Dora Deane | Page 2

seeming to see him again as
he was on the day when, with the wreath of white apple blossoms upon
her brow, she sat on the mossy bank and listened to his low spoken
words of love. Again she was out in the pale starlight, and heard the
autumn wind go moaning through the locust trees as Nathaniel, the
strange, eccentric, woman-hating Nathaniel, but just returned from the
seas, told her how madly he had loved her, and how the knowledge that
she belonged to another would drive him from his fatherland
forever--that in the burning clime of India he would make gold his idol,
forgetting, if it were possible, the mother who had borne him! Then she
recalled the angry scorn with which her adopted sister had received the
news of her engagement with John, and how the conviction was at last
forced upon her that Sarah herself had loved him in secret, and that in a
fit of desperation she had given her hand to the rather inefficient
Richard, ever after treating her rival with a cool reserve, which now
came back to her with painful distinctness.
"But she will love my little Dora for _John's_ sake, if not for mine," she
thought, at last; and then, as if she had all the time been speaking to her
daughter, she continued," And you must be very dutiful to your aunt,
and kind to your cousins, fulfilling their slightest wishes."
Looking up quickly, Dora asked, "Have you written to Aunt Sarah?
Does she say I can come?"
"The letter is written, and Mrs. Gannis will send it as soon as I am
dead," answered Mrs. Deane. "I am sure she will give you a home. I
told her there was no alternative but the almshouse;" then, after a pause,
she added: "I wrote to your uncle Nathaniel some months ago, when I
knew that I must die. It is time for his reply, but I bade him direct to
Sarah, as I did not then think to see the winter snow."
"Did you tell him of me?" eagerly asked Dora, on whom the name of
Uncle Nathaniel, or "Uncle Nat," as he was more familiarly called,
produced a more pleasant impression than did that of her aunt Sarah.

"Yes", answered the mother, "it was of you that I wrote, commending
you to his care, should he return to America. And if you ever meet him,
Dora, tell him that on my dying bed I thought of him with
affection--that my mind wandered back to the years of long ago, when I
was young, and ask him, for the sake of one he called his brother, and
for her who grieves that ever she caused him a moment's pain, to care
for you, their orphan child."
Then followed many words of love, which were very precious to Dora
in the weary years which followed that sad night; and then, for a time,
there was silence in that little room, broken only by the sound of the
wailing tempest. The old year was going out on the wings of a fearful
storm, and as the driving sleet beat against the casement, while the
drifting snow found entrance through more than one wide crevice and
fell upon her pillow, the dying woman murmured, "Lie up closer to me,
Dora, I am growing very cold."
Alas! 'twas the chill of death; but Dora did not know it, and again on
the hearthstone before the fast dying coals she knelt, trying to warm the
bit of flannel, on which her burning tears fell like rain, when through
the empty wood-box she sought in vain for chip or bark with which to
increase the scanty fire.
"But I will not tell her," she softly whispered, when satisfied that her
search was vain, and wrapping the flannel around the icy feet, she
untied the long-sleeved apron which covered her own naked arms, and
laying it over her mother's shoulders, tucked in the thin bedclothes; and
then, herself all shivering and benumbed, she sat down to wait and
watch, singing softly a familiar hymn, which had sometimes lulled her
mother into a quiet sleep.
At last, as her little round white arms grew purple with the cold, she
moved nearer to the bedside, and winding them lovingly around her
mother's neck, laid her head upon the pillow and fell asleep. And to the
angels, who were hovering near, waiting to bear their sister spirit home,
there was given charge concerning the little girl, so that she did not
freeze, though she sat there the livelong night, calmly sleeping the
sweet sleep of childhood, while the mother at her side slept the long,

eternal sleep of death!
* * * * *

CHAPTER II.
THE FIRST AND LAST NEW