“Of course,” answered Betty promptly, her eyes plenteous with pity. “It is a terrible thing to be retired at your age.”
There was a pause, and they continued mechanically to pace slowly up and down the garden path in the dying glow of the October afternoon. Presently Fortescue spoke:
“I don’t know whether I should have come here or not. But it was so lonely at Rosehill—I can’t read, you know—and you said we were to be friends.”
Betty, who could usually control her tears marvellously, suddenly felt them dropping upon her cheeks. They came quickly in a flood and with gasping little sobs. It was through her that Fortescue was menaced with this calamity, that this tragic closing of his soldier’s life had come, perhaps never to be reopened. Her heart was so wrung with this thought, she did not know that she was weeping, but Fortescue knew it. He felt she had injured him and even insulted him by her conduct, and he had once thought she had no heart, but now a strange and quick conviction came to him that Betty was very far from being a heartless coquette. And with it came a sudden illumination concerning himself. He had been very hasty, very dictatorial. After all, their quarrel had not been about a trifle, but about what was to become of Colonel Beverley, a serious matter for them to consider, and Betty had shown more unselfishness than he. Fortescue put some of this in broken words. He took out his handkerchief, and, with his arm around Betty, wiped away the tears that were streaming down her cheeks, and Betty, the haughty, the arrogant, the resolute Betty, laid her head on Fortescue’s shoulder, and they asked forgiveness of each other, like two children that have quarrelled. But they were not children: their hearts were strong, and each knew its mate.
A half-hour went by; neither Betty nor Fortescue could have told what passed, except that there were clinging kisses, and whispered pleas for forgiveness, and tender promises. They were so quiet and low-voiced that the blue pigeons which nested in the pigeon-house close by the hedge fluttered around them, looking at them, and making little cooing sounds as they stopped close to them on the brown earth. At last the tension of emotion subsided a little, and Betty made Fortescue tell her all the details of his trouble. His case was peculiar. There was not much obvious injury to his eyes, so the doctors said, only he could not see very well. But that was enough. He hoped that in a year or two, perhaps, with country air and rest and quiet, a cure might be worked. Betty, with all her old confidence, and smiling bravely, declared he could get well, he should get well, he must get well.
They stayed out until the sunset glow was past and the purple dusk had come. Then it was Betty who sent Fortescue home.
“I can’t ask you to stay to supper,” she said, “because I want first to tell Grandfather that we have made up. Haven’t we made up?”
Fortescue’s answer was a true lover’s answer.
“We have made up,” he said, “and as you know right from wrong better than I do, I mean to do what you think best, Betty, if we have to be engaged for thirty-four years, until I shall be retired, even if I get my eyesight back.”
“Very well,” answered Betty, with a wicked smile. “Let us see how long you will remain in that virtuous frame of mind.”