"You have made up your mind after all these years," she said slowly and regretfully. "Poor Dora! whom we all loved for your sake, and who is so good and faithful a sister and daughter, so thoroughly trustworthy and intrinsic! Oh, no, Garth, you could not be so fickle!"
"You speak as though I have been in love with her all these years," returned Garth sullenly. "You know very well, Langley, I have been perfectly heart-whole all the time. True, I always believed that we should come together, but it is not my fault if my inclinations no longer point that way."
"Ah!" Langley uttered no more than that little monosyllable, but the blood rushed to her brother's face; she knew now what he meant. "Poor Dora!" she sighed, and then she put up her face and kissed him, and said good night.
She had come to speak to him about Dora, not of the other one; that was none of her business. As far as she knew, his choice was not an unwise one; no one could know Queenie and not love her. She had grown into all their hearts strangely; but the old friend of their childhood, Dora!
She went away very sadly after that. Garth made no effort to detain her. His purposes were not yet ripe enough for confidence; he was a little shy of whispering them even to himself.
"You are not hurt with me because I ventured to say this to you?" she asked him, as she was about to move away.
"No; I think I am relieved; it is always best to undeceive people," was his sole reply, and then she left him.
Garth enjoyed his solitude uninterruptedly after that, but he was not quite at ease in his own conscience. Langley's words, few and temperate as they were, had troubled him. It seemed so strange to hear her pleading Dora's cause, the very girl whom all these years he had intended to make his wife.
Should he give her this one chance more? should he write such a letter that its very sternness should constrain her to answer him? but no, she might repent and fling herself into his arms, and now his heart had gone from her.
"It is well to be off with the old love before one is on with the new," thought Garth, somewhat ruefully, but it was very clear that it was not Dora now that he wanted. "We are better apart; she will get to see that in time herself," he said, as Langley's earnest pleading rose uncomfortably to his mind. "I don't believe she is a bit in love with me." And before he retired that night he made up his mind that things must take their chance. He would wait a little perhaps, there was no hurry. When the time for his wooing should come he would carry it in far different fashion than he had done, and the girl he should woo would not be Dora.