“And now,” cried Dora, flinging back her hair, all crisped, and almost scintillating, with anger and distress, her eyes filled with tears, “here comes the doctor now--far, far worse than any bills or any perplexities, and tells him straight out that he must ask for a year’s holiday and go away, first for the rest of the summer, and then for the winter, as father says, to one of those places where all the fools go!--father, whose life is in the Museum, who cares for nothing else, who can’t bear to go away! Oh!” cried Dora, stamping her foot, “to think I should be made to lie, to keep little, little things from him--contemptible things! and that then the doctor should come straight upstairs and without any preface, without any apology, blurt out that!” “The doctor must have thought, Dora, it was better for him to know. He says all will go well, he will get quite strong, and be able to work in the Museum to his heart’s content, if only he will do this now.” “If only he will do this! If only he will invent a lot of money, father says, which we haven’t got. And how is the money to be invented? It is like telling poor Mrs. Hesketh not to walk, but to go out in a carriage every day. Perhaps that would make her quite well, poor thing. It would make the beggar at the corner quite well if he had turtle soup and champagne like father. And we must stop even the turtle soup and the champagne. He will not have them; they make him angry now that he has come to himself. Cannot you see, Miss Bethune,” cried Dora with youthful superiority, as if such a thought could never have occurred to her friend, “that we can only do things which we can do--that there are some things that are impossible? Oh!” she said suddenly, perceiving for the first time young Gordon with a start of annoyance and surprise. “I did not know,” cried Dora, “that I was discussing our affairs before a gentleman who can’t take any interest in them.” “Dora, is that all you have to say to one that shared our watch last night--that has just come, as it were, from her that is gone? Have you no thought of that poor lady, and what took place so lately? Oh, my dear, have a softer heart.” “Miss Bethune,” said Dora with dignity, “I am very sorry for the poor lady of last night. I was a little angry because I was made to deceive father, but my heart was not hard. I was very sorry. But how can I go on thinking about her when I have father to think of? I could not be fond of her, could I? I did not know her--I never saw her but once before. If she was my mother’s sister, she was--she confessed it herself--father’s enemy. I must--I must be on father’s side,” cried Dora. “I have had no one else all my life.” Miss Bethune and her visitor looked at each other,--he with a strange painful smile, she with tears in her eyes. “It is just the common way,” she said,--“just the common way! You look over the one that loves you, and you heap love upon the one that loves you not.”