d a peep of it, was as
lead-coloured as the sky, while the kind pity of the good wife for
Dora's weak limbs and disfigured face irritated me so that I could
hardly be civil.

Dora mended from that day, devoted herself to the hideous little lambs
that were brought in to be nursed by the fire; ate and drank like a
little cormorant, and soon began to rush about after Mr. and Mrs. Long,
whether in house or farm-yard, like a thing in its native element,
while they were enchanted with her colonial farm experience, and could
not make enough of "Little Missy."

I had a respite from Mayne Reid, and could wander as far as I pleased
alone on the shingle, or sit and think as I had so often longed to do;
but the thoughts only resulted in a sense of dreariness and of almost
indifference as to my fate, since the one person in all the world who
had needed me was gone, and I had heard nothing whatever of Dermot
Tracy. He might be gone out to his mother and sister, or back to
Ireland. Our paths would never come together again, for he thought I
did not care for him. Nay, was I even sure of his recovery? His
constitution had been much tried! He was in a strange place, among
mere professional nurses! Who could tell how it had been with him?

Everything went from me that had loved me. Even Dora was to leave me
as soon as people ceased to be afraid of her.

Letters had found out the married pair on their return from the
cataracts of the Nile. Eustace had immediately been vaccinated
fourteen times, but he was shocked and appalled, and the spirit of his
letter was--

O while my brother with me stayed,
Would I had loved him more,

and I forgave him much.

Hippolyta likewise wrote with feeling, but it rather stung me to be
thanked for my care of "her poor little sister," as if Dora were not my
child before she was hers. As soon as it was considered safe, Dora was
to be returned to Horsman keeping, and as the Randall party declined to
receive her again, Philippa would convey her to a school at Baden-Baden.

And Dora declared she was glad! There was none of the angry resistance
with which she had left me in the spring; when I had done nothing for
her compared with what I had gone through for her now; but I believe I
was dull company, and showed myself displeased at her hardness and wild
outbreaks of spirits, and that the poor child longed to escape from all
that reminded her of the unbearable sorrow at the bo