e had not returned, and that he was not expected
home for many days.

So I concluded that John could not be behind my fair cousin's motive. I
tried to stop guessing at the riddle Dorothy had set me, but my effort was
useless. I wondered and thought and guessed, but I brought to myself only
the answer, "Great is the mystery of womanhood."

After Dorothy had ridden away I again climbed to the top of Eagle Tower
and saw the riders cross the Wye at Dorothy's former fording-place, and
take the wall. I then did a thing that fills me with shame when I think of
it. For the only time in my whole life I acted the part of a spy. I
hurried to Bowling Green Gate, and horror upon horror, there I beheld my
cousin Dorothy in the arms of Thomas, the man-servant. I do not know why
the truth of Thomas's identity did not dawn upon me, but it did not, and I
stole away from the gate, thinking that Dorothy, after all, was no better
than the other women I had known at various times in my life, and I
resolved to tell John what I had seen. You must remember that the women I
had known were of the courts of Mary Stuart and of Guise, and the less we
say about them the better. God pity them! Prior to my acquaintance with
Dorothy and Madge I had always considered a man to be a fool who would put
his faith in womankind. To me women were as good as men,--no better, no
worse. But with my knowledge of those two girls there had grown up in me a
faith in woman's virtue which in my opinion is man's greatest comforter;
the lack of it his greatest torment.

I went back to Eagle Tower and stood at my window looking down the Wye,
hoping soon to see Dorothy returning home. I did not feel jealousy in the
sense that a lover would feel it; but there was a pain in my heart, a
mingling of grief, anger, and resentment because Dorothy had destroyed not
only my faith in her, but, alas! my sweet, new-born faith in womankind.
Through her fault I had fallen again to my old, black belief that virtue
was only another name for the lack of opportunity. It is easy for a man
who has never known virtue in woman to bear and forbear the lack of it;
but when once he has known the priceless treasure, doubt becomes
excruciating pain.

After an hour or two Dorothy and her servant appeared at the ford and took
the path up the Wye toward Haddon. Thomas was riding a short distance
behind his accommodating mistress, and as they approached the Hall, I
recognized something familiar in his