She slipped off through the throng, and I sauntered into the gun-room, from whence I crossed the hallway and entered the dining-hall.  Dorothy stood inspecting the silver and linen, and giving orders to Cato in a low voice.  Then she dismissed the row of servants and sat down in a leather chair, resting her forehead in her hands.

“Deary me!  Deary me!” she murmured, “how my brain whirls!...  I would I were abed!...  I would I were dead!...  What was it you said concerning constancy?  Oh, I remember; I am never to doubt your constancy.”  She raised her fair head from between her hands.

“Promise you will never doubt it,” I whispered.

“I—­I never will,” she said.  “Ask me again for the minuet, dear.  I—­I refused everybody—­for you.”

“Will you walk it with me, Dorothy?”

“Yes—­yes, indeed!  I told them all I must wait till you asked me.”

“Good heavens!” I said, laughing nervously, “you didn’t tell them that, did you?”

She bent her lovely face, and I saw the smile in her eyes glimmering through unshed tears.

“Yes; I told them that.  Captain O’Neil protests he means to call you out and run you through.  And I said you would probably cut off his queue and tie him up by his spurs if he presumed to any levity.  Then he said he’d tell Sir George Covert, and I said I’d tell him myself and everybody else that I loved my cousin Ormond better than anybody in the world and meant to wed him—­”

“Dorothy!” I gasped.

“Wed him to the most, beautiful and lovely and desirable maid in America!”

“And who is that, if it be not yourself?” I asked, amazed.

“It’s Maddaleen Dirck, the New York heiress, Lysbet’s sister; and you are to take her to table.”

“Dorothy,” I said, angrily, “you told me that you desired me to be faithful to my love for you!”

“I do!  Oh, I do!” she said, passionately.  “But it is wrong; it is dreadfully wrong.  To be safe we must both wed, and then—­God knows!—­we cannot in honor think of one another.”

“It will make no difference,” I said, savagely.

“Why, of course, it will!” she insisted, in astonishment.  “We shall be married.”

“Do you suppose love can be crushed by marriage?” I asked.

“The hope of it can.”

“It cannot, Dorothy.”

“It must be crushed!” she exclaimed, flushing scarlet.  “If we both are tied by honor, how can we hope?  Cousin, I think I must be mad to say it, but I never see you that I do not hope.  We are not safe, I tell you, spite of all our vows and promises....  You do not need to woo me, you do not need to persuade me!  Ere you could speak I should be yours, now, this very moment, for a look, a smile—­were it not for that pale spectre of my own self which rises ever before me, stern, inexorable, blocking every path which leads to you, and leaving only that one path free where the sign reads ‘honor.’