hered
from the flowers, ripe fruits, cream from the dairy everything was
ready; yet the farmer and his guest seemed long in coming. She went to
the door and looked across the meadows. The quiet summer beauty stole
like a spell over her.

Suddenly, down in the meadows, Mrs. Thorne caught sight of a lady
leading a little child by the hand. She was followed by a young maid
carrying another. As the lady drew nearer, Mrs. Thorne stood
transfixed and bewildered. Could the summer sun or the flickering
shade be mocking her? Was she dreaming or awake? Far off still,
through the summer haze, she saw a white, wan face; dark eyes, shadowed
and veiled, as though by long weeping; lips, once rosy and smiling,
rigid and firm. She saw what seemed to her the sorrowful ghost of the
pretty, blooming child that had left her long ago. She tried to call
out, but her voice failed her. She tried to run forward and meet the
figure coming slowly through the meadows, but she was powerless to
move. She never heard the footsteps of her husband and his guest. She
only stirred when Stephen Thorne placed his hand upon her shoulder, and
in a loud, cheery voice, asked what ailed her.

"Look," she said, hoarsely, "look down the meadow there and tell me--if
that is Dora or Dora's ghost?"

She drew near more swiftly now, for she had seen the three figures at
the door. The white face and wild eyes seemed aflame with anxiety.

"Dora, Dora!" cried Mrs. Thorne, "is it really you?"

"It is," said a faint, bitter voice. "I am come home, mother. My heart
is broken and I long to die."

They crowded around her, and Ralph Holt, with his strong arms, carried
the fragile, drooping figure into the house. They laid her upon the
little couch, and drew the curling rings of dark hair back from her
white face. Mrs. Thorne wept aloud, crying out for her pretty Dora,
her poor, unhappy child. The two men stood watching her with grave,
sad eyes. Ralph clenched his hand as he gazed upon her, the wreck of
the simple, gentle girl he had loved so dearly.

"If he has wronged her," he said to Stephen Thorne, "if he has broken
her heart, and sent her home to die, let him beware!"

"I knew it would never prosper," groaned her father; "such marriages
never do."

When Dora opened her eyes, and saw the three anxious faces around her,
for a moment she was bewildered. They knew when the torture of memory
returned to her, for she clasped her hands with a low moan.