Now, Betty had a splendid dowry; that is to say, she had youth, health, gaiety of heart, an indomitable spirit, and a pair of the softest, loveliest, most misleading dark eyes that were ever seen. Betty was the soul of sincerity and truth, yet she was also an arrant hypocrite and flatterer to those she loved. Likewise, she had the heart of a lion concerning burglars, tramps, runaway horses, and dangers of all sorts; but when it came to caterpillars and daddy-long-legs, small spiders and frightened mice, Betty was cowardly beyond words, and shrieked and fled at the mere sight of those harmless creatures. Music and dancing were like foretastes of Heaven to Betty, who could dance twenty-five miles a night without the slightest fatigue. But she was the same gay little Betty in the long wintry days at Holly Lodge, with no one for company except her grandfather, Colonel Beverley, and his rheumatism, and Uncle Cesar and his wife, Aunt Tulip, the two old servants who had followed them into exile. For Colonel Beverley was born and reared in the great house of Rosehill, and Betty, too, was born there, and had passed the whole of her short life in its stately rooms and its old walled garden, except the last year. Evil times had come upon Colonel Beverley, and the piled up mortgages at last drove him forth. The Colonel, tall and straight as an Indian, grim to look at, but gentle at heart, said truly that for himself he minded not Holly Lodge, with its few cramped rooms and its mite of a garden patch; but for little Betty---- Here, the Colonel's voice would break, and whenever this point was reached in the discussion, Betty always rushed at the Colonel and kissed him all over his handsome clear-cut, pallid face, and declared that he had insulted her by his hateful remarks, and that she would a thousand times rather live at Holly Lodge with him, than live at Rosehill with millions of dollars, without him. As Betty was very young and unsophisticated, she really believed this, and it comforted the Colonel's weary heart to hear it. This was their first Christmas at Holly Lodge, but as Betty said to the Colonel on the afternoon of Christmas Eve: "Granddaddy, I mean this to be the very happiest Christmas we ever had, because we are together, and your rheumatism is better, and I am going to a dance every night this week, and have a perfectly brand new white muslin gown to wear, and goodness knows what will be left of it after six dances, because I never really begin to enjoy myself until I have torn my gown all to pieces!"