“I certainly did not expect to find so great a change,” said I.  “Why, Doll, you are wondrous, glorious, beautiful.  I can’t find words—­”

“Then don’t try, Cousin Malcolm,” she said with a smile that fringed her mouth in dimples.  “Don’t try.  You will make me vain.”

“You are that already, Doll,” I answered, to tease her.

“I fear I am, cousin—­vain as a man.  But don’t call me Doll.  I am tall enough to be called Dorothy.”

She straightened herself up to her full height, and stepping close to my side, said:  “I am as tall as you.  I will now try to make you vain.  You look just as young and as handsome as when I last saw you and so ardently admired your waving black mustachio and your curling chin beard.”

“Did you admire them, Doll—­Dorothy?” I asked, hoping, though with little faith, that the admiration might still continue.

“Oh, prodigiously,” she answered with unassuring candor.  “Prodigiously.  Now who is vain, Cousin Malcolm Francois de Lorraine Vernon?”

“I,” I responded, shrugging my shoulders and confessing by compulsion.

“But you must remember,” she continued provokingly, “that a girl of twelve is very immature in her judgment and will fall in love with any man who allows her to look upon him twice.”

“Then I am to believe that the fire begins very early to burn in the feminine heart,” I responded.

“With birth, my cousin, with birth,” she replied; “but in my heart it burned itself out upon your curling beard at the mature age of twelve.”

“And you have never been in love since that time, Doll—­Dorothy?” I asked with more earnestness in my heart than in my voice.

“No, no; by the Virgin, no!  Not even in the shadow of a thought.  And by the help of the Virgin I hope I never shall be; for when it comes to me, mark my word, cousin, there will be trouble in Derbyshire.”

“By my soul, I believe you speak the truth,” I answered, little dreaming how quickly our joint prophecy would come true.

I then asked Dorothy to tell me about her father.

“Father is well in health,” she said.  “In mind he has been much troubled and disturbed.  Last month he lost the lawsuit against detestable old Lord Rutland.  He was much angered by the loss, and has been moody and morose in brooding over it ever since.  He tries, poor father, to find relief from his troubles, and—­and I fear takes too much liquor.  Rutland and his friends swore to one lie upon another, and father believes that the judge who tried the case was bribed.  Father intends to appeal to Parliament, but even in Parliament he fears he cannot obtain justice.  Lord Rutland’s son—­a disreputable fellow, who for many years has lived at court—­is a favorite with the queen, and his acquaintance with her Majesty and with the lords will be to father’s prejudice.”

“I have always believed that your father stood in the queen’s good graces?” I said interrogatively.