. . . It was long before she fell asleep. "I alone must hover about the
gates or steal into your garden like a thief," the Incroyable had said.
"The last time I spoke to him it was to tell him that if he ever set foot
on ground of mine, I'd shoot him down! " had been her father's
declaration. And Mr. Carewe had spoken with the most undeniable air of
meaning what he said. Yet she knew that the Incroyable would come again.

Also, with hot cheeks pressed into her pillow, Miss Betty had identified
the young man in the white hat, that dark person whose hand she had far
too impetuously seized in both of hers. Aha! It was this gentleman who
looked into people's eyes and stammered so sincerely over a pretty speech
that you almost believed him, it was he who was to marry Fanchon Bareaud--
" if he remembers!" No wonder Fanchon had been in such a hurry to get him
away . . . . "If he remembers!" Such was that young man's character, was
it? Miss Carewe laughed aloud to her pillow: for, was one to guess the
reason, also, of his not having come to her ball? Had the poor man been
commanded to be "out of town?"

Then, remembering the piquant and generous face of Fanchon, Betty clinched
her fingers tightly and crushed the imp who had suggested the unworthy
thought, crushed him to a wretched pulp and threw him out of the open
window. He immediately sneaked in by the back way, for, in spite of her
victory, she still felt a little sorry for poor Fanchon.



CHAPTER IV

"But Spare Your Country's Flag"