“God bless you both,” he said; “I blame no one,—harbor no ill-feeling towards any one. If Dora had told me frankly at first it might have saved some pain, some mortification, but I do not lay it up against her. She meant for the best. It is natural she should love you more than me. God bless her; and doctor, if you like, marry her at once, but don’t take her away from here yet; wait a little till I am more settled,—for the children’s sake, you know.” Dr. West could not understand the feeling which prompted Squire Russell to want Dora to stay there, but he recognized the great unselfishness of the man whose sunshine he had darkened, and with a trembling lip he, too, said, “God bless you,” as he grasped the hand most cordially offered, and then hurried away. It was a week before the Squire could command sufficient courage to have an interview with Dora, as she had repeatedly asked that he might do. With a faltering step he approached her door, hesitating upon the threshold, until Jessie, coming suddenly upon him, said to him, cheerily, “It will soon be over, never mind it; go in.” So he went in, and stayed a long, long time, but as they were alone, no one ever knew all that had passed between them. The Squire was very white when he came out, but his face shone with a look of one who felt that he had done right, and after that the expression did not change except that it gradually deepened into one of content and even cheerfulness, as the days went by, and people not only came to know that the wedding between himself and Dora would never be, but also to approve the arrangement, and to treat him as a hero who had achieved a famous victory. As for Dora, Jessie and Bell found her after the interview weeping bitterly over what she called her own wicked selfishness and John’s great generous goodness in giving her up so kindly, and making her feel while he was talking to her that it really was no matter about him. He was not injured so very much, although he had loved her dearly. He still had his children, and with them he should be happy. “Oh, he is the best man!” Dora said; “the very best man that ever lived, and I wish he might find some suitable wife, whom he could love better than he did me, and who would make him happy.” “So do I! I guess I do!” retorted Jessie, industriously cutting a sheet of note-paper in little slips and scattering them on the floor. “I’ve thought of everybody that would be at all suitable, for I suppose he must be married on account of the children; but there is nobody good enough except—” and Jessie held the scissors and paper still a moment, while she added, “except Bell. I think she would answer nicely. She is twenty-nine,—almost that awful thirty,—which no unmarried woman ever reaches, they say; and I’d like to be aunt to six children right well, only I believe I should thrash Jim and Letitia—who, by the way, is not very bright. Did you ever discover it, Dora?”