like the volatile essence it really was. I cannot tell you why, but I at once seemed to realize that all the thought and labor which I had devoted to the arduous task of arranging with myself this marriage was labor lost. So I frankly told her my kindly feelings for Sir John, and gave her my high estimate of his character.

I continued: "You see, Dorothy, I could not so easily explain to your father my association with Sir John, and I hope you will not speak of it to any one, lest the news should reach Sir George's ears."

"I will not speak of it," she returned, sighing faintly. "After all, it is not his fault that his father is such a villain. He doesn't look like his father, does he?"

"I cannot say. I never saw Lord Rutland," I replied.

"He is the most villanous-looking—" but she broke off the sentence and stood for a moment in revery. We were in the darkened passage, and Dorothy had taken my hand. That little act in another woman of course would have led to a demonstration on my part, but in this girl it seemed so entirely natural and candid that it was a complete bar to undue familiarity. In truth, I had no such tendency, for the childish act spoke of an innocence and faith that were very sweet to me who all my life had lived among men and women who laughed at those simple virtues. The simple conditions of life are all that are worth striving for. They come to us fresh from Nature and from Nature's God. The complex are but concoctions of man after recipes in the devil's alchemy. So much gold, so much ambition, so much lust. Mix well. Product: so much vexation.

"He must resemble his mother," said Dorothy, after a long pause. "Poor fellow! His mother is dead. He is like me in that respect. I wonder if his father's villanies trouble him?"

"I think they must trouble him. He seems to be sad," said I, intending to be ironical.

My reply was taken seriously.

"I am sorry for him," she said, "it is not right to hate even our enemies. The Book tells us that."

"Yet you hate Lord Rutland," said I, amused and provoked.

Unexpected and dangerous symptoms were rapidly developing in the perverse girl, and trouble was brewing "in Derbyshire."

The adjective perverse, by the way, usually is superfluous when used to modify the noun girl.

"Yet you hate Lord Rutland," I repeated.

"Why, y-e-s," she responded. "I cannot help that, but you know it would be very wrong to—to hate all his family. To hate him is bad enough."

I soon began to fear that I had praised Sir John overmuch.

"I think Sir John is all there is of Lord Rutland's family," I said, alarmed yet amused at Dorothy's search for an excuse not to hate my new-found friend.

"Well," she continued after a pause, throwing her head to one side, "I am sorry there are no more of that family not to hate."

"Dorothy! Dorothy!" I exclaimed. "What has come over you? You surprise me."

"Yes," she answered, with a little sigh, "I certainly have surprised myself by—by my willingness to forgive those who have injured my house. I did not know there was so much—so much good in me."

"Mistress Pharisee," thought I, "you are a hypocrite."

Again intending to be ironical, I said, "Shall I fetch him from the tap-room and present him to you?"

Once more my irony was lost upon the girl. Evidently that sort of humor was not my strong point.

"No, no," she responded indignantly, "I would not speak to him for—" Again she broke her sentence abruptly, and after a little pause, short in itself but amply long for a girl like Dorothy to change her mind two score times, she continued: "It would not be for the best. What think you, Cousin Malcolm?"

"Surely the girl has gone mad," thought I. Her voice was soft and conciliating as if to say, "I trust entirely to your mature, superior judgment."

My judgment coincided emphatically with her words, and I said: "I spoke only in jest. It certainly would not be right. It would be all wrong if you were to meet him."

"That is true," the girl responded with firmness, "but—but no real harm could come of it," she continued, laughing nervously. "He could not strike me nor bite me. Of course it would be unpleasant for me to meet him, and as there is no need—I am curious to know what one of his race is like. It's the only reason that would induce me to consent. Of course you know there could be no other reason for me to wish—that is, you know—to be willing to meet him. Of course you know."

"Certainly," I replied, still clinging to my unsuccessful irony. "I will tell you all I know about him, so that you may understand what he is like. As for his personal appearance, you saw him, did you not?"

I thought surely that piece of irony would not fail, but it did, and I have seldom since attempted to use that form of humor.

"Yes—oh, yes, I saw him for a moment."

"But I will not present him to you, Dorothy, however much you may wish to meet him," I said positively.

"It is almost an insult, Cousin Malcolm, for you to say that I wish to meet him," she answered in well-feigned indignation.

The French blood in my veins moved me to shrug my shoulders. I could do nothing else. With all my knowledge of womankind this girl had sent me to sea.

But what shall we say of Dorothy's conduct? I fancy I can hear you mutter, "This Dorothy Vernon must have been a bold, immodest, brazen girl." Nothing of the sort. Dare you of the cold blood—if perchance there be any with that curse in their veins who read these lines—dare you, I say, lift your voice against the blessed heat in others which is but a greater, stronger, warmer spark of God's own soul than you possess or than you can comprehend? "Evil often comes of it," I hear you say. That I freely admit; and evil comes from eating too much bread, and from hearing too much preaching. But the universe, from the humblest blade of grass to the infinite essence of God, exists because of that warmth which the mawkish world contemns. Is the iron immodest when it creeps to the lodestone and clings to its side? Is the hen bird brazen when she flutters to her mate responsive to his compelling woo-song? Is the seed immodest when it sinks into the ground and swells with budding life? Is the cloud bold when it softens into rain and falls to earth because it has no other choice? or is it brazen when it nestles for a time on the bosom of heaven's arched dome and sinking into the fathomless depths of a blue black infinity ceases to be itself? Is the human soul immodest when, drawn by a force it cannot resist, it seeks a stronger soul which absorbs its ego as the blue sky absorbs the floating cloud, as the warm earth swells the seed, as the magnet draws the iron? All these are of one quality. The iron, the seed, the cloud, and the soul of man are what they are, do what they do, love as they love, live as they live, and die as they die because they must—because they have no other choice. We think we are free because at times we act as we please, forgetting that God gives us the "please," and that every act of our being is but the result of a dictated motive. Dorothy was not immodest. This was her case. She was the iron, the seed, the cloud, and the rain. You, too, are the iron, the seed, the cloud, and the rain. It is only human vanity which prompts you to believe that you are yourself and that you are free. Do you find any freedom in this world save that which you fondly believe to exist within yourself? Self! There is but one self, God. I have been told that the people of the East call Him Brahma. The word, it is said, means "Breath," "Inspiration," "All." I have felt that the beautiful pagan thought has truth in it; but my conscience and my priest tell me rather to cling to truths I have than to fly to others that I know not of. As a result, I shall probably die orthodox and mistaken.