The poem, after all, turned out to be but a lover's appeal to his mistress to give over coyness and use time while she might; but Dorothea wondered why its solemn language should have hit her namesake's fancy, and, turning a few more pages, discovered that this merry dead girl had chosen and copied out other verses which were more than solemn.

How had she dug these gloomy gems out of Donne, Ford, Webster, and set them here among loose songs and loose epigrams from _Wit's Remembrancer_ and the like?
for gems they were, though Dorothea did not know it nor whence they came.

Dorothea had small sense of poetry: it was the personal interest which led her on.

To be sure the little animal (she had already begun to construct a picture of her) might have secreted these things for no more reason than their beauty, as a squirrel will pick up a ruby ring and hide it among his nuts.
But why were they, all so darkly terrible?
Had she, being young, been afraid to die?
Rather it seemed as if now and then, in the midst of her mirth, she had paused and been afraid to live.
And in the end she had married a Devonshire squire, which on the face of it is no darkly romantic thing to do.

But it was over the maiden that our Dorothea pondered, until by and by the small shade took features and a place in her leisure time: a very companionable shade, though tantalising; and innocent, though given to mischievously sportive hints.