not for yours. I was only
wondering which makes a woman happier in the end, a home or a career?
Now please relate me your day's experience, which you have been keeping
such a profound secret, so that I may know I am forgiven."

"It is too late now," Betty returned, slipping away from his grasp. "I
must find out whether mother is coming down to dinner. Perhaps I may
tell you afterwards."

CHAPTER VI

A Cosmopolitan Company

Sitting opposite Betty at the dinner table were the two German youths to
whom Dick most objected. And yet they were totally unlike both in
appearance and position. For one of them was apparently a humble person,
with long light hair hanging in poetic fashion below his shirt collar, a
big nose and small, hungry, light-blue eyes that seemed always to be
swimming in a mist of embarrassment. He was a clerk in a bank and
occupied the smallest room on the highest floor of the pension. So it
would have been natural enough to suppose from his manner and behavior
that he was of plebeian origin. But exactly the opposite was the case.
For the landlady, Mrs. Hohler, who was herself an impoverished
gentlewoman, had confided to Mrs. Ashton that the strange youth was in
reality of noble birth. He had an uncle who was a count, and though
this uncle had one son, the nephew Frederick stood second in the line of
succession. To Richard Ashton, however, this added nothing to the young
man's charms, nor did it make him the less provoked over Frederick von
Reuter's attitude toward Betty. Nevertheless he rather preferred
Frederick, who seemed utterly without brains, to her second admirer,
Franz. For Franz was dark and aggressive and had an extremely rich
father, a merchant in Hamburg. Also Franz hoped to be able to purchase a
commission in the German army, so that already he was assuming the
dictatorial, disagreeable manner for which many German officers are
unpleasantly distinguished.

However, neither young man had ever done anything in the least offensive
either to Betty or to any member of her family, so that Dick Ashton's
feeling was largely prejudice. And although Esther shared his point of
view, Mrs. Ashton was somewhat flattered at the amount of admiration
that Betty's beauty had excited ever since their arrival in Europe. As
for Betty herself, she gave the whole question very little attention.
All her life she had been accustomed to attention. Now and then her two
suitors amused her and at other times