Dora did not try to pray. She never thought of that, but only remembered how desolate, how miserable she was, vainly imagining that to rest beneath the waters lying so calmly at her feet was to end all the pain, the misery, and woe.
The sun was going down the west now very fast, and out upon the bosom of the lake, at some distance from the shore, it cast a gleam like burnished gold, and Dora, gazing wistfully upon it, fancied that if she could but reach that spot, and sink into that golden glory, it would be well with her. No thoughts of the hereafter crossed her disordered mind, and so she sat and watched the shining spot, until there came to her a memory of the night when Robin died, and the time when the sunshine round Anna’s picture looked like the bed of fire upon the lake.
“They are in heaven,” she said; adding mournfully, “and where is that heaven?”
“Not where they go who take their lives in their own hands,” seemed whispered in her ear, and with a shudder she woke to the great peril of her position.
“Save me, O God!” she sobbed, as she moved cautiously back from her seat upon the tree, breathing freer when she knew that beneath her there was no dark, cold water into which she could dip her feet at pleasure.
She had dipped them there until both hose and slippers were dripping wet, but this she did not heed, and once off from the tree, she sat down where Richard sat, and tried to look the present calmly in the face,—to see if there were not some bright, happy spots, if she would but accept them. With her head bowed down, she did not hear the footstep coming through the woods, and drawing near to her; but when a strange voice said interrogatively, “Miss Freeman?” she started and uttered a nervous cry, for the face she saw was the face of a stranger. And yet it was so like to Dr. West, that she looked again to reassure herself.
“I am Robert West,” the man began, abruptly. “I am Richard’s brother. He sent me here,—he sent me to his Dora, and you are she.”
For an instant a tumultuous throb of joy shot through Dora’s heart, but it quickly passed, as she answered Robert:
“You are mistaken, sir. I am to be Squire Russell’s wife to-morrow.”
Sitting down beside her, Robert repeated rapidly a part of what the reader already knows, telling her of Anna, of his own sin, and exonerating Richard from all blame. Then he told her of the meeting in California, of his long illness,—of Richard’s anguish when he heard that she was to be married,—of the reaction when that letter so long in coming was received,—of his haste to embark for home, and his illness during the voyage,—illness which made him so weak that he was brought from New York on pillows, and partly in his brother’s arms.