of right and wrong, whether Dorothy is to be condemned or justified in the woful deception she practised upon her father.  To use a plain, ugly word, she lied to him without hesitation or pain of conscience.  Still, we must remember that, forty years ago, girls were frequently forced, regardless of cries and piteous agony, into marriages to which death would have been preferable.  They were flogged into obedience, imprisoned and starved into obedience, and alas! they were sometimes killed in the course of punishment for disobedience by men of Sir George’s school and temper.  I could give you at least one instance in which a fair girl met her death from punishment inflicted by her father because she would not consent to wed the man of his choice.  Can we blame Dorothy if she would lie or rob or do murder to avoid a fate which to her would have been worse than death?  When you find yourself condemning her, now or hereafter in this history, if you are a man ask yourself this question:  “If I had a sweetheart in Dorothy’s sad case, should I not wish her to do as she did?  Should I not wish, if it were possible by any means, that she should save herself from the worst of fates, and should save me from the agony of losing her to such a man as Sir George had selected for Dorothy’s husband?  Is it not a sin to disobey the law of self-preservation actively or passively?” Answer these questions as you choose.  As for myself, I say God bless Dorothy for lying.  Perhaps I am in error.  Perhaps I am not.  I but tell you the story of Dorothy as it happened, and I am a poor hand at solving questions of right and wrong where a beautiful woman is concerned.  To my thinking, she usually is in the right.  In any case, she is sure to have the benefit of the doubt.

When Sir George heard the woodman’s story, he started hurriedly toward Bowling Green Gate.

Now I shall tell you of Dorothy’s adventures after I saw her cross the Wye.

When she reached the gate, John was waiting for her.

“Ah, Sir John, I am so glad you are here.  That is, I am glad you are here before I arrived—­good even,” said the girl, confusedly.  Her heart again was beating in a provoking manner, and her breath would not come with ease and regularity.  The rapid progress of the malady with which she was afflicted or blessed was plainly discernible since the last meeting with my friend, Sir John.  That is, it would have been plain to any one but John, whose ailment had taken a fatal turn and had progressed to the ante-mortem state of blindness.  By the help of the stimulating hope and fear which Dorothy’s letter had brought to him, he had planned an elaborate conversation, and had determined to speak decisive words.  He hoped to receive from her the answer for which he longed; but his heart and breath seemed to have conspired with Dorothy to make intercommunication troublesome.

“I received your gracious letter, Mistress Vernon, and I thank you.  I was—­I am—­that is, my thanks are more than I—­I can express.”