That was enough for Dolly. She did not trouble the world with much outward evidence of sorrow after that. The wound closed externally, bled internally. Her bed-room in the roof of Eglantine Cottage, selected by herself because there she was out of the way, the lonely woods around Dassell Court, the alder-trees growing by the trout streams, quiet lanes bordered by wild roses, holly and blackberries, and even quieter fields where the half-horned cattle browsed peacefully,--could have told tales of long weary fits of crying, of broken-hearted inquiries as to why such things should be, of an insensate struggle against the inevitable,--of very, very bad half-hours indeed when Dolly wished she was lying beside her father in Dassell's quiet church-yard. Time went by; and if the wound was not healed it ceased to bleed at any rate. Life had to be gone through, and Dolly was not one to lengthen the distance between the miles with useless repinings. Though she probably had never read "A Winter's Tale" with sufficient attention to know that "A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in a mile-a!" she seemed to have adopted that couplet for her ensampler. She might, as Miss Trebasson suspected, have no soul, but she was possessed of a wonderful temper--of a marvellous elasticity. She took life after the fashion of an amiable cat or dog. If people stroked and patted her, she purred and gambolled for joy; if they were out of sorts she crept away from sight till that mood was past. She was a lazy little sinner--lazy, that is, in points where other young ladies of her acquaintance were most industrious. She would not practice, she would not sketch, she resolutely refused to read German with any one, and she openly scoffed at two London misses who visiting at the Rectory talked French to each other on the strength of having spent a winter at Paris, imagining the Dassell natives could not understand their satirical sentences. She commented on their remarks in English, and so put them to the rout. "I thought you told me you could not speak French?" said the youngest to her. "Neither I can any better than you," retorted Dolly; "and I do not call _that_ speaking French." Altogether an unpleasant young person, and yet Miss Trebasson loved her tenderly, and Mortomley as well as he knew how. "What is the matter with you to-night, Dolly?" asked Miss Celia one evening when her niece had sat longer than usual looking out into the twilight while the spinster indulged in that nap which "saved candles." "Are not you well? I told you how it would be going out for that long walk in the heat of the day." "We walked through the woods, aunt, and it was not too hot,--and I am quite well," answered Dolly in her concise manner, still looking out into the gathering night. If she could have seen painted upon that blank background all that was to come, would she have gone forward?