At first he had been satisfied with matters as they were, and had said that he never could marry and love again. But gradually there had crept into life another feeling, which prompted him to watch Dora constantly as she moved about his house; to miss her when she was away,—to think of her the last at night as well as first in the morning,—to wonder, with a harassing jealousy, if Dr. West cared for Dora, or if she cared for him. No, she did not, he thought, and made himself believe it, else he had never said to her what he did that night, when, with Daisy in her arms, she sat wholly in his power, and was obliged to listen to what was not unexpected, but which, nevertheless, fell like a thunderbolt upon her, turning her into stone, and making her grow faint and sick, just as she did at Saratoga, when the first suspicion dawned upon her that some day John Russell would speak to her what he was speaking now, with one hand on her shoulder and the other on Daisy’s golden head. It was a kind, true, fatherly heart he offered her, and she felt that he meant it all. He cast no reflections upon his departed wife,—he merely said: “You knew Margaret as well as I. She was not, perhaps, as even-tempered as a more healthy person would have been, but I loved her, remembering always what she was when I took her from her home. You were a little girl, then, Dora, and I never dreamed that I should some time be sueing for your hand just as I had sued for Margaret’s.” Then he pleaded for his children, who loved her so much; would she be their mother, just as she had promised Margaret she would? Then Dora roused herself, and the face which met the Squire’s view made his heart beat faster as he doubted what it portended. “I did not think Margaret meant what you ask,” Dora said, her words coming gaspingly. “I thought she meant care for them as I have tried to do, and will do still. I’ll stay with you, John. I’ll be your housekeeper, but don’t ask me to be your wife. I can’t; I’m too young for you; I’m,—O John! O Margaret!” and here the voice broke down entirely, while Dora sobbed convulsively. Margaret, too, had said she could not be his wife when he asked her. She, too, had said she was too young, and cried, but hers was not like Dora’s crying, and Squire Russell saw the difference, feeling perplexed, but never suspected the truth. It was natural for girls to cry, he thought, when they received an offer of marriage, and so, with both hands on her shoulder, he pleaded again, but this time for himself, telling her in words which his true love made eloquent, how dear she was to him, dearer, if possible, than his early choice, the beautiful Margaret. And Dora believed him, for she knew he was incapable of deception, and that made her pain harder to bear.