n, Betty Ashton," he began
with a pretense of sternness, "is the very last word I wish to hear from
your lips."

Then, as Betty ran away from the possibility of his further objecting to
her departure, Dick turned seriously to Esther.

"Esther, if you have any influence with Betty, do please stop allowing
her to have admirers. Tell her that she is not to be permitted to
consider any one seriously, say for five or ten years."

As Esther laughed, he added, "Who is it that she has gone off in the
moonlight with this time? Anthony Graham? Well, he is a fine fellow,
but has his way to make, and thank fortune cannot think of marrying for
several years!"

Down by the lake, which was frozen over with a thin coating of ice,
forming a kind of mirror for the silver face of the moon, Anthony and
Betty were at this moment standing in the shadow looking out over its
surface.

"I want to tell you something I never have mentioned, Anthony," Betty
said gravely. "I want to thank you for coming to Germany to bring me the
good news of my inheritance. Oh, it is not that I could not have waited
longer to have heard, but that if the news had not come just when it
did, I might have been the unconscious cause of making the two people I
love almost best in the world unhappy all their lives. For you see I did
not dream that Dick cared for Esther or she for him. So I kept on urging
Esther to devote herself to her music, when all the time she and Dick
wanted to be married, and Esther was only going on with her music
because she wanted to earn money for me and for father. As though
either one of us wished her to sacrifice herself!"

"Still, your brother was a brave fellow to ask a girl to give up such a
future," Anthony Graham returned. "I don't think I could have done it."

Betty frowned at him. "Why not?" she demanded.

Turning toward her, Anthony now looked at her so steadfastly that the
girl's white lids drooped.

"Well, once I cared for a girl who was miles and miles above me in
family, position, beauty, brains, oh, everything that is worth having,
except one thing!" he explained. "Neither she nor her people had money;
they had lost it through misfortune. So I used to work and dream that
some day I might be able to climb that _one_ hill. But before I was even
halfway up my hill--oh, I can't talk in figures of speech, I must speak
plain English--why the girl inherited a lot of money. So now she has
everything and I have nothing worth w