"And in that thin dress, too!" he remonstrated; "you ought to take better care of yourself, Beatrix."
Beatrix looked up at him half grateful and half laughing. She wished she were not grown up, and she might ask him to chafe her cold hands as he used to do when she was a little girl. She remembered even now the comforting warmth of those strong, brown hands.
"Never mind, one day he will be my brother, and that will be nice," thought Beatrix to herself. "I wish he and Dorrie would settle it quickly between themselves, and then there will be no more cold school-rooms."
Garth did not find another opportunity to exchange a word with Dora that night. The girls played some duets, and their sister turned the pages of their music for them, and left her father to entertain their visitor.
Nevertheless, the sense of her displeasure pervaded the atmosphere somehow, and drove all comfort from him. When he said good night to her, she gave him a very fleeting pressure of the fingers, and scarcely lifted her eyes to his, but her mouth looked a little scornful.
But it was not Garth this time that passed a sleepless night. When Dora brushed out her golden hair a pale, set face met her eyes in the glass, with a very decided frown on the brow.
"He thinks to blind me, but I am not to be thrown aside in this sort of way," she said to herself. "He belongs to me, and she shall not have him." And before she slept Dora took her resolution.
CHAPTER XII.
"HE BELONGS TO ME."
"Lor. You loved and he did love?
Mar. To say he did
Were to affirm what oft his eyes avouch'd,
What many an action testified, and yet
What wanted confirmation of his tongue."—J. S. Knowles.