ten, or every day that you come?" In her overconfidence she was
chaffing him. He caught the tone, and looked quickly into the girl's eyes.
Her gaze could not stand against John's for a moment, and the long lashes
drooped to shade her eyes from the fierce light of his.

"I said I would come to Overhaddon every day," he returned; "and although
I must have appeared very foolish in my confusion, you cannot
misunderstand the full meaning of my words."

In John's boldness and in the ring of his voice Dorothy felt the touch of
her master, against whom she well knew all the poor force she could muster
would be utterly helpless. She was frightened, and said:--

"I--I must go. Good-by."

When she rode away from him she thought: "I believed because of his
confusion that I was the stronger. I could not stand against him for a
moment. Holy Virgin! what have I done, and to what am I coming?"

You may now understand the magnitude of the task which Sir George had set
for me when he bade me marry his daughter and kill the Rutlands. I might
perform the last-named feat, but dragon fighting would be mere child's
play compared with the first, while the girl's heart was filled with the
image of another man.

I walked forward to meet Dorothy, leaving Madge near the farrier's shop.

"Dorothy, are you mad? What have you been doing?" I asked.

"Could you not see?" she answered, under her breath, casting a look of
warning toward Madge and a glance of defiance at me. "Are you, too, blind?
Could you not see what I was doing?"

"Yes," I responded.

"Then why do you ask?"

As I went back to Madge I saw John ride out of the village by the south
road. I afterward learned that he rode gloomily back to Rutland Castle
cursing himself for a fool. His duty to his father, which with him was a
strong motive, his family pride, his self love, his sense of caution, all
told him that he was walking open-eyed into trouble. He had tried to
remain away from the vicinity of Haddon Hall, but, despite his
self-respect and self-restraint, he had made several visits to Rowsley and
to Overhaddon, and at one time had ridden to Bakewell, passing Haddon
Hall on his way thither. He had as much business in the moon as at
Overhaddon, yet he told Dorothy he would be at the village every day, and
she, it seemed, was only too willing to give him opportunities to transact
his momentous affairs.

As the floating cloud to the fathomless blue, as the seed to the earth, as