"Dorothy," she cried, raising her hands limply, "Dorothy, I believe our Richard's rich!" And Mrs. Hanway-Harley wept.
"I shall always love him, whatever he is!" exclaimed Dorothy, all tenderness and fresh alarm.
Dorothy did not understand.
It was ten o'clock; the Potomac lay between its soft banks like a river of silver. There was the throb of the engines, and the talk of the water against her bows, as the Dorothy Storms with her two passengers, they and their love, swept onward through the moonlight. Dorothy, her head on Richard's shoulder, and thinking on her mother and Bess and all she had left behind, watched the V-shaped wake as it spread away in ripples to either bank. Now and then a shore-light slipped by, to snuff out astern as distance or a bend in the river extinguished it. Dorothy crept more and more into the Pict arms.
"Dear, when did you name the Dorothy Storms?"
"The day after you precipitated yourself into my arms—and my heart."
"I think you were shamefully confident," whispered Dorothy, with a delicious sigh.
Richard the brazen replied to the attack as became a lover and gentleman.
And so they sailed away.
THE END