"Tell me, at least, what you might do if your father would permit you to leave the Hall.

I would gladly fall to my knees, were it not for the assembled company." With reluctance in her manner and gladness in her heart, the girl said:-- "If my father would permit me to leave the Hall, I might--only for a moment, meet you at the stile, in the northeast corner of the garden back of the terrace half an hour hence.

But he would not permit me, and--and, my lord, I ought not to go even should father consent." "I will ask your father's permission for you.

I will seek him at once," said the eager earl.
"No, no, my lord, I pray you, do not," murmured Dorothy, with distracting little troubled wrinkles in her forehead.

Her trouble was more for fear lest he would not than for dread that he would.
"I will, I will," cried his Lordship, softly; "I insist, and you shall not gainsay me." The girl's only assent was silence, but that was sufficient for so enterprising a gallant as the noble Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.