dubious as to the ensuing situation.

"I wrote to old Mrs. Boyce," she added after a while. "I thought it
only decent. I wrote yesterday, but only posted the letter to-day, so
as to be sure I wasn't acting on impulse."

The latter part of the remark was by way of apology. The breach of the
engagement had occasioned a cessation of social relations between Betty
and Mrs. Boyce. Betty's aunts had ceased calling on Mrs. Boyce and Mrs.
Boyce had ceased calling on Betty's aunts. Whenever the estranged
parties met, which now and then was inevitable in a little town, they
bowed with distant politeness, but exchanged no words. Everything was
conducted with complete propriety. The old lady, knowing how beloved an
intimate of mine was Betty, alluded but once to the broken engagement.
That was when Betty got married.

"It has been a great unhappiness to me, Major," she said. "In spite of
her daring ways, which an old woman like myself can't quite understand,
I was very fond of her. She was just the girl for Leonard. They made
such a handsome couple. I have never known why it was broken off.
Leonard won't tell me. It's out of the question that it could be his
fault, and I can't believe it is all Betty Fairfax's. She's a girl of
too much character to be a mere jilt."

I remember that I couldn't help smiling at the application of the
old-fashioned word to my Betty.

"You may be quite certain she isn't that," said I.

"Then what was the reason? Do you know?"

I didn't. I was as mystified as herself. I told her so. I didn't
mention that a few days before she had implied that Leonard was a devil
and she wished that he was dead, thereby proving to me, who knew
Betty's uprightness, that Boyce and Boyce only was to blame in the
matter. It would have been a breach of confidence, and it would not
have made my old friend any the happier. It would have fired her with
flaming indignation against Betty.

"Young people," said I, "must arrange their own lives." And we left it
at that. Now and then, afterwards, she enquired politely after Betty's
health, and when Willie Connor was killed, she spoke to me very
feelingly and begged me to convey to Betty the expression of her deep
sympathy. In the unhappy circumstances, she explained, she was
naturally precluded from writing.

So Betty's letter was the first direct communication that had passed
between them for nearly two years. That is why to my meddlesome-minded
self it appeared to have so