“Sometimes it appears as if it was no matter. We walk blindly in this world, and often do things unawares that we would put our hands in the fire rather than do. You say an unguarded word, meaning nothing, and it falls to the ground, as you think, but afterwards springs up into a poisonous tree and blights your life; or you take a turn to the right hand instead of the left when you go out from your own door, and it means ruin and death--that’s fatality, and it’s everywhere,” said Miss Bethune, with a deep sigh. “I do not believe in it,” said Dora, standing straight and strong, like a young tree, and holding her head high. “Nor did I, my dear, when I was your age,” Miss Bethune said. At this moment there was a light knock at the door, and there appeared suddenly the young man whom Miss Bethune had met in the Square, and who had come as the messenger of the lady who was Dora’s aunt. “She is asking me what fatality is,” said Miss Bethune. “I wonder if you have any light to throw on the subject? You are nearer her age than I.” The two young people looked at each other. Dora, though she was only sixteen, was more of a personage than the young Gordon whom she had not seen before. She looked at him with the condescension of a very young girl brought up among elder people, and apt to feel a boundless imaginative superiority over those of her own age. A young man was a slight person to Dora. She was scarcely old enough to feel any of the interest in him which exists naturally between the youth and the maiden. She looked at him from her pedestal, half scornful beforehand of anything he might say. “Fatality?” he said. “I think it’s a name people invent for anything particularly foolish which they do, when it turns out badly: though they might have known it would turn out badly all the time.” “That is exactly what I think,” cried Dora, clapping her hands. “This is the young lady,” said young Gordon, “whom I used to help to pack the toys for. I hope she will let me call her Miss Dora, for I don’t know her by any other name.”