he saw her now
more rarely and for shorter periods. She always explained this fact
by saying that the invalid was more suffering and in need of her, and
she never seemed to think it possible that this excuse would not be
all-sufficing.

At last a day came which brought him what he had been fearing--a
summons to return to his post of duty. At one time he would have
attempted to get a longer leave, even at some risk; but now, with the
prospect of having his allowance from England withdrawn, he dared not
do so. He knew that it would require great economy for two to live on
what had once seemed so inadequate for one, and he laid the matter
frankly before Bettina. She was full of hope that Lord Hurdly would
relent, and spoke so indifferently about their lack of money that he
loved her all the more for it.

He had some hope, in his ardent soul, that he might persuade Bettina
to be married at once and go with him, but when he ventured to
propose this he found that the mere suggestion of her leaving her
mother, then or ever, made her almost angry. She insisted that her
mother would get better; that when the weather changed she would be
braced up and strengthened, and then, she hoped, a thorough change
would do her good. So her plan was to let her lover go at once, and
some months later, when Mrs. Mowbray should be stronger, they would
go to England together, and there Spotswood could meet her and they
could be married.

With this promise he was obliged to go. It was a new and annoying
experience for him to have to consider the question of money so
closely. True, he was Lord Hurdly's heir-at-law, and he could not be
disinherited, so far as the title and entailed estates were
concerned, but it was wholly within the power of the present lord to
deprive him of the other properties, and he knew Lord Hurdly well
enough to understand that he was tenacious of any position once
taken.

So he said farewell to Bettina with a sad heart. He was ardently
willing to give up money and ease and to endure hardness for her
sake, but he would have wished to feel that the sadness and
depression in which Bettina parted from him had been the echo of what
was in his own heart, rather than, as he was quite aware, the deeper
care and sorrow of her anxiety about her mother's health.

Once away from her, however, the strong flame of his love burned so
vividly that he wrote her, by almost every mail, letters of such
heart-felt love and sympathy and