"Yes--yes, indeed! I told them all I must wait till you asked me."
"Good heavens!" I said, laughing nervously, "you didn't tell them that, did you?"
She bent her lovely face, and I saw the smile in her eyes glimmering through unshed tears.
"Yes; I told them that. Captain O'Neil protests he means to call you out and run you through. And I said you would probably cut off his queue and tie him up by his spurs if he presumed to any levity. Then he said he'd tell Sir George Covert, and I said I'd tell him myself and everybody else that I loved my cousin Ormond better than anybody in the world and meant to wed him--"
"Dorothy!" I gasped.
"Wed him to the most, beautiful and lovely and desirable maid in America!"
"And who is that, if it be not yourself?" I asked, amazed.
"It's Maddaleen Dirck, the New York heiress, Lysbet's sister; and you are to take her to table."
"Dorothy," I said, angrily, "you told me that you desired me to be faithful to my love for you!"
"I do! Oh, I do!" she said, passionately. "But it is wrong; it is dreadfully wrong. To be safe we must both wed, and then--God knows!--we cannot in honor think of one another."