Their interview had seemed so brief--in all it seemed scarcely more than a moment--to have made such a horrible change in her way of looking at things. If he had protested innocence, fought, if even so weakly, against her evidence, fought with a man’s strength against odds the danger of losing the woman he wanted, she could have seen him go with a calmness born of woman’s inherent right to dismiss. But this----! Death surely was no worse than for a woman to be spurned by such a man. After a while tears came, and they helped her, tears of anger, if you will, but tears, soft and humid, in which to a woman there is always a kind of bitter sweetness, too. She threw herself on her bed in her riding togs, her mannish coat and mannish boots, eloquent of their own pretensions. In spite of them and the things they typified she was merely a very tired little girl, weeping her heart out as other little girls had done before and will again, because her lover had gone away from her. Toward luncheon time when the others were expected to return she got up, bathed her eyes and, summoning Wilson, changed into a dress for the afternoon. Pride came to her rescue now, and with the help of her maid and the mysterious process with which maids are familiar she managed to make herself presentable enough to avoid notice from so keen an observer as her hostess. Doris found herself smiling, and doing her share of conversation in a mechanical way which left a question in her mind as to the depth of her own emotions. But the weight about her heart, the dull echo of reiterated thoughts pervaded all and she knew that it was merely that her spirit was dulled, her heart numb, like a nerve from the shock of a blow. She stole away when she could with a book to the gun-room, where she could sit alone and try to put her thoughts in order. CHAPTER IX THE VIKING’S TOWER There in the middle of the afternoon the butler brought her a note. For a moment before she read the superscription, a wild rush of something which might have been joy yet could not be, sent a pale flush of color into her cheek. But she glanced at the envelope carelessly, and when the man had gone, quickly opened it. It was from John Rizzio, signed with the familiar initials and begun without either name or qualification: You will think it strange, perhaps, that I should write to you after the events of last night, because the modesty of a woman is the last thing that forgives. My action is beyond apology and I offer none for fear that it may be construed into a hope--a selfish hope of an unimaginable forgiveness. Hope has passed--that with the others, but something else remains, something less selfish than hope and more vital than self-interest and that is a whole-hearted wish that your honor may be kept free from the taint of the dark and furtive things with which it has come into contact.