Her first half-fear of Joe, a real dislike of his presumed character, had melted before a broader understanding of the man and his aims. Joe was her brother’s friend and the chief supporter of Hunt’s earnest work among these people. First of all Betty had begun to like Joe because he so generously aided the parson.
Her appreciation of the underlying strata of Joe’s character had grown from day to day of personal association with him. He was a man who would ultimately achieve big things. She felt this to be his dominant trait. Yet he had tenderness, generosity, wit, and a measure of “book learning” of which last she eagerly approved.
Under ordinary conditions—Betty Hunt admitted this frankly now—she would have been as strongly attracted by Joe Hurley, once she had got over her first doubt of his surface qualities, as by any young man she had ever associated with.
She did not question her own judgment in Joe’s case, no matter how far wrong the unsophisticated school girl had been to give her heart into the keeping of another who had seemed a much more charming man!
Andy Wilkenson—sophisticated, smiling, tender, with all the graces of person and intellect that any young girl could wish—had set himself to win Betty Hunt. His intentions had been perfectly honorable, in the sense thus used.
Andy had urged marriage—an immediate, if secret, marriage—from the very first. And there was reason for secrecy. Betty wished to finish her course at Grandhampton Hall. Aunt Prudence must not know of this great, new thing that had come into Betty’s life. Even Ford must not be told.
For, after all, the girl realized that she was very young—much younger, even, it seemed, than Andy Wilkenson. Andy was so much more sensible than she!
Betty feared she could not keep her mind sufficiently on her studies to stand well at the end of the semester if she was not utterly sure of Andy. Once married to him, of course, Andy would be hers entirely! No other woman could ever mean anything to him if the unsuspicious, broken-down old minister in a neighboring town joined them in holy bonds.
Aunt Prudence would forgive her when it was all over and she went home with her diploma and her marriage certificate in her trunk. It would be absolutely wicked to disturb poor Aunt Prudence by a letter either announcing the engagement, which was for a very brief term, or her marriage. For Betty’s elderly relative was ill—worse than either Betty or her brother dreamed of at the time.
The opportunities Betty had to be with Andy were not many. The rules of the Hall were very strict. Even her introduction to the young man from the West had been clandestine. Unknown to Betty, Wilkenson, learning all he could about certain girls in her set at the school, had selected Betty Hunt deliberately as his mark.