She felt like one who had strayed unconsciously into forbidden ground, and yet the landscape was so beautiful, and the fragrance of the flowers was so sweet, and the air was so soft and cool, and the music of the birds and the streams was so delicious, that she had neither the courage nor the inclination to go away.
She did not try to analyse this new sensation that thrilled her to the finger-tips. She did not know what it meant, or what it portended.
She took her pocket-handkerchief at length and began to wipe the bloodstains from Ralph's face, and while she did so the warm colour mounted to her own cheeks.
There was no denying that he was very handsome, and she had already had proof of his character. She recalled the day when she lay in his strong arms, with her head upon his shoulder, and he carried her all the way down to the cross roads. How strange that she should be performing a similar service for him now! Was some blind, unthinking fate weaving the threads of their separate lives into the same piece?
The colour deepened in her cheeks until they grew almost crimson. The words to which she had just listened from his lips seemed to flash upon her consciousness with a new meaning, and she found herself wondering what would happen if she had been only a peasant's child.
A minute or two later the sound of wheels was heard on the grass-grown road. Ralph turned his head uneasily, and muttered something under his breath.
"Help is near," she whispered. "The doctor is coming."
"Don't tell the squire's little maid that I love her," he said slowly. "I've tried to hate her, but I cannot."
She gave a little gasp, and tried to speak, but a lump rose in her throat which threatened to choke her.
"But her father," he went on slowly, "he's a--a----" but he did not finish the sentence.
When the doctor reached his side he was quite unconscious again.
Dorothy--to quote her father's words--had taken the bit between her teeth and bolted. The squire had coaxed her, cajoled her, threatened her, got angry with her, but all to no purpose. She stood before him resolute and defiant, vowing that she would sooner die than marry Lord Probus.
Sir John was at his wits' end. He saw his brightest hopes dissolving before his eyes. If Dorothy carried out her threat, and refused to marry the millionaire brewer, what was to become of him? All his hopes of extricating himself from his present pecuniary embarrassments were centred in his lordship. But if Dorothy deliberately broke the engagement, Lord Probus would see him starve before raising a finger to help him.