For the three young men those few days were a continuous enchantment. During the morning they searched, without any kind of method be it said, and with an ardor that lessened all the more quickly because Dorothy did not take part in their investigations. Really they were only waiting for the moment when they would be with her again. They lunched together, near the caravan, which Dorothy had established under the shade of the big oak which commanded the avenue of trees.
A delightful meal, followed by an afternoon no less delightful, and by an evening which they would have willingly prolonged till the coming of dawn. Not a cloud in the sky spoilt the beautiful weather. Not a traveler tried to make his way into their domain or pass beyond the notice they had nailed to a branch: "Private property. Man-traps."
They lived by themselves, with the four boys with whom they had become the warmest friends, and in whose games they took part, all seven of them in an ecstasy before her whom they called the wonderful Dorothy.
She charmed and dazzled them. Her presence of mind during the painful day of the 12th of July, her coolness in the chamber in the tower, her journey to the inn, her unyielding struggle against d'Estreicher, her courage, her gayety, were so many things that awoke in them an astounded admiration. She seemed to them the most natural and the most mysterious of creatures. For all that she lavished explanations on them and told them all about her childhood, her life as nurse, her life as showman, the events at the Château de Roborey and Hillocks Manor, they could not bring themselves to grasp the fact that she was at once the Princess of Argonne and circus-manager, that she was just that, manifestly as reserved as she was fanciful, manifestly the daughter of a grand seignior every whit as much as mountebank and rope-dancer. But her delicate tenderness towards the four children touched them profoundly, to such a degree did the maternal instinct reveal itself in her affectionate looks and patient care.
On the fourth day Marco Dario succeeded in drawing her aside and made his proposal:
"I have two sisters who would love you like a sister. I live in an old palace in which, if you would come to it, you would wear the air of a lady of the Renaissance."
On the fifth day the trembling Errington spoke to her of his mother, "who would be so happy to have a daughter like you." On the sixth day it was Webster's turn. On the seventh day they nearly came to blows. On the eighth day, they clamored to her to choose between them.
"Why between you?" said she laughingly. "You are not the only people in my life, besides my four boys. I have relations, cousins, other suitors perhaps."
"Choose."
On the ninth day, under severe pressure, she promised to choose.