As a compromise he determined at last to ask Dorothy again for her hand, and he availed himself of an early opportunity of doing this. He used all his persuasive eloquence in vain. He pointed to his haggard face, and told her that a refusal would inevitably complete the work that Manners had begun, but she was firm; and seeing that nothing would shake her resolution, he resolved to put his plan into operation immediately upon his recovery. It was a deeply-laid scheme, the scheme of a villain, and it revealed its author in its proper light. As he communicated his plan to his page, when the latter paid him his final visit, his face glowed with satisfaction, and he imagined the chagrin his dupes would feel when they found themselves within his power. It was necessary, in the first place, to throw Manners off his guard, and, smarting under the humiliation of his defeat, De la Zouch determined that his victor should also come within the reach of his net; and, as he witnessed the growing familiarity which existed between his rival and Dorothy, he was more than ever determined to have vengeance upon him, and more jubilant at the prospect of attaining the consummation of his wish. This was the motive which caused his readiness to meet Manners as a friend. He rightly judged that Manners once put off the scent, the rest would follow his example, so he appeared to accept Dorothy's refusal with a better grace, as a thing inevitable; and once face to face again with his gallant foe, nothing could exceed the extravagance of the language he employed to convince him that he regretted the follies of the past and to instil into his mind that he wished for the future to be counted as his friend. It is a noticeable feature about villains that they almost always overreach themselves at some point or other--in story-books they always do--and to this characteristic De la Zouch proved no exception, for the very intensity of the words he chose, and the excessive flattery he employed, instead of gaining their object, aroused in John Manners' mind a feeling of suspicion of which he could in nowise dispossess himself. He would have communicated his fears to Dorothy, but he feared lest she should misjudge him and interpret it as an ebulition of jealousy, and there was none other except his friend Crowleigh in whom he could confide. Unwilling, however, to wound the susceptibilities of De la Zouch, who, after all, might have been actuated by the best of motives, he fairly met all his advances, and though he was all along mistrustful of his intentions, yet he was careful that Sir Henry should perceive no signs of it.