Dora Deane | Page 6

see her, as he was resolved to spend his days in India, he still wished to think of her as an educated and accomplished woman.
"Accompanying this letter," he wrote, "is a check for $500, to be used for Dora's benefit. Next year I will make another remittance, increasing the allowance as she grows older. I have more money than I need, and I know of no one on whom I would sooner expend it than the child of Fanny Moore."
"Spiteful old fool!" muttered Eugenia, "I could relieve him of any superfluous dimes he may possess."
But even Eugenia, heartless as she was, felt humbled and subdued for a moment, as she read the latter part of her uncle's letter, from which we give the following extract:
"I am thinking, to-day, of the past, Sarah, and I grow a very child again as I recall the dreary years which have gone over my head, since last I trod the shores of my fatherland. You, Sarah, know much of my history. You know that I was awkward, eccentric, uncouth, and many years older than my handsomer, more highly gifted brother; and yet with all this fearful odds against me, you know that I ventured to love the gentle, fair-haired Fanny, your adopted sister. You know this, I say, but you do not know how madly, how passionately such as I can love--did love; nor how the memory of Fanny's ringing laugh, and the thought of the sunny smile, with which I knew she would welcome me home again, cheered me on my homeward voyage, when in the long night-watches I paced the vessel's deck, while the stars looked coldly down upon me, and there was no sound to break the deep stillness, save the heavy swell of the sea. At the village inn where I stopped for a moment ere going to my father's house, I first heard that her hand was plighted to another, and in my wild frenzy, I swore that my rival, whoever it might be, should die!
"It was my youngest brother--he, who, on the sad night when our mother died, had laid his baby head upon my bosom, and wept himself to sleep--he whose infant steps I had guided, bearing him often in my arms, lest he should 'dash his foot against a stone.' And his life I had sworn to take, for had he not come between me and the only object I had ever loved? There was no one stirring about the house, for it was night, and the family had retired. But the door was unfastened, and I knew the way upstairs. I found him, as I had expected, in our old room, and all alone; for Richard was away. Had he been there, it should make no difference, I said, but he was absent, and John was calmly sleeping with his face upturned to the soft moonlight which came in through the open window. I had not seen him for two long years, and now there was about him a look so much like that of my dead mother when she lay in her coffin bed, that the demon in my heart was softened, and I seemed to hear her dying words again, 'I can trust you, Nathaniel; and to your protection, as to a second mother, I commit my little boy.'
"The little boy, whose curls were golden then, was now a brown- haired man--my brother--the son of my angel mother, whose spirit, in that dark hour of my temptation, glided into the silent room, and stood between me and her youngest born, so that he was not harmed, and I was saved from the curse of a brother's blood.
"'Lead us not into temptation,' came back to me, just as I had said it kneeling at my mother's side; and covering my face with my hands, I thanked God, who had kept me from so great a sin. Bending low, I whispered in his ear his name, and in a moment his arms were around my neck, while he welcomed me back to the home, which, he said, was not home without me. And then, when the moon had gone down, and the stars shone too faintly to reveal his blushes, he told me the story of his happiness, to which I listened, while the great drops of sweat rolled down my face and moistened the pillow on which my head was resting.
"But why linger over those days of anguish, which made me an old man before my time? I knew I could not stand by and see her wedded to another--neither could I look upon her after she was another's wife; so, one night, when the autumn days were come, I asked her to go with me out beneath the locust trees, which skirted my