“Most gracious lady, I thank you for your letter, and with God’s help I will meet you at Bowling Green Gate—.”  The girl could endure no more.  She sprang with a scream toward her father and tried to snatch the letter.  Sir George drew back, holding firmly to the paper.  She followed him frantically, not to be thrown off, and succeeded in clutching the letter.  Sir George violently thrust her from him.  In the scuffle that ensued the letter was torn, and the lower portion of the sheet remained in Dorothy’s hand.  She ran to the fireplace, intending to thrust the fragment into the fire, but she feared that her father might rescue it from the ashes.  She glanced at the piece of paper, and saw that the part she had succeeded in snatching from her father bore John’s name.  Sir George strode hurriedly across the room toward her and she ran to me.

“Malcolm!  Malcolm!” she cried in terror.  The cry was like a shriek.  Then I saw her put the paper in her mouth.  When she reached me she threw herself upon my breast and clung to me with her arms about my neck.  She trembled as a single leaf among the thousands that deck a full-leaved tree may tremble upon a still day, moved by a convulsive force within itself.  While she clung to me her glorious bust rose and fell piteously, and her wondrous eyes dilated and shone with a marvellous light.  The expression was the output of her godlike vitality, strung to its greatest tension.  Her face was pale, but terror dominated all the emotions it expressed.  Her fear, however, was not for herself.  The girl, who would have snapped her fingers at death, saw in the discovery which her father was trying to make, loss to her of more than life.  That which she had possessed for less than one brief hour was about to be taken from her.  She had not enjoyed even one little moment alone in which to brood her new-found love, and to caress the sweet thought of it.  The girl had but a brief instant of rest in my arms till Sir George dragged her from me by his terrible strength.

“Where is the paper?” he cried in rage.  “It contained the fellow’s signature.”

“I have swallowed it, father, and you must cut me open to find it.  Doubtless that would be a pleasant task for you,” answered Dorothy, who was comparatively calm now that she knew her father could not discover John’s name.  I believe Sir George in his frenzy would have killed the girl had he then learned that the letter was from John Manners.

“I command you to tell me this fellow’s name,” said Sir George, with a calmness born of tempest.  Dorothy did not answer, and Sir George continued “I now understand how you came by the golden heart.  You lied to me and told me that Malcolm had given it to you.  Lie upon lie.  In God’s name I swear that I would rather father a thief than a liar.”