“Tell me, sweet Doll,” says I, “how is’t that your love for me hath thus wondrously outlived these many years of sorrow and unkindness since we parted?”
“Nay, Ned,” says Dorothy, leaning her chin on her hand, and looking into the fire, “who can tell how love grows and is nourished up? Sure I had known and loved you all your life until your setting forth, and the remembrance of you, so far from becoming faint, did but grow stronger and more fond by reason of your letters and the compliments made to Sir Harry on the possession of such a son by good Mr Martin, when he took occasion to write to him. For that which I recollected not, my fancy wan’t idle, and truly I think I loved you as well, though absent, as if you had been always with me, for, possessing you, I seemed to be lifted up above the cares and hopes of the other young gentlewomen of my acquaintance. There was many of ’em handsomer and richer than I, but there was none had such a servant as I had in you. Sure you will laugh when I tell you that the confidence I reposed in you had been huge even in a romance, and could have borne any strain save the breaking of our bond by your own hand. ’Twas this confidence sustained me when we heard that you was fallen into the hands of the Inquisition, and your misfortune did but increase my love, for sure I must have loved you then, though I had never seen you in my life. Before that time, Ned, you had been to me a hero, but now a martyr and a saint. I don’t know whether I prayed most for your enlargement, or thanked God for your steadfastness, but sure the happiest time of my life was when Sir Harry received your letter sent by Captain Freeman, telling of your marvellous deliverance and escape.”
“And thereafter, Dorothy?” says I, when she ceased, having told me this not all at once, but with divers arrests and pauses.
“After that,” she said, “I enjoyed a space of the most delectable contentment that ever young damsel passed through. But what came next, I won’t tell you, for fear it make you too proud. I beg that you won’t question me touching the time that passed after that day when Sir Harry called me into the parlour, and showing me your letter wrote from St Thomas, bid me think no more of you.”
“Alas, wretch that I am!” I cried, “to have entreated so hardly such a woman as you, and such a father as I had. Sure I deserved that he should lay his curse upon me for ever.”
“Nay, Ned, my dear Ned,” says she, laying her hand upon my arm the while I covered my face and groaned in my grief. “Sir Harry never did that. True, he was grievously vexed at the way you carried it; but he softened much towards you in his latter days, and blamed himself that he had sent you, while yet young and tender, into so great temptation. Also he sent you his blessing at the last, as you know.”
“Ay,” says I, “and I can well guess through whose intercession he did so, Dorothy, my dear. But tell me,” for a sudden thought was come to me, “what that signified which you writ to me in that letter telling me of my father’s death? You said that he bid me be worthy, and there stopped. Worthy of you, Doll, and of your faithful love—wan’t that what he would say?”
“My dear Sir Harry said many kind things that I han’t set down,” says Dorothy, but I knew that I was right.
“That you could love me still, after my evil usage of you, is more than I could have supposed,” I says to her.
“I loved you, Ned,” says she, as though this were reason enough. “Not perhaps the Edward that my fancy portrayed, but still——”