Jimmie both asked him at different times why Auntie cried so much,—“did everybody just before they were married? Did mother?” After Jessie came, Dora felt a great deal better, for Jessie made the future anything but gloomy. Jessie was like a brilliant diamond, flashing and sparkling, and singing and dancing and whistling until the house seemed like a different place, and even Squire Russell wished he could keep her there forever. And now it was the day before the bridal. Every trunk was packed, and everything was ready for the ceremony, which was to occur at an early hour in the morning, as the bridal pair were to take the first train for New York. Jessie upon the grassy lawn was romping with the children, and occasionally addressing some saucy, teasing remark to the bridegroom-elect, who was smoking his cigar demurely beneath the trees, and wishing Dora would join them. But Dora was differently employed. With the quiet which had suddenly fallen upon the household, a terrible reaction had come to her, and as if waking from some horrid nightmare, she began to realize her position, to feel that only a few hours lay between herself and a living death. Vaguely, too, she began to see how, with every morning mail, there had come a shadowy hope that something might be received from Dr. West, that in some way he would yet save her from Squire Russell. But for months no news had been received of him by any one, and now the last lingering hope had died, leaving only a feeling of despair. She could not even write a line in her journal, and once she thought to burn it, but something stayed the act, and ’mid a rain of tears, she laid it away, resolving never to open its lids again until her heart ached less than it was aching now. “I shall get over it, I know,” she moaned, as she seated herself by the window. “If I thought I should not, I would go to Squire Russell before the whole world, and on my knees would beg to be released; but I am tired now, and excited, and everything looks so dark,—even my pleasant chamber is so close that I can scarcely breathe. I wonder if the breeze from the lake would not revive me. I’ll try it,—I’ll go there. I’ll sit where Richard and I once sat. I’ll listen to the music of the waves just as I listened then, and if this does not quiet me, if the horror is still with me,—perhaps—” There was a hard, terrible look in Dora’s eyes as the evil thought first flashed upon her, a look which grew more and more desperate as she began to wonder how deep the waters were near the shore, and if the verdict would be “accidental drowning,” and if Dr. West would care. Alas for Dora! the tempter was whispering horrible things to her, and she, poor, half-crazed girl, was listening to him as she stole from the back door, and took her way across the fields to where the waters of the lake lay sparkling in the September sun now low in the western horizon.