“But such an unnecessary suffering!” rather impatiently asserted Malcom.  “If either had died, then the other might have borne it patiently and been just as noble.  But such a blunder!  I threw the book aside in disgust, for the author had absorbed me with interest, and I was so utterly disappointed.”

Mr. Sumner had been reading, and had not joined in the conversation, but Bettina thought she saw some evidence that he had heard it; and when, throwing aside his paper, he stepped outside on the balcony, she obeyed an impulse she could never afterward explain to herself, and followed him.  Quickly putting her hand on his, she said, with a fluttering heart, but with a steady voice:—­

“Dear Mr. Sumner, do not do as Richard did.”

Then drawing back in consternation as she realized what she had done, she gasped:—­

“Oh, forgive me!  Forget what I have said!”

She tried to escape, but her hand was in a grip of iron.  “What do you mean?  Tell me, Betty.  Barbara—­” His voice failed, but the passion of love that blazed in his eyes reassured her.

“I will not say another word.  Please let me go and never, never tell Barbara what I said;” and as she wrenched her hand from him, and vanished from the balcony, her smiling face, white amidst the darkness, looked to Robert Sumner like an angel of hope.  Could it be that she intended to give him hope of Barbara’s love—­that sweet young girl—­when he was so much older?  When she knew that he had once before loved?  But what else could Betty have meant?  Had he been blind all this time, and had Betty seen it?  A hundred circumstances sprang into his remembrance, that, looked at in the light of her message, took on possible meanings.

Robert Sumner was a man of action.  As soon as his sister retired to her own room, he followed, and then and there fully opened his heart to her.  He told her all, from the first moment when Barbara began to monopolize his thoughts, and confessed his struggles against her usurpation of the place Margaret had so long held.

To say that Mrs. Douglas was astonished does not begin to express the truth.  She listened in helpless wonder.  As he went on, and it became evident to her what a strong hold on his affections Barbara had gained, the fear arose lest he might be on the brink of a direful disappointment.  At last, when he ended, saying, “I shall tell her all to-morrow,” she could only falter:—­

“Is it best so soon, Robert?”

“Soon!” he cried.  “It seems as if I have waited years!  Say not one word against it, sister.  My mind is made up!”

But he could not tell her the hope Bettina had given, which was singing joyfully in his heart all the time.  And so Mrs. Douglas was tortured all through the night with miserable forebodings.

The next morning Bettina was troubled at the look of resolve she understood in Mr. Sumner’s face, and almost trembled at the thought of what she had done.  “But I am sure—­I am sure,” she kept repeating, to reassure herself.