“You do not put much heart in it,” said Miss Bethune, with a laugh. The most magnanimous person, when conscious of having been very helpful and a truly good friend at his or her personal expense to another, may be pardoned a sense of humour, partially bitter, in the grudging acknowledgment of ignorance. Then she added more gravely: “When your father knows--and he shall know in time--where I am taking you, he will approve; whatever his feelings may be, he will tell you it was right and your duty: of that I am as sure as that I am living, Dora.” “Because she is my aunt? An aunt is not such a very tender relation, Miss Bethune. In books they are often very cold comforters, not kind to girls that are poor. I suppose,” said Dora, after a little pause, “that I would be called poor?” “You are just nothing, you foolish little thing! You have no character of your own; you are your father’s daughter, and no more.” “I don’t wish to be anything more,” cried Dora, with her foolish young head held high. “And this poor woman,” said Miss Bethune, exasperated, “will not live long enough to be a friend to any one--so you need not be afraid either of her being too tender or unkind. She has come back, poor thing, after long years spent out of her own country, to die.” “To die?” the girl echoed in a horrified tone. “Just that, and nothing less or more.” Dora walked on by Miss Bethune’s side for some time in silence. There was a long, very long walk through the streets before they reached the coolness and freshness of the Park. She said nothing for a long time, until they had arrived at the Serpentine, which--veiled in shadows and mists of night, with the stars reflected in it, and the big buildings in the distance standing up solemnly, half seen, yet with gleams of lamps and light all over them, beyond, and apparently among the trees--has a sort of splendour and reality, like a great natural river flowing between its banks. She paused there for a moment, and asked, with a quick drawing of her breath: “Is it some one--who is dying--that you are taking me to see?” “Yes, Dora; and next to your father, your nearest relation in the world.” “I thought at one time that he was going to die, Miss Bethune.” “So did we all, Dora.” “And I was very much afraid--oh, not only heartbroken, but afraid. I thought he would suffer so, in himself,” she said very low, “and to leave me.” “They do not,” said Miss Bethune with great solemnity, as if not of any individual, but of a mysterious class of people. “They are delivered; anxious though they may have been, they are anxious no more; though their hearts would have broken to part with you a little while before, it is no longer so; they are delivered. It’s a very solemn thing,” she went on, with something like a sob in her voice; “but it’s comforting, at least to the like of me. Their spirits are changed, they are separated; there are other things before them greater than what they leave behind.”