CHAPTER XXII
GLORIA
While Fortescue was walking across the brown stubble of the fields to Rosehill, Betty, in the firelit sitting-room, was telling the Colonel all about it.
“And you must not worry, Grandfather, about my leaving you,” she said, “because Jack has said that he will leave all that to me, and we can find a way, depend upon it.”
The Colonel thought that he knew a way, a very easy and good way, by which most problems are finally solved, but he did not speak of this to Betty. He only said:
“Whatever you do, my dear, will make me satisfied.”
The next morning Fortescue appeared, and looked much more like his old cheerful self than he had the day before. Betty blushed up to her eyes when Fortescue said smiling, to the Colonel:
“Well, Colonel, I may as well make a clean breast of it. I have come this morning to ask you——”