Hugh Knollys was so much a member of the household that Aunt Lettice thought nothing of going her own way when dinner was over and leaving him in the living-room with Dorothy; and the two now sat on one of the low, broad window-seats, watching Joseph Devereux as he went out of doors in search of Trent, with 'Bitha dancing along beside him. "How fast 'Bitha is growing!" Hugh remarked. "She will soon be taller than you, Dot. Although, to be sure," he added with a laugh, "that is not saying very much." Dorothy did not reply. Indeed it would seem that she had not heard him; and now he laid his hand softly upon one of her own to arouse her attention as he called her by name. At this she started, and turned her face to him. "What, Hugh--what is it?" she asked confusedly. His smiling face became sober at once, and a curious intentness crept into his blue eyes while he and Dorothy looked at each other without speaking. Then he asked deliberately, "Of what were you dreaming just now, Dot?" A burning blush deepened the color in her cheeks, and her eyes fell before those that seemed to be searching her very thoughts. "Shall I make a guess?" he said, a strange thrill now creeping into his voice and causing her to lift her eyes again. "Were you dreaming of that young redcoat you were walking with this morning?" She sprang to her feet and faced him, her eyes blazing, and her slight form trembling with anger. "I was not walking with any such," she replied hotly. "How dare you say so?" "Because it so appeared as I came along the Salem road," was his calm answer. "I saw him on one side of the road leaning against the stone wall, and watching you, as you went from the wall on the opposite side, and across your father's lot. His eyes were fixed upon you as though he were never going to look away; indeed he never saw nor heard me until my horse was directly in front of him." Dorothy was now looking down at the floor, and made no reply. After waiting a moment for her to speak, Hugh took both her hands and held them close, while he said with an earnestness that seemed almost solemn in its intensity: "Don't deceive me, Dot. Don't tell me aught that is not true, when you can trust me to defend you and your happiness with my life, if needs be." His words comforted her in a way she could not explain. And yet they startled her; for she was still too much of a child, and Hugh Knollys had been too long a part of her every-day life, for her to suspect how it really was with him. "I was not intending to tell you any untruth, Hugh. But--I was not walking with him." The anger had now gone from her eyes, and she left her hands to lie quietly in his clasp. But she had not forgotten the warm pressure of those other hands in whose keeping they had been that same morning. "Had you not seen him, Dot?" Hugh asked, looking keenly into her face.