He came face to face with Dorothy at a bend in the road. She was walking slowly, with her eyes on the ground. She did not hear his footsteps on the grass-grown road, and when she looked up he was close upon her. There was no time to debate the situation even with herself, so she followed the impulse of her heart and held out her hand to him. "I thought I should meet you to-day," he said. "I am sorry you have been ill." "I was rather run down when I came," she answered, glancing at him with a questioning look, "and I think I caught cold on the journey." "But you are better now?" "Oh yes, I am quite well again." "I feared you had returned to London. I have been on the look-out for you for weeks." She looked shyly up into his face, but did not reply. "I wanted to know my fate," he went on. "You know that I love you. You must have guessed it long before I told you." "But--but----" she began, with averted eyes. "Please hear me out first," he interrupted. "I would not have spoken again had not circumstances changed. When I saw you in London I was poor and without hope. I believed that I should have to leave the country in order to earn a living. To have offered marriage to anyone would have been an insult. And yet if I had never seen you again I should have loved you to the end." "But have you considered----" she began again, with eyes still turned from his face. "I have considered everything," he interrupted eagerly, almost passionately. "But there is only one thing that matters, and that is love. If you do not love me--cannot love me--my dream is at an end, and I will endure as best I am able. But if your heart responds to my appeal, then the thing is settled. You are mine." "But you are forgetting my--my--position," she stammered. "I am forgetting nothing of importance," he went on resolutely. "There are only two people in the world really concerned in this matter, you and I, and the decision rests with you. It is not my fault that I love you. I cannot help it. You did not mean to steal my heart, perhaps, but you did it. It seems a curious irony of fate, for I detested your father; but Providence threw me across your path. In strange and inexplicable ways your life has become linked with mine. You are all the world to me. Cannot you give me some hope?" "But my father still----" she began. "You are of age," he interrupted. "No, no! Questions of parentage or birth or position do not count. Why should they? Let us get back to the one thing that matters. If you cannot love me, say the word, and I will go my way and never molest you again. But if you do love me, be it ever so little, you must give me hope." "My father would never consent," she said quickly.