The truth was, Bettina had disappointed him in this last respect. Her mother was so obviously and unquestionably her first thought, and her mother's failing health was so plainly a grief which his love could not counterbalance, that he at times had pangs of jealousy, of which he afterward felt ashamed. Was not this intense love for her mother in itself a proof of her great capacity of loving, and must he not, with patient waiting, one day see himself loved in like manner? Still, he chafed under the fact that every day her mother became more and more the object of her time and attention, so that 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attempted to get a longer leave, even at some risk; but now, with the prospect of having his allowance from England withdrawn, he dared not do so.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.