ntly. Two large,
round, woeful tears came slowly into the corners of her eyes, paused a
moment as though to survey the world, and then ran timidly down, one on
each side of her nose.

At this piteous sight, Richard became a hero. Being an extremist in all
things, Richard, roused, caught Dorothy to his bosom--the first embrace
since that blessed boot-heel evening in the Waldorf! He folded her in
those Pict arms in most radical fashion, and kissed her--they were like
unto glimpses of heaven, those kisses!--kissed her eyes, and her hair,
and at last her lips, measuring one kiss from another with words of
rapturous endearment, of which "heart's love" and "darling" were the
most prudently cool. Richard refused to free Dorothy from out his arms,
not that she struggled bitterly, and continued for full ten minutes in
the utmost bliss and incoherency.

At these unexpected pictures of Paradise before the Fall, Ajax, sole
spectator, felt profound dismay. He bottle-brushed and arched and
exploded; and then, the wretched exhibition continuing, fled.

At last Richard listened to Dorothy, and released her to an armchair; he
took another, fastened his eyes upon her like visual leeches, and drank
her in.

"Who so blooming, who so lovely, who so glorious as Dorothy?" thought
Richard, on whom her beauty grew with ever-increasing witchery, like a
deep, clear night of stars.

And yet, the dough-like Fopling, at that moment in the library with
Bess, would have fought Richard to the death on a simple issue that Bess
was Dorothy's beauteous superior; which, so far from proving that love
is blind, shows it to have the eyes of Argus.

Richard and Dorothy said a thousand loving things, and meant them; they
made a thousand loving compacts, and kept them all.

Suddenly Richard burst forth as though a momentous and usual ceremony
had been overlooked.

"Oh, ho!" cried he, "you haven't asked how I am to support a wife."

"And do you suppose I have been thinking of that?" returned Dorothy,
beginning to bridle. "For that matter, I know you are poor."

"And how did you dig that up?"

"Dig!" This with the utmost resentment, as though repelling a slander.
"Why, you told mamma and me yourself. It was the day she was rude and
asked if Mr. Gwynn would make you his heir."

"Surely," said Richard, grinning cheerfully, as if a puzzle had been
made plain, "so I did."

"Sweetheart, I loved you from that moment!" cried Dorothy; and with a
half-sob