mother for love of him? Richard was all but swept away on a very tide of
tenderness. He would comply with Dorothy's requests; he would not press
to see her; he would write her every day; he would love her more
passionately than before. Incidentally, he would go questing Bess.

Richard did not permit himself to dwell upon Storri. He knew him for the
source of all this poison in his cup. In his then temper, he put Storri
out of his thought. He feared that if he considered that Russian too
long he would be drawn into some indiscretion that, while curing
nothing, might pull down upon Mr. Harley, and in that way upon Dorothy,
the catastrophe that hung over their heads. There could be no doubt of
the black measure of that catastrophe, whatever it might be. Richard,
while no mighty admirer of Mr. Harley, had been enough in that
gentleman's company to realize that it was more than a common
apprehension which had sent him, limp and fear-shaken, to Dorothy
begging for defense. The longer Richard pondered, the clearer the truth
grew that some deadly chance was pending against Mr. Harley, and that
Storri held the key which might unlock that chance against him. Until he
understood the trend of affairs, a hostile collision with Storri would
be the likeliest method by which disaster might be invoked. He must
avoid Storri. This prudence on Richard's part went tremendously against
the grain, for he was full of stalwart, primitive impulses that moved
him to find Storri by every shortest cut and beat him to rags. He must
keep away from Storri. Also, he would defer those revelations to Mrs.
Hanway-Harley which were to have filled her soul with that radiance and
made her as ready for Dorothy's marriage with Richard as was Richard
himself. Those confidences could not aid now when it was Storri, not
Mrs. Hanway-Harley, who stood in the way. And they might even work a
harm. Richard went on his road to Bess, while these thoughts came flying
thick as twilight bats.

Richard found the blonde sorceress bending above a flower, and doing
something to the flower's advantage with a pair of scissors. As Bess
hung over the leafy object of her solicitude, with her yellow wealth of
hair coiled round and round, she herself looked not unlike a graceful,
gaudy chrysanthemum. This poetic reflection, which would have been
creditable to Mr. Fopling, never occurred to Richard; he was too full of
Dorothy to have room for Bess. However, the good Bess found no faul