But Margaret was mercifully inclined, and by siding with Dorothy she would be supporting her husband.  Therefore she could not agree with the angry declamations of her stepmother.

“Poor Dorothy,” she exclaimed, “I pity her, but she has done foolishly indeed.”

Lady Vernon was astonished; she had counted upon Margaret’s support at least.

“Pity her, indeed!” she scornfully laughed.  “She shall have little enough of my pity if ever I clap my eyes on her again,” replied Lady Vernon.  “She shall never come here again.”

“Hush, Maude,” interrupted the baron, “I shall settle that.”

Lady Vernon had never been spoken to in such a manner since she had wedded Sir George, and she staggered back in surprise as though she had been struck by an invisible hand.

“You will—!” she began, but checked herself.  The baron’s brow was forbidding.  She had never seen him look so threatening before, and she cowered back in fear and kept a discreet silence.

“I am furious,” the baron burst out, with a sudden revulsion of feeling.  “To think that my Dorothy should serve me thus! and as she has chosen, so shall it be.  She prefers Manners to me, then she shall have him.  I disown her, she is none of mine.  She shall never return.”

Flesh and blood, however, is very human, and, in spite of his stern resolve never to see Dorothy again, the baron’s naturally kind heart soon began to soften, and in a short space of time his feelings had entirely undergone a change.  He longed to clasp his lost darling to his heart again, and tell her she was forgiven, but he was proud, and his pride held him back from declaring his sentiments.

It was not long to be endured.  He became anxious.  Dorothy was ill.  Sir Ronald Bury had sent him word of that in a letter which was calculated to stab the baron to the very heart.  He grew restless; his conscience pricked him day and night, until, unable to bear it any longer, he declared himself.

“Maude,” he said, as together they sat in the lonely dining-room, “Dorothy has been a month gone now.”

“Yes,” she carelessly replied.

“And I hear she is sorely ill.”

“Like enough,” said Lady Vernon, not unwilling to make the knight suffer a little, for she had not forgiven him yet.  “She was ill enough when she went.”

“Then,” returned the baron, “she shall come back; we cannot do without her.”

Lady Vernon turned sharply round to expostulate with her lord, but seeing his forbidding countenance, she desisted, and her silence Sir George tacitly construed as acquiescence.

“I shall send for her this very day,” pursued the good old knight, “we must try to forget the past, Maude—­for, in good sooth, we have all done amiss—­and begin again.  We have no Margaret now, and without Doll, gone in such a fashion withal, we were miserable indeed.”

“We must have more balls and feasts,” quickly suggested Lady Maude.  “They will heal our wounds.”