d
her for a while, in fact, and imagined themselves wretches because they
had been unsuccessful; but they had generally outlived their despair,
and their adoration, cooling for want of sustenance, had usually settled
down into a comfortable admiring liking for the cause of their
misery, but it would never have been so with Griffith. This ordinary,
hard-working, ill-paid young man had passionate impulse and hidden power
of suffering enough in his restive nature to make a broken hope a
broken life to him. His long-cherished love for the shabbily attired,
often-snubbed, dauntless young person yclept Dorothea Crewe was the
mainspring of his existence. He would have done daring deeds of valor
for her sake, if circumstances had called upon him to comfort himself
in such tragic manner; had he been a knight of olden time, he would just
have been the chivalrous, hotheaded, but affectionate young man to have
entered the lists in his love's behalf, and tilted against tremendous
odds, and died unvanquished; but living in the nineteenth century, his
impetuosity, being necessarily restrained, became concentrated upon one
point, and chafed him terribly at times. Without Dolly, he would have
been without an object in life; with Dolly, he was willing to face
any amount of discouragement and misfortune; and at this stage of his
affection--after years of belief in that far-off blissful future--to
lose her would have brought him wreck and ruin.

So when Dolly, in the full consciousness of present freedom from
iniquity, withdrew herself from his encircling arm and turned her
attention to Tod and Mollie, he was far more wretched than he had any
right to be, and stood watching them, and gnawing his slender mustache,
gloomy and distrustful.

But this could not last long, of course. They might quarrel, but they
always made friends; and when in a short time Mollie, doubtless feeling
herself a trifle in the way, left the room with the child, Dolly's
impulsive warm-heartedness got the better of her upon this occasion as
upon all others.

She came back to her lover's side and laid her hand on his arm.

"Don't let us quarrel about Ralph Gowan, Griffith," she said. "It was my
fault; I ought to have told you."

He fairly crushed her in his remorseful embrace almost before she had
finished her appeal. His distrust of her was as easily overcome as it
was roused; one touch of her hand, one suspicion of a tremor in her
voice, always conquered him an