Next day Frank went to Glenby without even making the poor pretense of asking me to accompany him.  I spent the time of his absence overseeing the construction of a new greenhouse I was having built.  I was conscientious in my supervision; but I felt no interest in it.  The place was intended for roses, and roses made me think of the pale yellow ones Betty had worn at her breast one evening the week before, when, all lovers being unaccountably absent, we had wandered together under the pines and talked as in the old days before her young womanhood and my gray hairs had risen up to divide us.  She had dropped a rose on the brown floor, and I had sneaked back, after I had left her the house, to get it, before I went home.  I had it now in my pocket-book.  Confound it, mightn’t a future uncle cherish a family affection for his prospective niece?

Frank’s wooing seemed to prosper.  The other young sparks, who had haunted Glenby, faded away after his advent.  Betty treated him with most encouraging sweetness; Sara smiled on him; I stood in the background, like a benevolent god of the machine, and flattered myself that I pulled the strings.

At the end of a month something went wrong.  Frank came home from Glenby one day in the dumps, and moped for two whole days.  I rode down myself on the third.  I had not gone much to Glenby that month; but, if there were trouble Bettyward, it was my duty to make smooth the rough places.

As usual, I found Betty in the pineland.  I thought she looked rather pale and dull...fretting about Frank no doubt.  She brightened up when she saw me, evidently expecting that I had come to straighten matters out; but she pretended to be haughty and indifferent.

“I am glad you haven’t forgotten us altogether, Stephen,” she said coolly.  “You haven’t been down for a week.”

“I’m flattered that you noticed it,” I said, sitting down on a fallen tree and looking up at her as she stood, tall and lithe, against an old pine, with her eyes averted.  “I shouldn’t have supposed you’d want an old fogy like myself poking about and spoiling the idyllic moments of love’s young dream.”

“Why do you always speak of yourself as old?” said Betty, crossly, ignoring my reference to Frank.

“Because I am old, my dear.  Witness these gray hairs.”

I pushed up my hat to show them the more recklessly.

Betty barely glanced at them.

“You have just enough to give you a distinguished look,” she said, “and you are only forty.  A man is in his prime at forty.  He never has any sense until he is forty—­and sometimes he doesn’t seem to have any even then,” she concluded impertinently.

My heart beat.  Did Betty suspect?  Was that last sentence meant to inform me that she was aware of my secret folly, and laughed at it?

“I came over to see what has gone wrong between you and Frank,” I said gravely.