she was bored by them.
Notwithstanding she did not find it disagreeable to be able to tease her
serious-minded brother. Moreover, the widow with her two daughters,
about whom Betty and her mother had been making guesses for several
years, continued making her home at the pension, and without a shadow of
a doubt one of the girls regarded Dick with especial favor.

So tonight Betty, who had not yet entirely recovered from her
irritation, was unusually gracious to the two young Germans. She even
lingered downstairs in the small, overcrowded parlor after dinner with
her mother, allowing Dick and Esther, who were not so friendly with the
other boarders, to go up alone to their private sitting room.

"Fritz and Franz," as Betty's adorers were called, although Herr von
Reuter and Herr Schmidt were their proper titles, were regarded with a
good deal of quiet amusement by their fellow boarders. While this filled
the autocratic soul of Franz with a variety of suppressed emotions, the
gentle Fritz seemed totally unaware of it. He was content to sit
silently on one side of the _schoenes Fraeulein_, even when she devoted
the greater part of her attention to his rival. This evening, without
openly flinching, he overheard her accepting with her mother's approval
an invitation from the wealthy Franz for both of them to attend a
performance at the Royal Opera House the next evening. Then, although
Frederick's eyes grew mistier and his figure more dejected in
consequence, he did not leave the parlor until Betty and her mother had
gone up stairs. Late into the night, however, had anyone been in the
German youth's neighborhood, strains of exquisitely melancholy music
might have been heard drifting forth from a fifth floor back room. It
was the music of the oboe.

Even after Betty Ashton had seen her mother in bed, helping her undress
for the night, she did not immediately join Esther and Dick, although
Mrs. Ashton had asked her to explain to them that she was not well
enough to remain up any longer. Instead Betty went first into her own
bedroom and there re-read the two letters which she carried in her
pocket. For if Dick and Esther were of so much the same opinion in
regard to her sister's refusal to sing in public, it was best that they
be allowed to discuss the matter without interruption from her. For
although she had promised not to speak of it again to her sister, Betty
felt that it would be impossible for her to disguise how she