“O Dora! how can you, how can you!-you cruel, cruel girl, how can you speak of him!” cried Kitty in a passion of anger and grief; and, pushing back her chair so violently as to upset it, she rushed out of the room.

“Oh, I am so sorry!” exclaimed Dora in great distress; and would have followed her, had not Karl held her back.

“Don’t go, dear; it will be of no use:  she will not let you into her room.  Poor Kitty! she loved her mother so passionately, and her nature is so intense!  We must make great excuses, Dora, for our sister’s little inequalities of temper:  I think her great loss is at the bottom of all.”

Dora looked thoughtful, and presently said slowly, “I know it, Karl; but it does seem to me rather unjust that she should hate poor Pic’s memory so bitterly even now.  He did not know any more than I that he had small-pox when he came back that time from New York; and when Kitty told him that Aunt Lucy had taken it from him, and was very sick, he felt so badly, that I think it prevented his getting well.”

“O Dora, don’t say that!  Kitty could not have blamed him openly.”

“I don’t know what she said; but, from that day, he grew worse, and died without being able to bid me good-by,—­Pic, who brought me away from those cruel people, and cared for me as if I had been his child.  O dear, dear old Pic!”

She did not cry; she very seldom did:  but she clasped her hands tightly together, and looked so white and wild, that Karl came to her, and, taking her in his arms, would have soothed and caressed her like a little child, had not she repulsed him.

“Please not, dear Karl!  I must bear my griefs alone for I am alone in all the world.”

It was the bitterest sentence Dora had ever spoken, and her cousin looked at her in dismay.

“If Picter could have given the disease to me instead of to aunt, and he and I could have journeyed on together into another world as we had through this, and left your mother to Kitty and you!” continued Dora; while in her eyes, and about her white lips, quivered a passion of grief far beyond any tears,—­far beyond, thank God! any grief that eyes and lips so young are often called to express.  And as it rose and swelled in her girl heart, and shook her strong young soul, Dora uttered in one word all the bitterness of her orphaned life.

“Mother!” cried she, and clinched her hands above the sharp pain that seemed to suffocate her, the pain we call heart-ache, and might sometimes more justly call heart-break.

Karl looked at her, and his gay young face grew strong, and full of meaning.  He folded her again in his arms, and said,—­

“Dora, I had not meant to speak yet; but I cannot see you so, or hear you say such words.  Do not you know, cousin, that there is nothing in all the world I love like you; and that, while I live, you can never be alone; and, while I have a home, you can never want one, or be other than its head and centre?  Dora, marry me, and I will make you forget all other loves in the excess of mine.”  Dora allowed her head to droop upon his shoulder, and a sudden sense of peace and rest fell temptingly upon her spirit.