Betty had been out in the garden, gathering a harvest of flowers, whilst her three companions raced one another round the gravel walks, or rollicked among the cabbages, and she had now returned with an armful of roses, carnations and geraniums, to where all the empty vases in the house were paraded on the study table, awaiting her attention. They were soon filled from the pile of flowers. Betty had dainty, tasteful fingers, and knew how to apply a bud here and to insert a bit of fern there. She took up a late yellow rose quite tenderly, and gave it the honour of a glass to itself, and set it off with one or two pretty shaded leaves. Had George her rose still? The one she had pulled from the old Cloth of Gold tree, now so many months ago. He had said a year, and a year had elapsed; it was a year and two months since that summer afternoon, when, as she came in from picking strawberries she found him waiting for her at the end of the long walk. Oh, and her heart beat quickly at the thought, if she had only seen him standing there, when she opened the garden gate to-day! Not that she doubted him for one second; no, she turned her bangle on her arm, and told herself she would trust him, and wait for him, if she lived for fifty years. “Betty, Betty, Betty,” screamed Belle, coming dashing through the drawing-room, like a whirlwind. “Where are you? News, news, and such news,” embracing her and hugging her till she was almost suffocated. “Do put down those wretched flowers, and listen to what I am going to tell you. Something so very nice,” she added with her usual rapid utterance. Betty stuck a piece of geranium in a glass, and turned to her cousin with an expectant smile. “Mother has had a letter from George Holroyd.” Here Betty became rather white. “It came by the second post; his uncle has made him an allowance, and he can afford to marry _now_. He has friends going to India next month, and so he has written home for--guess who?” pushing her cousin away playfully with both hands and looking at her with a pair of brilliant, excited eyes. Betty gazed back at her with a stare of awful suspense, and almost held her breath. “For _me_!” cried Belle, and she broke into a hysterical peal of laughter. Betty felt as if her heart had stopped. Her senses seemed to be suddenly benumbed; there was a dimness over her eyes. “Isn’t it splendid?” continued Belle exultantly, still holding her cousin by the wrists. “Am I not a lucky girl? Oh, what a change in one’s life a little bit of paper and a few strokes can make”--(Yes, poor Betty, what a change indeed!) “And is it quite certain--are you sure?” she stammered with a curious catching of her breath. “As sure as I am standing here, my dear child! Here’s his letter, you may read it if you like!” “Oh, no! no!” averting her face with a kind of shuddering sigh. Belle in her innocence was turning the knife in the wound.