George had always loved Betty dearly, but he felt now, at the hour of his cruelest disappointment, what it was to have that tender sister, to whom he could reveal his whole heart. Much as he loved his brother Laurence, deeply as he revered Lord Fairfax, and with all his love and reverence for his mother, he felt obliged to keep up before them a manly fortitude; but Betty was young and inexperienced like himself, and, because of that, in some ways she was nearer to him than anybody else.