ral allowance, and with this it was easy for Horace to
indulge his taste for travel. In this way he had come to America,
intending to see it extensively; but he met Bettina, and from that
moment gave up every other thought but the dominant one of winning
her for his wife.

Even when he had asked and been accepted he could not leave her side,
but concluded to await there Lord Hurdly's answer to his letter
announcing his engagement. He was not without certain misgivings on
this point, but he had written so convincingly, as he thought, of
Bettina's beauty, breeding, and fitness for the position of Lady
Hurdly that was to be, that he would not and could not believe that
his cousin would disapprove. Besides, he was too blissfully happy to
grieve over problematical troubles, and so he quite gave himself up
to the joys of his present position and ardent dreams of the future.

It happened, however, that Lord Hurdly's letter, when it came, was a
cold, curt, and most decided refusal to consent to the marriage. He
objected chiefly on the score of Bettina's being an American, though
he did not hesitate to say also that he considered his heir a fool to
think of marrying a woman without fortune, when he might so easily do
better. In conclusion, he said that if this infatuated nonsense, as
he called it, went on, he would withdraw his allowance from the very
day of the marriage. He ended by hoping that Horace would come to his
senses, and let him know that the thing was at an end.

Poor Horace! He would fain have kept this letter from Bettina, but
she insisted upon seeing it. Having done so, she became fired with a
keen desire to triumph over this obdurate opposition, and when Horace
asked her if she would still fulfil her pledge, in the face of his
altered fortunes, she agreed with rather more ardor of feeling than
she had hitherto shown.

The truth was, Bettina had disappointed him in this last respect. Her
mother was so obviously and unquestionably her first thought, and her
mother's failing health was so plainly a grief which his love could
not counterbalance, that he at times had pangs of jealousy, of which
he afterward felt ashamed. Was not this intense love for her mother
in itself a proof of her great capacity of loving, and must he not,
with patient waiting, one day see himself loved in like manner?
Still, he chafed under the fact that every day her mother became more
and more the object of her time and attention, so that