"Please not, dear Karl! I must bear my griefs alone for I am alone
in all the world."
It was the bitterest sentence Dora had ever spoken, and her cousin
looked at her in dismay.
"If Picter could have given the disease to me instead of to aunt,
and he and I could have journeyed on together into another world as
we had through this, and left your mother to Kitty and you!"
continued Dora; while in her eyes, and about her white lips,
quivered a passion of grief far beyond any tears,--far beyond, thank
God! any grief that eyes and lips so young are often called to
express. And as it rose and swelled in her girl heart, and shook her
strong young soul, Dora uttered in one word all the bitterness of
her orphaned life.
"Mother!" cried she, and clinched her hands above the sharp pain
that seemed to suffocate her, the pain we call heart-ache, and might
sometimes more justly call heart-break.
Karl looked at her, and his gay young face grew strong, and full of
meaning. He folded her again in his arms, and said,--
"Dora, I had not meant to speak yet; but I cannot see you so, or
hear you say such words. Do not you know, cousin, that there is
nothing in all the world I love like you; and that, while I live,
you can never be alone; and, while I have a home, you can never want
one, or be other than its head and centre? Dora, marry me, and I
will make you forget all other loves in the excess of mine.
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