blown to the winds.'

Dorcas looked in his strange face with her proud, sad gaze, like one
guessing at a funereal allegory.

He kissed her cheek again, placing one arm round her slender waist, and
with his other hand taking hers.

'Yes, Dorcas, my beloved, my only darling, you will yet know all it has
cost me to retain from you even this folly; and when you have heard
all--which upon my soul and honour, you shall the moment I am enabled to
_prove_ all--you will thank me for having braved your momentary
displeasure, to spare you a great deal of useless and miserable suspense.
I trust you, Dorcas, in everything implicitly. Why won't you credit what
I say?'

'I don't urge you--I never have--to reveal that which you describe so
strangely as a concealment, yet no secret; as an absurdity, and yet
fraught with miserable suspense.'

'Ah, Dorcas, why will you misconstrue me? Why will you not believe me? I
long to tell you this, which, after all, _is_ an _utter_ absurdity, a
thousand times more than you can desire to hear it; but my doing so now,
unfortified by the evidence I shall have in a very few days, would be
attended with a danger which you will then understand. Won't you trust
me?'

'And now for my advice,' said Dorcas, smiling down in her mysterious way
upon a crimson exotic near her feet.