The events of those last weeks at Grandhampton Hall were etched so deeply upon Betty’s memory that they could not be effaced. She believed that they never would be. And on this day all had been rubbed raw again by Joe Hurley’s outbreak. If he had only not spoken as he had! If things had only gone on between Betty and him as they had been going—calmly, quietly; yes, she confessed it now, really pleasantly. She had come to think of the mining man’s attention as an undoubted aid to her placid life. Her rides with him, and their association in other ways, their conversations on various subjects had been of greater moment in establishing her peace of mind than Betty had realized. She faced that fact—alone in her own room now—with fuller appreciation of what Joe Hurley had come to mean to her. She was an utterly honest girl. She had faced a terrible and soul-racking situation before and come to a decision which she had held to through all the months since she had left school. Just what did Joe Hurley mean to Betty Hunt? Her first half-fear of Joe, a real dislike of his presumed character, had melted before a broader understanding of the man and his aims. Joe was her brother’s friend and the chief supporter of Hunt’s earnest work among these people. First of all Betty had begun to like Joe because he so generously aided the parson. Her appreciation of the underlying strata of Joe’s character had grown from day to day of personal association with him. He was a man who would ultimately achieve big things. She felt this to be his dominant trait. Yet he had tenderness, generosity, wit, and a measure of “book learning” of which last she eagerly approved. Under ordinary conditions—Betty Hunt admitted this frankly now—she would have been as strongly attracted by Joe Hurley, once she had got over her first doubt of his surface qualities, as by any young man she had ever associated with. She did not question her own judgment in Joe’s case, no matter how far wrong the unsophisticated school girl had been to give her heart into the keeping of another who had seemed a much more charming man! Andy Wilkenson—sophisticated, smiling, tender, with all the graces of person and intellect that any young girl could wish—had set himself to win Betty Hunt. His intentions had been perfectly honorable, in the sense thus used. Andy had urged marriage—an immediate, if secret, marriage—from the very first. And there was reason for secrecy. Betty wished to finish her course at Grandhampton Hall. Aunt Prudence must not know of this great, new thing that had come into Betty’s life. Even Ford must not be told. For, after all, the girl realized that she was very young—much younger, even, it seemed, than Andy Wilkenson. Andy was so much more sensible than she!