"It can buy a pretty good imitation."

"But imitation happiness is like imitation pearls."

He laughed and sat down beside her. "You mustn't be too clever."

"I am not clever at all."

"I believe you are. And you don't have to be. There are plenty of clever
women but only one Becky Bannister."

It was just an hour later that Georgie-Porgie kissed her. She was at the
piano in the music-room, and there was no light except the glimmer of
tall white candles, and the silver moonlight which fell across the
shining floor.

Her grandfather was nodding in the room beyond, and through the open
window came the dry, sweet scent of summer, as if nature had opened her
pot-pourri to give the world a whiff of treasured fragrance.

Becky had been singing, and she had stopped and looked up at him.

"Oh, you lovely--lovely, little thing," he said, and bent his head.

To Becky, that moment was supreme, sacred. She trembled with happiness.
To her that kiss meant betrothal--ultimate marriage.

To George it meant, of course, nothing of the kind. It was only one of
many moments. It was a romance which might have been borrowed from the
Middle Ages. A rare tale such as one might read in a book. A pleasant
dalliance--to be continued until he was tired of it. If he ever
married, it must be a spectacular affair--handsome woman, big fortune,
not an unsophisticated slip of a child from an impoverished Virginia
farm.

III

In the days that followed, Becky's gay lover came and rode away, and
came again. He sparkled and shone and worshipped, but not a word did he
say about the future. He seemed content with this idyl of old gardens,
scented twilights, starlight nights, with Beauty's eyes for him alone
radiant eyes that matched the stars.

Yet as the days went on the radiance was dimmed. Becky was in a state of
bewilderment which bordered on fear. George showed himself an
incomparable lover, but always he was silent about the things which she
felt cried for utterance.

So at last one day she spoke to the Judge.

"Granddad, did you kiss Grandmother before you asked her to marry you?"

"Asking always comes first, my dear. And you are too young to think of
such things."

Grandfather was, thus obviously, no help. He sat in the Bird Room and
dreamed of the days when the stuffed mocking-bird on the wax branch sang
to a young bride, and his ideal of love had to do with the courtly
etiquette of a time when men knelt and sued and were rew