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"Miss Betty's at the church now gettin' married!" announced Marie uppishly, "and you'd best be gettin' out of here right away, for the wedding party's due to arrive any minute now and madam'll be very angry to have a servant as doesn't belong snoopin' round at such a time!" "Be still, Marie! For shame!" cried Aileen.
Betty's eyes grew wide with horror as she lay staring at the closed door, and a cold numbness seemed to envelop her, clutching at her throat, her heart and threatening to overwhelm her. Bessemer not here! What could it mean? Her mind seemed unable to grasp and analyze the nameless fear that awaited her outside that door.
In the old days, Percy had tried hard to win favor in Betty's eyes, but the latter had always treated him with a good-natured indifference not unmixed with contempt that had been very hard for the young dude to bear. During the years he had still admired Betty from afar and hated Allen Washburn for being the "lucky one." So now he hastened to make the most of what he thought was an opportunity.
"Yes," Grace answered, turning toward her a face so full of gladness that Betty's eyes opened wide in astonishment, and stepping in she asked wonderingly, "What what de mattah, Miss Gracie? yo' look like yo' done gone foun' a gol' mine, or jes' sumfin' mos' like dat."
Susie said nothing more. All the girls were dull, grave, distressed. The twins were nowhere to be seen. Betty's sweet face, Betty's sparkling eyes, Betty's gay laugh, were conspicuous by their absence. Miss Symes did not appear at all. When breakfast was over, and the brief morning prayers had been gone through by Mr. Fairfax for these prayers were not said in the chapel Mrs.
One day after our visit to Betty's room, Frances asked me to take her to see George. I suspected that she had seen him frequently, but was not sure. I objected, but changed my mind when she said: "Very well. I prefer going alone." I shall not try to describe the scene between them. We found George alone, and she sprang to him as the iron springs to the magnet.
Seymour to the coach, and when he turned to assist Betty found that she was in the act of climbing inside by the other door, where Caesar stood in attendance. "What a provoking child it is!" said Geoffrey to himself as he flung into his saddle, smiling at the recollection of Betty's rebuke and proud little toss of her head.
We are wasting valuable time," answered Betty, starting toward the coach. George and I were helpless against Betty's will, so we said nothing more, and she climbed into the coach, taking her former place at the left end of the back seat.
It was like a dream to her; that clear cold March day, the London church, with its gorgeous pews, and green-baize linings, and the great organ in the west gallery so different from their own little church in the shrubbery of King's-Hintock Court the man of thirty, to whose face she had looked up with so much awe, and with a sense that he was rather ugly and formidable; the man whom, though they corresponded politely, she had never seen since; one to whose existence she was now so indifferent that if informed of his death, and that she would never see him more, she would merely have replied, 'Indeed! Betty's passions as yet still slept.
Apparently sincere, too, though addressed to a wealthy widow, was the tribute to Lady Elizabeth Germain prefixed to "The Fruitless Enquiry"; and at least one other of Mrs. Haywood's productions is known to have been in Lady Betty's library. But these instances are decidedly exceptional. Usually the needy novelist's dedications were made up of servile adulation and barefaced begging.
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