“It cannot be the common way,” said Gordon, “for the circumstances are not common. It is because of strange things, and relations that are not natural. I had no right to that love you speak of, and Dora had. But I have got all the advantages of it for many a year. There is no injustice if she who has the natural right to it gets it now.” “Oh, my poor boy,” cried Miss Bethune, “you argue well, but you know better in your heart.” “I have not a grudge in my heart,” he exclaimed, “not one, nor a complaint. Oh, believe me!--except to be put away as if I were nobody, just at this moment when there was still something to do for her,” he said, after a pause. Dora looked from one to the other, half wondering, half impatient. “You are talking of Mr. Gordon’s business now,” she said; “and I have nothing to do with that, any more than he has to do with mine. I had better go back to father, Miss Bethune, if you will tell Dr. Roland that he is cruel--that he ought to have waited till father was stronger--that it was wicked--wicked--to go and pour out all that upon him without any preparation, when even I was out of the way.” “Indeed, I think there is reason in what you say, Dora,” said Miss Bethune, as the girl went away. “It will not matter,” said Gordon, after the door was closed. “That is one thing to be glad of, there will be no more want of money. Now,” he said, rising, “I must go back again. It has been a relief to come and tell you everything, but now it seems as if I had a hunger to go back: and yet it is strange to go back. It is strange to walk about the streets and to know that I have nobody to go home to, that she is far away, and unmoved by anything that can happen to me.” He paused a moment, and added, with that low laugh which is the alternative of tears: “Not to say that there is no home to go back to, nothing but a room in a hotel which I must get out of as soon as possible, and nobody belonging to me, or that I belong to. It is so difficult to get accustomed to the idea.”