ture might be good to have; but imagine, if you can,
the horror of anticipating evils to come.

After a short time, a lotuslike dreaminess stole over me, and past and
future seemed to blend in a supreme present of contentment and rest. Then
I knew I had wooed and won Tobacco and that thenceforth I had at hand an
ever ready solace in time of trouble. At the end of an hour my dreaming
was disturbed by voices, which came distinctly up to me from the base of
the tower. I leaned over the battlements to listen, and what I heard gave
me alarm and concern such as all the tobacco in the world could not
assuage. I looked down the dizzy heights of Eagle Tower and saw Sir George
in conversation with Ben Shaw, a woodman. I had not heard the words first
spoken between them.

"Ay, ay, Sir George," said Ben, "they be there, by Bowling Green Gate,
now. I saw them twenty minutes since,--Mistress Vernon and a gentleman."

"Perhaps the gentleman is Sir Malcolm," answered my cousin. I drew back
from the battlements, and the woodman replied, "Perhaps he be, but I doubt
it."

There had been a partial reconciliation--sincere on Sir George's part, but
false and hollow on Dorothy's--which Madge had brought about between
father and daughter that morning. Sir George, who was sober and repentant
of his harshness, was inclined to be tender to Dorothy, though he still
insisted in the matter of the Stanley marriage. Dorothy's anger had
cooled, and cunning had taken its place. Sir George had asked her to
forgive him for the hard words he had spoken, and she had again led him to
believe that she would be dutiful and obedient. It is hard to determine,
as a question of right and wrong, whether Dorothy is to be condemned or
justified in the woful deception she practised upon her father. To use a
plain, ugly word, she lied to him without hesitation or pain of
conscience. Still, we must remember that, forty years ago, girls were
frequently forced, regardless of cries and piteous agony, into marriages
to which death would have been preferable. They were flogged into
obedience, imprisoned and starved into obedience, and alas! they were
sometimes killed in the course of punishment for disobedience by men of
Sir George's school and temper. I could give you at least one instance in
which a fair girl met her death from punishment inflicted by her father
because she would not consent to wed the man of his choice. Can we blame
Dorothy if she would lie or rob or d