“‘Yes, a terrible loss,’ I said, thinking more of myself than of her. ‘But is there a prospect of losing her?’ I asked, feeling through my frame a cold, sickly chill, which rapidly increased as she replied:
“‘Perhaps not; but this Mrs. Randall, whom she has gone to visit, has a brother at West Point, you know, Lieutenant Reed, the young man with epaulets, who was here last summer.’
“‘Yes, I remember him,’ I said, and Mrs. Russell continued:
“‘He has been in love with Dora ever since she was with his sister Mattie at school. Dora has not yet given him a decided answer, but I know her preference for him, and as he is to be at his sister’s while Dora is there, it is natural to fear that it may result in eventually taking Dora away from Beechwood.’
“‘It may, it may,’ I responded, in a kind of absent way, for my brain was in a whirl, and I scarcely knew what I did.
“She must have observed my manner, for her eyes suddenly brightened as if an entirely new idea had been suggested to her.
“‘Now if it were some one near by,’ she continued, ‘perhaps she would not leave me. The house is large enough for all, and Dora will marry some time, of course. She is a kind sister, and will make a good wife.’
“At this point Squire Russell came in, and soon after I said good-by, going out again into the summer night, beneath the great, full moon, whose soft, pure light could not still the throbbing of my heart; neither could the long walk I took down by the lake, where Dora and I went one day last summer. There were quite a number of the villagers with us, for it was a picnic, but I saw only Dora, who, afraid of the water, stayed on the shore with me, while the rest went off in sail-boats. We talked together very quietly, sitting on the bank, beneath a broad grape-vine, of whose leaves she wove a sort of wreath, as she told me of her dear old home, and how the saddest moments she had ever known were those in which she fully realized that she was never again to live there, that stranger hands would henceforth tend the flowers she had tended, and stranger feet tread the walks and alleys and winding paths with which the grounds abounded. I remember how the wish flashed upon me that I might some day buy back the home, and take her there as its mistress. Of all this I thought to-night, sitting on the lone shore, just where she once sat, and listening to the low dash of the waves, which, as they came rolling almost to my feet, seemed to murmur, ‘Never, never more!’
“I do not believe I am love-sick, but I am very sad to-night, and the walk down to the lake did not dispel the sadness. It may be it is wrong in me thus to despond, when in many ways I have been prospered beyond my most sanguine hopes. That heavy debt is paid at last, thanks to the kind Father who raised me up so many friends, and whose healing hand has more than once been outstretched to save when medicine was no longer of avail. As is natural, the cure was charged to me, when I knew it was God who had wrought the almost miraculous change. And shall I murmur at anything when sure of His love and protection? Be still, my heart. If it be God’s will, Dora shall yet rest in these arms, which fain would shelter her from all the ills of life; and if ’tis not His will, what am I, that I should question His dealings?”