FENWICK. Dorothy, I loved you as a boy. There is not a meadow on Edenside but is dear to me for your sake, not a cottage but recalls your goodness, not a rock nor a tree but brings back something of the best and brightest youth man ever had. You were my teacher and my queen; I walked with you, I talked with you, I rode with you; I lived in your shadow; I saw with your eyes. You will never know, dear Dorothy, what you were to the dull boy you bore with; you will never know with what romance you filled my life, with what devotion, with what tenderness and honour. At night I lay awake and worshipped you; in my dreams I saw you, and you loved me; and you remember, when we told each other stories—you have not forgotten, dearest—that Princess Hawthorn that was still the heroine of mine: who was she? I was not bold enough to tell, but she was you! You, my virgin huntress, my Diana, my queen. DOROTHY. O silence, silence—pity! FENWICK. No, dear; neither for your sake nor mine will I be silenced. I have begun; I must go on and finish, and put fortune to the touch. It was from you I learned honour, duty, piety, and love. I am as you made me, and I exist but to reverence and serve you. Why else have I come here, the length of England, my heart burning higher every mile, my very horse a clog to me? why, but to ask you for my wife? Dorothy, you will not deny me. DOROTHY. You have not asked me about this broken trinket? FENWICK. Why should I ask? I love you. DOROTHY. Yet I must tell you. Sit down. (_She picks up the necklace_, _and stands looking at it_. _Then_, _breaking down_.) O John, John, it’s long since I left home. FENWICK. Too long, dear love. The very trees will welcome you. DOROTHY. Ay, John, but I no longer love you. The old Dorothy is dead, God pardon her! FENWICK. Dorothy, who is the man? DOROTHY. O poor Dorothy! O poor dead Dorothy! John, you found me breaking this: me, your Diana of the Fells, the Diana of your old romance by Edenside. Diana—O what a name for me! Do you see this trinket? It is a chapter in my life. A chapter, do I say? my whole life, for there is none to follow. John, you must bear with me, you must help me. I have that to tell—there is a secret—I have a secret, John—O, for God’s sake, understand. That Diana you revered—O John, John, you must never speak of love to me again. FENWICK. What do you say? How dare you? DOROTHY. John, it is the truth. Your Diana, even she, she whom you so believed in, she who so believed in herself, came out into the world only to be broken. I met, here at the Wells, a man—why should I tell you his name? I met him, and I loved him. My heart was all his own; yet he was not content with that: he must intrigue to catch me, he must bribe my maid with this. (_Throws the necklace on the table_.) Did he love me? Well, John, he said he did; and be it so! He loved, he betrayed, and he has left me. FENWICK. Betrayed?