"Hush!" said Dora, soothingly, some hours later, as she sat in Minnie's room beside her, holding a hand in her own. "All will be fair and bright soon, dear Minnie. Mr. Burton has been the mover in all this, to win you; I think that man loves you, in truth I do." "And would _you_ counsel me," cried the sobbing girl, "to marry so unworthy a creature?--this prying, mean, wicked man?" Dora was silent a moment, in embarrassed thought; then she looked up and answered, though not at ease, evidently, "Why, he may seem many harsh things now; jealous of his cousin, he knows scarcely which way to act. I think you might be happy with him." "With Marmaduke Burton!" she exclaimed, and her tears dried up in her starting eyes with wonder. "Marry him! I'd die sooner than even harbour the thought a moment! Oh, Dora! can _you_ counsel me to so terrible a thing?" "I do it, Minnie, to save you," her cousin replied, looking on the ground, and half-sighing as she spoke. "I dread your being led into some entanglement with--with--Mr. Tremenhere." "And if I loved him, Dora, what then?" "Oh, 'twould be a disgrace--an irretrievable, false step!" cried the other in agitation. "Think what he is! A man without name, position, character, perhaps--what do you know of him?" "And what do you know _against_ him, Dora?" asked Minnie, no longer sobbing, but in a low, firm voice. "This--that, in my opinion, no honourable family should forget its dignity, and become allied to a blighted name, a name with the stain of----" "Do not say that!" exclaimed her cousin, rising with energy, and pacing the room for an instant; then, as suddenly stopping before Dora, she continued, "Do not so harshly, and I am sure unjustly, judge a fellow-sister. 'Tis only in the hand of Time, the fate which may await ourselves; perhaps, calumnies we may suffer from--innocent now, innocent then, too. Dora, I love that man; I never knew how well, until I weighed it by my tears. I love him the deeper for every one I have shed this day for him!" Dora was very pale, and did not reply. Minnie continued: "Why do you hate him so much? Why did you seek him? Dora, dear Dora, tell me that!" She knelt before her cousin, on a stool at her feet, and, taking both hands, looked up in her face. For some moments Dora was painfully silent. "No," she thought, "I will not tell her how weak I once was, in nearly loving him." This was the war within her. "I met him," she said at last, aloud, evading the first question, "because I feared you might love him. He bore the character, in Florence, of a reckless man--such a man as you, my innocent cousin, should not marry; I sought and begged him to quit this place and you!" "Oh!" cried Minnie, blushing at the picture before her mind's eye, "he must have fancied I had spoken of him with love, and we had scarcely met then, except as strangers. I hope he does not think this now. How could you have sought him for such a motive as that?--how touch on so delicate a subject?"