HOW STORRI PLOTTED A VENGEANCE Richard asked Dorothy if she had told Bess.

No, Dorothy had not told Bess.
"Do you think, dear heart, I would tell anyone before I had told you ?" As the most fitting reply to this question, Richard kissed Dorothy all over again as though for the first time, and with a fervor that told how his soul was in the work.
Bess was called in as a consulting engineer of hearts.

That blonde tactician glanced over the situation with the eye of a field-marshal.
This was the result of her survey.

There must be no clandestine marriage, no elopement.

Dorothy was in no peril; it was not a drawbridge day of moated castlewicks and donjon keeps.