Folks no longer smile at sentiment.  They laugh it down:  by which, perhaps, no great harm would be done if their laughter came through the mind; but it comes through the passions, and at the best chastises one excess by another—­a weakness by a rage, which is weakness at its worst.  I fear Dorothea may be injured in the opinion of many by the truth—­which, nevertheless, has to be told—­that her recovery was helped not a little by sentiment.  What?  Is a poor lady’s heart to be in combustion for a while and then—­pf!—­the flame expelled at a blast, with all that fed it?  That is the heroic cure, no doubt:  but either it kills or leaves a room swept and garnished, inviting devils.  In short it is the way of tragedy, and for tragedy Dorothea had no aptitude at all.  She did what she could—­tidied up.

For an instance.—­She owned a small book which had once belonged to a namesake of hers—­a Dorothea Westcote who had lived at the close of the seventeenth and opening of the eighteenth centuries, a grand-daughter of the first Westcote of Bayfield, married (so said the family history) in 1704 to a squire from across the Devonshire border.  The book was a slender one, bound in calf, gilt-edged, and stamped with a gold wreath in the centre of each cover.  Dorothea called it an album; but the original owner had simply written in, “Dorothea Westcote, her book,” on the first page, with the date 1687 below, and filled four-and-twenty of its blank pages with poetry (presumably her favourite pieces), copied in a highly ornate hand.  Presumably also she had wearied of the work, let the book lie, and coming to it later, turned it upside down and started with a more useful purpose:  for three pages at the end contained several household recipes in the same writing grown severer, including “Garland Wine (Mrs. Massiter’s Way)” and “A good Cottage Pie for a Pore Person.”

Now the family history left no doubt that in 1687 this Dorothy had been a bare fifteen years old; and although some of the entries must have been made later (for at least two of them had not been composed at the time), the bulk of the poems proved her a sprightly young lady whenever she transcribed them.  Indeed, some were so very free in calling a spade a spade, that our Dorothea, having annexed the book, years ago, on the strength of her name, and dipped within, had closed it in sudden virgin terror and thrust it away at the back of her wardrobe.

There it had lain until disinterred in the hurried search for linen for Mr. Raoul’s wound.  Next morning Dorothea was on the point of hiding it again, when, as she opened the covers idly, her eyes fell on these lines

   “But at my back I alwaies hear
   Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
   And yonder all before me lie
   Desarts of vast Eternitie . . .”