With thoughts of the scene between herself and her father at the gate, there came a low laugh, half of amusement, half of contentment, and the laugh meant a great deal that was to be regretted; it showed a sad change in Dorothy’s heart.  But yesterday the memory of her deceit would have filled her with grief.  To-night she laughed at it.  Ah, Sir George!  Pitiable old man!  While your daughter laughs, you sigh and groan and moan, and your heart aches with pain and impotent rage.  Even drink fails to bring comfort to you.  I say impotent rage, because Dorothy is out of your reach, and as surely as the sun rises in the east she is lost to you forever.  The years of protection and tender love which you have given to her go for nothing.  Now comes the son of your mortal enemy, and you are but an obstruction in her path.  Your existence is forgotten while she revels in the memory of his words, his embraces, and his lips.  She laughs while you suffer, in obedience to the fate that Heaven has decreed for those who bring children into this world.

Who is to blame for the pitiable mite which children give in return for a parent’s flood of love?  I do not know, but of this I am sure:  if parents would cease to feel that they own their children in common with their horses, their estates, and their cattle; if they would not, as many do in varying degrees, treat their children as their property, the return of love would be far more adequate than it is.

Dorothy stood before her mirror plaiting her hair.  Her head was turned backward a little to one side that she might more easily reach the great red golden skein.  In that entrancing attitude the reflection of the nether lip of which John had spoken so fondly came distinctly to Dorothy’s notice.  She paused in the braiding of her hair and held her face close to the mirror that she might inspect the lip, whose beauty John had so ardently admired.  She turned her face from one side to the other that she might view it from all points, and then she thrust it forward with a pouting movement that would have set the soul of a mummy pulsing if he had ever been a man.  She stood for a moment in contemplation of the full red lip, and then resting her hands upon the top of the mirror table leaned forward and kissed its reflected image.

Again forgetfulness fell upon her and her thoughts grew into words.

“He was surely right concerning my lower lip,” she said, speaking to herself.  Then without the least apparent relevance, “He had been smoking.”  Again her words broke her revery, and she took up the unfinished braid of hair.  When she did so, she caught a glimpse of her arm which was as perfectly rounded as the fairest marble of Phidias.  She stretched the arm to its full length that the mirror might reflect its entire beauty.  Again she thought aloud:  “I wish he could see my arm.  Perhaps some day—­” But the words ceased, and in their place came a flush that spread from her hair to her full white throat, and she quickly turned the mirror away so that even it should not behold her beauty.