"Oh, a wonderful man," Dorothy agreed. "Well, the few family heirlooms my grandmother still possessed were left to me, together with a small sum of money, which I'm sorry to say my father spent. That was my excuse for going on the stage. I told him that it was his fault and his fault only that I had to earn my own living. But the rescue work had affected his common sense. He turned me out of the house. I lived for a whole year on fifty pounds. But I was determined to succeed, and when I met Tony and he asked me to marry him I refused, because I had grown proud. You can understand that, can't you? Tell me, dear Lady Clarehaven, that you can understand my anxiety to prove that I could be a success. Besides, when I was a child the estrangement between my mother and my grandmother had greatly affected my imagination. I didn't want to find myself the cause of estranging another mother from her son. Have you forgiven me? Do you think that you will ever love me?" The dowager wept and declared that as soon as her own mother was pacified she should make it her business to reconcile Dorothy with hers. "Oh no," cried Dorothy, "that's impossible. My father must learn a little humility first. When he has learned his lesson I will be reconciled with my family, but meanwhile haven't you a place in your heart for me?" The dowager, so far as it was possible for a small woman to perform the action with one so much taller than herself, clasped Dorothy to her heart. "How I wish my husband were alive to be with us this evening," she exclaimed. It was probably as well that he was not; if he had been, neither age nor decency would have intervened to prevent the fourth earl from making love to his daughter-in-law. The fifth earl interrupted any further exchanges of confidences by bursting into the room to protest against his wife's desertion. "Your mother has been so sweet to me, Tony," she said. "Of course she has," he answered. "She knows what I've had to go through to bring off this coup." "Indeed," the dowager confessed, "I never suspected he had such determination. Dear old boy, it only seems yesterday that he was such a little boy, and now--" She broke off with a sigh and patted him on the shoulder. "Your mother and I have just decided that it would be best if I am presented to Lady Chatfield to-morrow," Dorothy announced. "What?" cried Clarehaven. "No. Look here! Steady, mother! I'm absolutely against that. I'm sorry to appear the undutiful grandson and all that, but really, don't you know, I must discourage her a bit. I didn't bring Dorothy down to Clare to be buzzing over to Chatfield all the time. We'll get Uncle Chat over here to dinner one night, and that'll be quite enough." The dowager looked appealingly at her daughter-in-law, who at once took matters into her own hands. "Don't be absurd, Tony. Of course we shall go to-morrow." He would have continued to protest, but his wife fixed him with those deep-brown eyes of hers.