did not come, she would be sorrowful. His will
was her will, and she would come again and again until she should find
him waiting for her, and he should stoop to lift her into heaven.

If there is a place in all the earth where red warm blood counts for its
full value, it is in a pure woman's veins. Through self-fear it brings to
her a proud reserve toward all mankind till the right one comes. Toward
him it brings an eager humbleness that is the essence and the life of
Heaven and of love. Poets may praise snowy women as they will, but the
compelling woman is she of the warm blood. The snowy woman is the lifeless
seed, the rainless cloud, the unmagnetic lodestone, the drossful iron. The
great laws of nature affect her but passively. If there is aught in the
saying of the ancients, "The best only in nature can survive," the day of
her extermination will come. Fire is as chaste as snow, and infinitely
more comforting.

Dorothy's patience was not to be tried for long. Five minutes after she
had climbed the gate she beheld John riding toward her from the direction
of Rowsley, and her heart beat with thrill upon thrill of joy. She felt
that the crowning moment of her life was at hand. By the help of a subtle
sense--familiar spirit to her love perhaps--she knew that John would ask
her to go with him and to be his wife, despite all the Rutlands and
Vernons dead, living, or to be born. The thought of refusing him never
entered her mind. Queen Nature was on the throne in the fulness of power,
and Dorothy, in perfect attune with her great sovereign, was fulfilling
her destiny in accordance with the laws to which her drossless being was
entirely amenable.

Many times had the fear come to her that Sir John Manners, who was heir to
the great earldom of Rutland,--he who was so great, so good, and so
beautiful,--might feel that his duty to his house past, present, and
future, and the obligations of his position among the grand nobles of the
realm, should deter him from a marriage against which so many good reasons
could be urged. But this evening her familiar spirit whispered to her that
she need not fear, and her heart was filled with joy and certainty. John
dismounted and tethered his horse at a short distance from the gate. He
approached Dorothy, but halted when he beheld a man instead of the girl
whom he longed to meet. His hesitancy surprised Dorothy, who, in her
eagerness, had forgotten her male attire. She soon saw, however, th