Yes, I think so; I am sure she would. For although Dolly had not been born in the purple, there was not a drop of cowardly blood in her veins. "Then what is the matter with you?" persisted Miss Celia, who always resented having been permitted to finish her nap in peace. "I was only thinking, aunt." "That is a very bad habit, particularly for a young girl like you." "I do not quite see how young girls can help thinking sometimes any more than old ones," answered Dolly, but there was no flippancy in her tone, if there were in her words. "Aunty, Mr. Mortomley--that gentleman I have told you of, who is so much at the Vicarage and Dassell Court--has asked me to marry him." "Asked _you_ to marry him, child?" "Yes." "And what did you say?" "What could I say, aunt? He is coming to see you about it to-morrow." Miss Celia arose from her easy-chair. Perhaps out of the midst of the cloud of years that had gathered behind her there arose the ghost of an old love-dream, never laid--never likely to be laid. At all events her usually shrill voice was modulated to an almost tender key, as, drawing Dolly towards her, she asked, "Do you love him, Dolly?" "What should I know about love, aunty?" inquired Dolly; and at that answer the elder woman's embrace relaxed. Here was no sentimental Miss such as she herself had been in her teens, but a girl lacking something as every one felt--who in some way or other was not as other human beings--who even in those remote wilds was able to behold a personable man and not go crazy about him on the instant. Clearly there was a want in Dolly. Miss Gerace could not imagine what that want might be, but that it existed she entertained not the smallest manner of doubt. After that answer about love, Dolly slipped out of her aunt's arms, out of the room, out of the house. It was a quiet country place, and so she merely wrapped a shawl about her head and shoulders, and walked a few paces up the road to a field path across which she struck--a field path leading to the church-yard. There were no gates and bolts and locks there--cutting off the dead from the living. Dolly swung back the turnstile gate--it had often yielded to her touch before--and entered the enclosure. Leaning over the spot where her father lay, she--this girl who had never known a mother--whispered her story. Dolly's best friend was right, I fear, and the girl was a heathen; but this visit to the dead had been a fancy of hers for years. Whenever she was troubled, whenever she was glad, whenever she was in perplexity, whenever a difficult problem had been solved--she carried the trouble, the gladness, the perplexity, the solution to a mound where the grass grew, which the daisies covered, and went away relieved. A strange creature--destitute of beauty, not in the least like other young ladies, with occasionally a biting tongue--for Mortomley to choose. Yet he chose her; that was the last act wanting to complete his ruin.