n; I must go on and finish, and put fortune to the touch. It
was from you I learned honour, duty, piety, and love. I am as you made
me, and I exist but to reverence and serve you. Why else have I come
here, the length of England, my heart burning higher every mile, my very
horse a clog to me?--why, but to ask you for my wife? Dorothy, you will
not deny me?

DOROTHY. You have not asked me about this broken trinket?

FENWICK. Why should I ask? I love you.

DOROTHY. Yet I must tell you. Sit down. (_She picks up the necklace, and
stands looking at it. Then, breaking down._) O John, John, it's long
since I left home.

FENWICK. Too long, dear love. The very trees will welcome you.

DOROTHY. Ay, John, but I no longer love you. The old Dorothy is dead,
God pardon her!

FENWICK. Dorothy, who is the man?

DOROTHY. O poor Dorothy! O poor dead Dorothy! John, you found me
breaking this: me, your Diana of the Fells, the Diana of your old
romance by Edenside. Diana--O what a name for me! Do you see this
trinket? It is a chapter in my life. A chapter, do I say? my whole life,
for there is none to follow. John, you must bear with me, you must help
me. I have that to tell--there is a secret--I have a secret, John--O,
for God's sake, understand. That Diana you revered--O John, John, you
must never speak of love to me again.

FENWICK. What do you say? How dare you?

DOROTHY. John, it is the truth. Your Diana, even she, she whom you
believed in, she who so believed in herself, came out into the world
only to be broken. I met, here at the Wells, a man--why should I tell
you his name? I met him, and I loved him. My heart was all his own; yet
he was not content with that: he must intrigue to catch me, he must
bribe my maid with this. (_Throws the necklace on the table._) Did he
love me? Well, John, he said he did; and be it so! He loved, he
betrayed, and he has left me.

FENWICK. Betrayed?

DOROTHY. Ay, even so; I was betrayed. The fault was mine that I forgot
our innocent youth, and your honest love.

FENWICK. Dorothy, O Dorothy!

DOROTHY. Yours is the pain; but, O John, think it is for your good.
Think in England how many true maids may be waiting for your love, how
many that can bring you a whole heart, and be a noble mother to your
children, while your poor Diana, at the first touch, has proved all
frailty. Go, go and be happy, and let me be patient. I have sinned.

FENWICK. By God, I'll have his blood.

DOROTHY. Stop!