voice trembling as much as Miss Franklin's.

Miss Franklin sat up, instinctively put her bonnet straight, wiped her
eyes with her embroidered handkerchief, and gazed pensively into the
empty air.

"God's ways are not as our ways," she said; "and certainly we are told
that we are not to look for our reward in this world. Still one would
have expected--one would have liked that it had not been so hard all
through for Tom--not merely to have been denied the desire of his heart,
but to have had to endure in his last moments to be set aside, to lie
still and look on at what is going to happen."

Dora sat mystified; but she had not the spirit left to seek an
explanation.

Miss Franklin was not aware that an explanation was needed. "I know,"
she added, "how kind and attentive your sister has been to Tom, and I
understand nothing can exceed the interest Dr. Ironside has taken in my
cousin, while he has made the most unremitting efforts to save him;
still you will grant that so long as my poor Tom was conscious, it must
have been very, very trying for him to see the terms these two were on.
I don't listen much to gossip"--the speaker declared, in a parenthesis,
with a little air of dignity and reserve even at that moment--"but it is
the talk of the town that he has followed her down from London, and that
they are to be married as soon as the epidemic is past. Nobody can say
anything against it. They are well matched. They will be a fine-looking
couple," she struggled to acknowledge with becoming politeness and
impartiality.

"This is the first time I have heard of it, I can say with truth," said
Dora wearily, without so much as a smile at the characteristic report.
She thought the mention of it most unsuitable at such a season. The very
word marriage smote her. "And even if it were so, what could it have
signified to Mr. Tom Robinson?" she was about to add naively, when a
light flashed upon her. She had often wondered how much Miss Franklin,
"Robinson's," the whole town, knew of what had taken place eighteen
months ago. She saw now that however little the lady might care for
gossip, a distorted version of the truth in which she was interested had
reached her. Either there had been a very natural mistake on the part of
some of the local newsmongers, or Miss Franklin herself had fallen into
the error. The belle of the Millar family and not Dora had been believed
to be the object of Tom Robinson's pursuit. The blunder had bee