Sir George had asked her to forgive him for the hard words he had spoken, and she had again led him to believe that she would be dutiful and obedient.

It is hard to determine, as a question of right and wrong, whether Dorothy is to be condemned or justified in the woful deception she practised upon her father.

To use a plain, ugly word, she lied to him without hesitation or pain of conscience.

Still, we must remember that, forty years ago, girls were frequently forced, regardless of cries and piteous agony, into marriages to which death would have been preferable.

They were flogged into obedience, imprisoned and starved into obedience, and alas! they were sometimes killed in the course of punishment for disobedience by men of Sir George's school and temper.