ld--and he would take no mean place
in the world, Betty--it is hard! Why, he talks as if he would throw
everything up. I never would have thought it of Pitt, of all people. It
is due, I am convinced, to the influence of those dissenting friends of
his!'

'Who are they?' Miss Betty asked curiously.

'You have heard the name,' said Mrs. Dallas, lowering her voice, though
Pitt was not within hearing. 'They used to live here. It was a Colonel
Gainsborough--English, but of a dissenting persuasion. That kind of
thing seems to be infectious.'

'He must have been a remarkable man, if his influence could begin so
early and last so long.'

'Well, it was not just that only. There was a daughter'--

'And a love affair?' asked Miss Betty, with a slight laugh which
covered a sudden down-sinking of her heart.

'Oh dear no! she was a child; there was no thought of such a thing. But
Pitt was fond of her, and used to go roaming about the fields with her
after flowers. My son is a botanist; I don't know if you have found it
out.'

'And those were the people he went to New York to seek?'

'Yes, and could not find--most happily.'

Miss Betty mused. Certainly Pitt was 'persistent.' And now he had got
this religious idea in his head, would there be any managing it, or
him? It did not frighten Miss Betty, so far as the religious idea
itself was concerned; she reflected sagely that a man might be worse
things than philanthropic, or even than pious. She had seen wives made
unhappy by neglect, and others made miserable by the dissipated habits
or the ungoverned tempers of their husbands; a man need not be
unendurable because he was true and thoughtful and conscientious, or
even devout. She could bear that, quite easily; the only thing was,
that in thoughts which possessed Pitt lately he had passed out of her
influence; beyond her reach. All she could do was to follow him into
this new and very unwonted sphere, and seem to be as earnest as he was.
He met her, he reasoned with her, he read to her, but Betty did not
feel sure that she got any nearer to him, nevertheless. She was shrewd
enough to divine the reason.

'Mr. Pitt,' she said frankly to him one day, when the talk had been
eager in the same line it had taken that first day on the verandah, and
both parties had held the same respective positions with regard to each
other,--'Mr. Pitt, are you fighting me, or yourself?'

He paused and looked at her, and half laughed.

'You are