or.

At last she grew calm, and rising up, said to him:

"Excuse me, I am not often so upset--I have not cried in years--not
since Rover died," here her voice trembled again, but she went on quite
steadily. "He was all the companion I had, you know, and he was so
faithful, so true. Oh, it almost broke my heart when he died and left me
there alone!"

There was a world of pathos in her voice, as she uttered the last two
words, "There alone," and it flashed upon Burton that there was more
meaning in them than was at first indicated; that to live there alone
was something from which his sister recoiled. Standing before her, with
his hand still upon her head, he remembered, that she had not always
been as she was now, so quiet and impassive, with no smile upon her
face, no joy in her dark eyes. As a young girl, in the days when he,
too, lived at home, and slept under the rafters in the low-roofed house,
she had been full of life and frolic, and played with him all day long.
She was very pretty then, and her checks, now so colorless, were red as
the damask roses which grew by the kitchen door, while her wavy hair was
brown, like the chestnuts they used to gather from the trees, in the
rocky pasture land. It was wavy still, and soft and luxurient, but it
was iron grey, and she wore it plain, in a knot at the back of her head,
and only a few short hairs, which would curl about her forehead in spite
of her, softened the severity of her face. Just when the change began in
his sister. Burton could not remember, for, on the rare occasions when
he visited his home he had not been a close observer, and had only been
conscious of a desire to shorten his stay as much as possible, and
return to his aunt's house, which was much more to his taste. He should
die if he had to live in that lonely spot, he thought, and in his newly
awakened pity for his sister, he said to her, impulsively:

"Don't go back there to stay. Live with me. I am all alone, and must
have some one to keep my house. Von and I can get on nicely together."

He made no mention of his father, and he did not half mean what he said
to his sister, and had she accepted his offer he would have regretted
that it had ever been made. But she did not accept it, and she answered
him at once:

"No, Burton, so long as father lives I must stay with him, and you will
be happier without than with me. We are not at all alike. But I thank
you for asking me all the same, and now it is