ed was writing her
note to Richard. And now you know why Dorothy sobbed her troubled,
hunted, harassed way into Richard's arms.

After ten minutes of love and peace, Dorothy was so much renewed that,
word for word, she gave Richard the entire story.

"What shall I do?" said Dorothy at the close. "Tell me, dear, what am I
to do?"

"You are in no danger," said Richard, in a manner of grim tenderness,
and folding her tight. "Before I'd see you marry Storri, I would kill
him in the church--kill him at the altar rail!"

"You must not kill him!" whispered Dorothy, at once horrified and
flattered.

"There's no chance," said Richard, with a quaver of comic regret. "Our
civilization has so narrowed the times that murder is inexpressibly
inconvenient. One thing I might do, however."

"What is that?"

"I might carry you off."

"Oh, that would never do!" said Dorothy, as, with a great sigh, she
crept more and more into Richard's arms, thinking all the time it would
do, and do nicely.

CHAPTER X

HOW STORRI PLOTTED A VENGEANCE

Richard asked Dorothy if she had told Bess. No, Dorothy had not told
Bess.

"Do you think, dear heart, I would tell anyone before I had told you?"

As the most fitting reply to this question, Richard kissed Dorothy all
over again as though for the first time, and with a fervor that told how
his soul was in the work.

Bess was called in as a consulting engineer of hearts. That blonde
tactician glanced over the situation with the eye of a field-marshal.
This was the result of her survey. There must be no clandestine
marriage, no elopement. Dorothy was in no peril; it was not a drawbridge
day of moated castlewicks and donjon keeps. Damsels were no longer
gagged and bound and carried to the altar, and there wedded perforce to
dreadful ogres. Wherefore, a runaway match was not necessary. Moreover,
it would be vulgar; and nothing could justify vulgarity. Dorothy and
Richard should remain as they were. They must continue to love; they
must learn to wait, and to take what advantage the flow of events
provided.

"My wisdom," quoth Bess, pausing as if for congratulations, "my wisdom
is, doubtless, so much beyond my years as to seem unearthly. It's due to
the fact that, although young, I've been for long the responsible head
of a family."

Bess mentioned this latter dignified condition with complacency. It left
her exempt from those troubles, like a bramble patch, into which Dorothy
was p