“But where is this to end?” inquired the young man. “If he will not accept me as your lover, and you cannot become mine except with his consent, the case seems hopeless.”
Dora did not reply at the moment, and they walked along for some time in silence.
“There is a way. I have thought of it a great deal,” at length said the young girl. She spoke with some hesitation in her manner.
“What is it?” inquired her lover.
Dora leaned toward him, and said something in a low voice.
“That’s not to be thought of,” was the quick reply of the young man.
Dora was silent, while her bosom, as it rose and fell quickly, showed that her feelings were much disturbed.
The suggestion, whatever it was, appeared to hurt or offend the young man, and when they separated, it was with a coldness on his part that made tears dim the eyes of Dora the moment she turned from him.
On their next meeting both felt constrained; and their conversation was not so free and tender as before. It took some weeks for the effect of Dora’s proposition, whatever it was, to wear off. But after that time the sunshine came back again, and was brighter and warmer than before.
One day, it was perhaps four or five months after the little misunderstanding just mentioned, the old engraver was visited by a stranger, whose whole appearance marked him as either a foreigner or one who had lived abroad. He wanted him, he said, to copy on steel, in his most finished style, the miniature of a lady. As he mentioned his errand to the engraver, he drew from his pocket the miniature of a young and exquisitely beautiful woman, set in a costly gold locket. Mark Stilling took the picture, but the moment he looked at it his countenance changed.