[figure description] Page 209.[end figure description]

SO absorbed was Mrs. West in Robert that she
seldom noticed Richard, and so she paid no heed
when he one day came into the sick-room, looking
whiter even than his brother, by whose side he sat
down as usual, doing for him the many offices he had
been accustomed to perform, and except for his suffering
face, giving no token of the terrible pain which wrung
his heart when he that morning read in Jessie's letter that
the worst he had feared was true, and that Dora was to
be married in September.

“For a person just engaged she acts very strangely,”
Jessie wrote, “and Bell will insist that she does not love
her future lord, but is marrying him from some mistaken
sense of duty. What do you think?”

Dr. West could not tell what he thought, he only knew
that his brain grew giddy, and his soul faint and sick as
he realized that Dora was lost to him forever. Never
even when Anna died had he suffered so keen a pang as
now, when in the solitude of his chamber he tried to pray,
while the words he would utter died away in unmeaning

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sounds. But God, who readeth the inmost secrets of the
heart, knew what his poor sorrowing child would ask, and
the needed strength to bear was given all the same.

It was very tedious now, waiting in that sick-room, for
there crept into Richard's mind the half conviction that
if he would see Dora for only one brief moment, he could
save her from the sacrifice. But Robert's improvement
was slow, and day after day went by, until at last there
came a morning when there was put into Richard's hand
a soiled, worn-looking letter, whose superscription made
his heart for an instant stop its beatings, for he recognized
Dora's handwriting, and involuntarily pressed the missive
to his lips ere he broke the seal. It had been weeks and
weeks upon the road, lying for a long time in another
office, but it had come to him at last; he had torn the
envelope open; he was reading Dora's cry for help, written
so long ago, a cry to which he gave a far different interpretation
from what she had intended.

“Oh, why did I not speak to her again!” he exclaimed;
“why was I permitted to form so wrong an estimate of
woman's character? But it is not yet too late. The
wedding is to be the 15th of September, Jessie wrote.
A steamer sails from here in a few days, and Robert
must be able by that time to leave California, or if he is
not I shall leave him behind with mother and fly to
Dora. Oh if I could go to-day!”

An hour later, and Robert knew all there was to know

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of Dora as connected with his brother, and warmly approved
the plan of sailing in the Raritan. I shall grow
stronger on the sea, he said, and the result proved that
he was right, for when at last the Raritan was loosened
from her moorings and gliding swiftly over the blue
waters of the Pacific, he lay on her deck, drinking in new
strength and vigor with each freshening breeze. But
with Richard it was different. Now that they were
really off, and Robert needed comparatively little of his
help, he sank beneath the load of anxiety and excitement,
and taking to his berth, scarcely lifted his head from the
pillow while the ship went gliding on towards home and
Dora Freeman.

p605-217

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