"Tell me? No. I knew it when you returned after five hours' absence, looking radiant as the sun."
"Oh!" the girl exclaimed, with a startled movement.
"I also knew," I continued, "that at other times when you rode out upon Dolcy you had not seen him."
"How did you know?" she asked, with quick-coming breath.
"By your ill-humor," I answered.
"I knew it was so. I felt that everybody knew all that I had been doing. I could almost see father and Madge and you—even the servants—reading the wickedness written upon my heart. I knew that I could hide it from nobody." Tears were very near the girl's eyes.
"We cannot help thinking that our guilty consciences, through which we see so plainly our own evil, are transparent to all the world. In that fact lies an evil-doer's greatest danger," said I, preacher fashion; "but you need have no fear. What you have done I believe is suspected by no one save me."
A deep sigh of relief rose from the girl's heaving breast.
"Well," she began, "I will tell you all about it, and I am only too glad to do so. It is heavy, Malcolm, heavy on my conscience. But I would not be rid of it for all the kingdoms of the earth."
"A moment since you told me that your conduct was good and pure and sacred, and now you tell me that it is heavy on your conscience. Does one grieve, Dorothy, for the sake of that which is good and pure and sacred?"