eorge. She and her ample skirts and broad
sleeves were between John and the door. Not one brief instant did Dorothy
waste in thought. Had she paused to put in motion the machinery of reason,
John would have been lost. Thomas sitting in Lady Crawford's chair and
Dorothy standing beside him would have told Sir George all he needed to
know. He might not have discovered John's identity, but a rope and a tree
in Bowling Green would quickly have closed the chapter of Dorothy's
mysterious love affair. Dorothy, however, did not stop to reason nor to
think. She simply acted without preliminary thought, as the rose unfolds
or as the lightning strikes. She quietly sat down upon John's knees,
leaned closely back against him, spread out the ample folds of her skirt,
threw the lower parts of her broad cape over her shoulders and across the
back of the chair, and Sir John Manners was invisible to mortal eyes.

"Come in, father," said Dorothy, in dulcet tones that should have betrayed
her.

"I heard you laughing and talking," said Sir George, "and I wondered who
was with you."

"I was talking to Madge and Malcolm who are in the other room," replied
Dorothy.

"Did not Thomas come in with fagots?" asked Sir George.

"I think he is replenishing the fire in the parlor, father, or he may have
gone out. I did not notice. Do you want him?"

"I do not especially want him," Sir George answered.

"When he finishes in the parlor I will tell him that you want him," said
Dorothy.

"Very well," replied Sir George.

He returned to his room, but he did not close the door.

The moment her father's back was turned Dorothy called:--

"Tom--Tom, father wants you," and instantly Thomas was standing
deferentially by her side, and she was seated in the great chair. It was a
rapid change, I assure you. But a man's life and his fortune for good or
ill often hang upon a tiny peg--a second of time protruding from the wall
of eternity. It serves him briefly; but if he be ready for the vital
instant, it may serve him well.

"Yes, mistress," said Thomas, "I go to him at once."

John left the room and closed the door as he passed out. Then it was that
Dorothy's laugh sounded like the chilling tones of a knell. It was the
laugh of one almost distraught. She came to Madge and me laughing, but the
laugh quickly changed to convulsive sobs. The strain of the brief moment
during which her father had been in Lady Crawford's room had been too
great for even