Bess some time before had had that threatened talk with Richard concerning marriage and husbands.

"Wedlock," declared Bess, on that edifying occasion, while Richard grinned and Dorothy rebuked him with a frown, "wedlock results always in the owner and the owned--a slave and a despot. That is by the wife's decree. The husband is slave and she despot, or he the despot and she the slave, as best matches with her strength or weakness. Some women desire slavery; they would be unhappy without a tyrant to obey."

"And you--are you of those?" asked Richard, half mocking Bess.

"No; I prefer the role of despot. It is the reason why I shall marry Mr.

Fopling."

"And yet Mr. Fopling might turn out a perfect Caligula," said Richard, with a vast pretense of warning. Mr. Fopling was not there to hear himself ill-used.

"Mr. Fopling," observed Bess, in tones of lofty conviction, "has no ambitions, no energies, no thoughts; and he has money. In brief, he is beset by none of those causes that excite and drive men into politics or literature or trade. He will have nothing to consider in his life but me."

"But," said Richard, "Mr. Fopling might turn out in the end a veritable Vesuvius. Mr. Fopling has often struck me as volcanic; who shall say that he will not some day erupt?"

Bess was not to be frightened.

"Mr. Fopling will do and say and think as I direct; and we shall be very, very happy."

Richard gave Dorothy a comical look of simulated dismay; and shook his head as though counseling against such heresies.

"Of course," Bess continued, "what I propose for Mr. Fopling would not do for you. Were you and I to marry"--Dorothy started--"it would result in civil war. I've no doubt that you will be given a wife worthy your tyrannical deserts. She will find her happiness in sitting at your feet, while her love will make you its trellis to climb and clamber on."

The conversation was not so foolishly serious as it sounds, and for the most part Bess and Richard were indulging in just no more than so much verbal sparring. Dorothy took no side; those questions of marriages and wives and husbands would ever find her tongue-tied if Richard were around.

"Will you have some tea?" asked Bess, when Richard, in response to the rapped window, made his way into her presence.

No, Richard would not have tea.

"Then you may smoke," said Bess. "That proves me your friend, doesn't it?" as Richard started a grateful cloud. "Now, to repay my friendship, I want to ask a question and a favor."

"You shall!" cried Richard magniloquently. Bess and he were on amiable terms, and he was secretly a.s.sured that the blonde pythoness approved him. "What am I to answer? What am I to do? Has the cherished Fopling gone astray? Say but the word, and I shall hale him to your feet."

"Mr. Fopling is in the library," replied Bess. "He and Ajax could not get along without quarreling, and I separated them. The question and the favor refer to Dorothy."

Richard colored.

"What is the question?" said he, his voice turning deep and soft.

"Do you love her?" This staggered Richard. Bess came to his aid. "I know you do," said she; "I'll answer the query for you. The real question I wanted to ask is, Have you told her? And that I'll answer: You have not."

"What does this lead to?" broke in Richard. A half-score of daunting surmises had come up to shake him.

"Don't you think you might better tell her?" continued Bess, not heeding the question.

"She knows," returned Richard, drawing a breath. "Dorothy knows. I've seen the knowledge in her eyes. And she loves me!"

"I've no doubt you've seen marvelous things in one another's eyes,"

retorted Bess in a matter-of-fact way; "but I say again: Wouldn't it be wise to tell her?"

"Frankly, yes," replied Richard, driven desperate. "I have been on the threshold of it, but somehow I couldn't lay hands on just the words.

Dorothy knows I love her!" he repeated as though to himself. "It would be only a formality."

"There is the very point," observed Bess. "It is the formality that has become important. Do you think I would break in upon your dreams, else?

A formality is a fence. If you owned a bed of flowers, would you build a fence about it? Then fence in your Dorothy with a formal offer of your love."

"I shall not rest until I've done so!" cried Richard, catching fire.

"And then you will have done the wise and safe and just and loving thing! Who taught you to ignore formalities? They are one's evidence of t.i.tle. Build your fence. It will be like saying to Storri: So far shalt thou come and no farther."

Bess looked curiously at Richard. She had mentioned Storri in a mood of mischief, as one spurs a gamesome horse to stir its mettle. Richard's brow was a thundercloud.

"Why do you name Storri with Dorothy?--a serpent and a dove!" he said, in tones very slow and full.

"Dorothy will tell you," replied Bess. "She will turn marvelously loquacious, once she finds herself behind her fence."

"How shall I go to her?" exclaimed Richard. "My heart will be sick until I've told her."

"You will not have long to wait," said Bess laughingly. "She should have been here ten minutes ago. I can't see what detains her."

Richard looked bewildered and a little shocked. "Surely," he began, "Dorothy didn't----"

"No, no; you are not the victim of a plot, Sir Suspicious One!" cried Bess. "It is a wonder that you are not, for your dullness surpa.s.ses belief. Do you imagine Dorothy doesn't see you every time you walk this street? that she hasn't seen you to-day? that she didn't see you come in? that she won't invent some pretext for running over? Oh, foolish, foolish bridegroom! You may guess how foolish by peeping from the window, for here your Dorothy comes."

At this, the benignant Bess, having questioned, advised, admonished, and, in a measure, berated Richard, gave him her hand, as if she would give him courage; and Richard, with the praiseworthy purpose of getting all the courage he could, lifted it to his lips. That was the blasting tableau at the moment Dorothy stood in the door.

"Oh!" cried Dorothy. Then her brow crimsoned, and her eyes began to shine like angry stars.

CHAPTER IX

HOW STORRI MADE AN OFFER OF HIS LOVE

At the brow of red and those angry eyes like stars, Bess smiled superior, in beaming toleration and affection. Bess could afford these benevolences, being now engaged in that most delightful of all Christian tasks to a woman, viz., superintending the love-romance of another woman. She swept sweetly down on Dorothy; and even Richard, albeit full to blindness of his own great pa.s.sion, could not help but see that she was as graceful as a G.o.ddess.

Bess placed a hand on each of Dorothy's shoulders, and kissed her brow where the angry red, already in doubt as to the propriety of its presence, was trying to steal away unnoticed.

"What have I done?" said Bess, as though repeating a query put by Dorothy. "Now I no more than found a wanderer, who loves you almost as dearly as you love him, and who would not see the way to go straight to you with his offer of a heart. He was for traveling miles and miles around, no one knows how many, by all kinds of hesitating roads. I stopped him and pointed cross-lots to you. That is my whole offense; and when you arrived, the wanderer, in a spirit of grat.i.tude I entirely commend, was very properly mumbling over my hands."

Bess drew Dorothy into the room.

"There!" cried she, "I have done my utmost best for both. I shall now look after Mr. Fopling. Poor child, he has already been neglected too long!"

Bess, departing, left behind her two young people wondrously embarra.s.sed. Richard had been plunged into a most craven condition; while Dorothy, head drooping like a flower gone to sleep, the flush creeping from her brow to her cheek, began to cry gently. Two large, round, woeful tears came slowly into the corners of her eyes, paused a moment as though to survey the world, and then ran timidly down, one on each side of her nose.

At this piteous sight, Richard became a hero. Being an extremist in all things, Richard, roused, caught Dorothy to his bosom--the first embrace since that blessed boot-heel evening in the Waldorf! He folded her in those Pict arms in most radical fashion, and kissed her--they were like unto glimpses of heaven, those kisses!--kissed her eyes, and her hair, and at last her lips, measuring one kiss from another with words of rapturous endearment, of which "heart's love" and "darling" were the most prudently cool. Richard refused to free Dorothy from out his arms, not that she struggled bitterly, and continued for full ten minutes in the utmost bliss and incoherency.