would give him a week, perhaps ten days, at Rosehill. Of course, he would have to spend a day or two with his father and brothers but they could meet him somewhere on the way.
“I’ve got a fine old dad,” Fortescue said, “and he is always saying that the men of to-day have no devotion to women; so the old gentleman wouldn’t think me game if I didn’t spend most of my leave with you, eh, Betty?”
It seemed to them but a little space of time that they had been in the garden together, when Fortescue, suddenly looking at his watch, found that he had barely time to go into the house and speak to the Colonel and then catch the boat at the landing. The friendly hedge that had screened the lovers witnessed the last throbbing kiss. Outwardly serene, but inwardly palpitating, they went quickly into the house. Betty had warned Fortescue, as they ran down the garden path, to say nothing to her grandfather.
“It will only distress him and keep him awake at night, and I will choose a time to tell him.”