Betty presided at the small table so daintily and graciously that her occasional lapses into slang were like the dartings of a particularly frisky little animal from the beaten track of conventions.  She and Lynda grew confidential in a half hour and felt as if they had known each other for years at the close of the call.  Just as Lynda was reluctantly leaving, Mrs. Morrell came in.  She was darker, more dignified than her sister, but like her in voice and laugh.

“Mollie, I wish I had told you to stay another hour,” Betty exclaimed, going to her sister and kissing her.  “And oh!  Mollie, Lynda likes me!  I’ll confess to you both now that I have lain awake nights dreading this ordeal.”

When Lynda met Brace that evening she was amused at his drawn face and tense voice.

“How did you like her?” he asked feebly and at that moment Lynda realized how futile a subterfuge would have been.

“Brace, I love her!”

“Thank God!”

“Why, Brace!”

“I mean it.  It would have gone hard with me if you hadn’t.”

To Truedale, Betty presented another aspect.

“You can trust women with your emotions about men,” she confided to Lynda, “but not men!  I wouldn’t let Brace know for anything how my love for him hobbles me; and if your Con—­by the way, he’s a great deal nicer than I expected—­should guess my abject state, he’d go to Brace and—­put him wise!  That’s why men have got where they are to-day—­standing together.  And then Brace might begin at once to bully me.  You see, Lynda, when a husband gets the upper hand it’s often because he’s reinforced by all the knowledge his male friends hand out to him.”

Truedale met Betty first at the dinner—­the little family dinner Lynda gave for her.  Morrell and his wife.  Brace and Betty, himself and Lynda.

In a trailing blue gown Betty looked quite stately and she carried her blond head high.  She sparkled away through dinner and proved her happy faculty of fitting in, perfectly.  It was a very merry meal, and later, by the library fire, Conning found himself tete-a-tete with his future sister-in-law.  She amused him hugely.

“I declare,” he said teasingly, “I can hardly believe that you believe in the equality of the sexes.”  They were attacking that problem at the moment.

“I—­don’t!” Betty looked quaintly demure.  “I believe in the superiority of men!”

“Good Lord!”

“I do.  That’s why I want all women to have the same chance that men have had to get superior.  I—­I want my sisters to get there, too!”

“There?  Just where?” Truedale began to think the girl frivolous; but her charm held.

“Why, where their qualifications best fit them to be.  I’m going to tell you a secret—­I’m tremendously religious!  I believe God knows, better than men, about women; I want—­well, I don’t want to seem flippant—­but truly I’d like to hear God speak for himself!”