"Good Mary,—good, true sister." And Dorothy pressed her lips to the hand she clasped.
"But the matter has given me such a heartache, Dot, for I feared I might be doing wrong. Surely no one can love you more than your own father and brother. Why not tell them, as well as me, of—whatever it is?"
"I will, Mary," Dorothy said resolutely. "I intended to, all the time. But not yet, not yet. I want to tell you, first of all, and see if you can think what is best to be done. And," with a little shudder, "I thought I had lost the ring; and the first day I was able to slip out of doors, I hunted for it where I got off the horse that night. Oh, that dreadful night!" She almost cried out the words as the sharpness of awakened sorrow came to her.
"Come, Dot," Mary urged, "tell me. I'll promise to keep silent until you bid me speak." She knew they were losing precious time, for her husband would not be long gone, having promised to return in order that she might go down for her own supper.
Dorothy hesitated no longer, but, in the fewest possible words, unburdened her heart, while Mary listened in speechless amazement.
Her indignation and horror grew apace until the story was all told. Then she cried: "It was a cowardly, unmanly trick,—a traitor's deed! He is no gentleman, with all his fine pretence of manners."
"Ah—but he is." And Dorothy sighed softly, and in a way to have opened Mary's eyes, had she been less absorbed by the anger now controlling her.
"By birth, mayhap," she admitted, although reluctantly; then adding fiercely, "he surely is not one in his acts."
Then her voice grew gentle again, and the tears seemed to be near, as she laid her head alongside the curly one upon the pillow.
"Oh, my poor, poor little Dot," she said; "to think of the dreadful thing you have been carrying in your mind all this time! Small wonder that you were pale and sad,—it was enough to kill you."