r-persuaded. There _is_ one thing, and I must say it if I should
die." She had to pause a little to recover her voice, for haste and
excitement had a tendency to make her inarticulate. "Frank," said
Miss Dora again, more solemnly than ever, "whatever you may be obliged
to do--though you were to write novels, or take pupils, or do
translations--oh, Frank, don't look at me like that, as if I was going
crazy. Whatever you may have to do, oh my dear, there is one
thing--don't go and break people's hearts, and put it off, and put it
off, till it never happens!" cried the trembling little woman, with a
sudden burst of tears. "Don't say you can wait, for you can't wait, and
you oughtn't to!" sobbed Miss Dora. She subsided altogether into her
handkerchief and her chair as she uttered this startling and wholly
unexpected piece of advice, and lay there in a little heap, all
dissolving and floating away, overcome with her great effort, while her
nephew stood looking at her from a height of astonishment almost too
extreme for wondering. If the trees could have found a voice and
counselled his immediate marriage, he could scarcely have been more
surprised.

"You think I am losing my senses too," said aunt Dora; "but that is
because you don't understand me. Oh Frank, my dear boy, there was once
a time!--perhaps everybody has forgotten it except me, but I have not
forgotten it. They treated me like a baby, and Leonora had everything
her own way. I don't mean to say it was not for the best," said the
aggrieved woman. "I know everything is for the best, if we could but
see it: and perhaps Leonora was right when she said I never could have
struggled with--with a family, nor lived on a poor man's income. My
dear, it was before your uncle Charley died; and when we became rich,
it--didn't matter," said Miss Dora; "it was all over before then. Oh
Frank! if I hadn't experience I wouldn't say a word. I don't interfere
about your opinions, like Leonora. There is just _one_ thing," cried
the poor lady through her tears. Perhaps it was the recollection of
the past which overcame Miss Dora, perhaps the force of habit which
had made it natural for her to cry when she was much moved; but the
fact is certain, that the Squire, when he came to the door of the
summer-house in search of Frank, found his sister weeping bitterly,
and his son making efforts to console her, in which some sympathy was
mingled with a certain half-amusement. Frank, like Lucy, f