I fear Dorothea may be injured in the opinion of many by the truth--which, nevertheless, has to be told--that her recovery was helped not a little by sentiment.

What?
Is a poor lady's heart to be in combustion for a while and then--pf!--the flame expelled at a blast, with all that fed it?
That is the heroic cure, no doubt: but either it kills or leaves a room swept and garnished, inviting devils.
In short it is the way of tragedy, and for tragedy Dorothea had no aptitude at all.

She did what she could--tidied up.
For an instance .-- She owned a small book which had once belonged to a namesake of hers--a Dorothea Westcote who had lived at the close of the seventeenth and opening of the eighteenth centuries, a grand- daughter of the first Westcote of Bayfield, married (so said the family history) in 1704 to a squire from across the Devonshire border.

The book was a slender one, bound in calf, gilt-edged, and stamped with a gold wreath in the centre of each cover.

Dorothea called it an album; but the original owner had simply written in, "Dorothea Westcote, her book," on the first page, with the date 1687 below, and filled four-and- twenty of its blank pages with poetry (presumably her favourite pieces), copied in a highly ornate hand.