blinded by the fury of his own infatuation.  He had placed a curb on his passion and did not really know its strength and power until he learned that another man was soon to possess the girl he loved.  Then life held but one purpose for him.  Thus, you see that when Dorothy was moaning, “My love, my love,” and was kissing the golden heart, she was taking a great deal for granted.  Perhaps, however, she better understood John’s feeling for her than did he himself.  A woman’s sixth sense, intuition, is a great help to her in such cases.  Perhaps the girl knew with intuitive confidence that her passion was returned; and perhaps at first she found John’s receptive mode of wooing sweeter far than an aggressive attack would have been.  It may be also there was more of the serpent’s cunning than of reticence in John’s conduct.  He knew well the ways of women, and perhaps he realized that if he would allow Dorothy to manage the entire affair she would do his wooing for him much better than he could do it for himself.  If you are a man, try the plan upon the next woman whom you seek to win.  If she happens to be one who has full confidence in her charms, you will be surprised at the result.  Women lacking that confidence are restrained by fear and doubt.  But in no case have I much faith in the hammer-and-tongs process at the opening of a campaign.  Later on, of course—­but you doubtless are quite as well informed concerning this important subject as I. There is, however, so much blundering in that branch of science that I have a mind to endow a college at Oxford or at Paris in which shall be taught the gentle, universally needed art of making love.  What a noble attendance such a college would draw.  But I have wandered wofully from my story.

I must go back a short time in my narrative.  A few days before my return to Haddon Hall the great iron key to the gate in the wall east of Bowling Green Hill was missed from the forester’s closet where it had hung for a century or more.  Bowling Green Hill, as you know, is eastward from Haddon Hall a distance of the fourth part of a mile, and the gate is east of the hill about the same distance or less.  A wall is built upon the east line of the Haddon estate, and east of the wall lies a great trackless forest belonging to the house of Devonshire.  In olden times there had been a road from Bakewell to Rowsley along the east side of the wall; but before Sir George’s seizin the road had been abandoned and the gate was not used.  It stood in a secluded, unfrequented spot, and Dorothy thought herself very shrewd in choosing it for a trysting-place.

But as I told you, one day the key was missed.  It was of no value or use, and at first nothing was thought of its loss; but from time to time the fact that it could not be found was spoken of as curious.  All the servants had been questioned in vain, and the loss of the key to Bowling Green Gate soon took on the dignity of a mystery—­a mystery soon to be solved, alas! to Dorothy’s undoing.