For weeks after that he hovered so near the verge of death that even the mother despaired, and looked each day to see the life go out from her child, who in his boyhood had never been so dear to her as now. But youth and a strong constitution triumphed, and again the fever abated, leaving the sick man as weak and helpless as a child, but anxious for the day when he would be able to make the homeward voyage. CHAPTER XX. RICHARD. So absorbed was Mrs. West in Robert that she seldom noticed Richard, and so she paid no heed when he one day came into the sick-room, looking whiter even than his brother, by whose side he sat down as usual, doing for him the many offices he had been accustomed to perform, and except for his suffering face, giving no token of the terrible pain which wrung his heart when he that morning read in Jessie’s letter that the worst he had feared was true, and that Dora was to be married in September. “For a person just engaged she acts very strangely,” Jessie wrote, “and Bell will insist that she does not love her future lord, but is marrying him from some mistaken sense of duty. What do you think?” Dr. West could not tell what he thought, he only knew that his brain grew giddy, and his soul faint and sick as he realized that Dora was lost to him forever. Never even when Anna died had he suffered so keen a pang as now, when in the solitude of his chamber he tried to pray, while the words he would utter died away in unmeaning sounds. But God, who readeth the inmost secrets of the heart, knew what his poor sorrowing child would ask, and the needed strength to bear was given all the same. It was very tedious now, waiting in that sick-room, for there crept into Richard’s mind the half conviction that if he would see Dora for only one brief moment, he could save her from the sacrifice. But Robert’s improvement was slow, and day after day went by, until at last there came a morning when there was put into Richard’s hand a soiled, worn-looking letter, whose superscription made his heart for an instant stop its beatings, for he recognized Dora’s handwriting, and involuntarily pressed the missive to his lips ere he broke the seal. It had been weeks and weeks upon the road, lying for a long time in another office, but it had come to him at last; he had torn the envelope open; he was reading Dora’s cry for help, written so long ago, a cry to which he gave a far different interpretation from what she had intended. “Oh, why did I not speak to her again!” he exclaimed; “why was I permitted to form so wrong an estimate of woman’s character? But it is not yet too late. The wedding is to be the 15th of September, Jessie wrote. A steamer sails from here in a few days, and Robert must be able by that time to leave California, or if he is not I shall leave him behind with mother and fly to Dora. Oh if I could go to-day!”