ten o'clock
`` I shall always love him , whatever he is ! '' exclaimed Dorothy , all tenderness and fresh alarm . Dorothy did not understand . It was ten o'clock ; the Potomac lay between its soft banks like a river of silver . There was the throb of the engines , and the talk of the water against her bows , as the _ Dorothy Storms _ with her two passengers , they and their love , swept onward through the moonlight . Dorothy , her head on Richard 's shoulder , and thinking on her mother and Bess and all she had left behind , watched the V-shaped wake as it spread away in ripples to either bank . Now and then a shore-light slipped by , to snuff out astern as distance or a bend in the river extinguished it .