There could be no question of their being married immediately, as Fortescue would be on the wing for the next four months, and he knew nothing of his new station or duties, except that both were trying and the conditions unsuited to a woman. But later, after he had seen what the conditions were, perhaps he could take Betty with him.
"I am asking a great deal of you, Betty," he said. "The wife of a junior officer has to go from place to place, to be uprooted constantly. It is true that I am lucky in having money enough to make it as easy as it can be made, still, it is hard, hard, all the same. But if you love me----"
Betty said one little word which settled that point, though her eyes were grave.
"How can I leave my grandfather?" she asked suddenly.
"You need not leave him," promptly replied Fortescue. "We can carry the old gentleman and the whole outfit around with us."
"You don't know my grandfather," she said. "He has a very independent spirit. How could a man who has lived his life here for so many years go from place to place? He must live and die here."
"He can go and live at Rosehill if he wants to," answered Fortescue, who was disposed to brush away all obstacles. "My father is pretty good to me, and he will do anything I ask him about the place."
"But Granddaddy would never consent to be a pensioner on anybody, I am sure," continued Betty, with a doleful little smile. "So we can't be married until you are retired, thirty-six years from now."
Fortescue scouted this proposition, but he saw in Betty Beverley something that gave him pain and yet made him proud. This was a fixed loyalty to her duty. It was that which made Fortescue, who could have led a life of idle luxury, lead the stern life of a soldier. He would not have loved Betty half so well if she had shown too much willingness to cast off the old ties for the new. But, as Fortescue told himself and Betty, there are a great many troublesome questions coming up all the time concerning human beings, horses, cows, gardens, and everything else. There was one small scrap of comfort. It was:
"And the only thing is, Betty," he said, "that we shall love each other and stand by each other, and some way out of it will be found."