Dora Deane | Page 6

you mean! It can't be true!" cried Eugenia,
snatching the letter, and reading therein a confirmation of her mother's
words.
After a slight apology for his long silence, Undo Nat had spoken of
Fanny's letter, saying he supposed she must be dead ere this, and that
Dora was probably living with her aunt, as it was quite natural she
should do. Then he expressed his willingness to defray all the expense

which she might be, adding that though he should never see her, as he
was resolved to spend his days in India, he still wished to think of her
as an educated and accomplished woman.
"Accompanying this letter," he wrote, "is a check for $500, to be used
for Dora's benefit. Next year I will make another remittance, increasing
the allowance as she grows older. I have more money than I need, and I
know of no one on whom I would sooner expend it than the child of
Fanny Moore."
"Spiteful old fool!" muttered Eugenia, "I could relieve him of any
superfluous dimes he may possess."
But even Eugenia, heartless as she was, felt humbled and subdued for a
moment, as she read the latter part of her uncle's letter, from which we
give the following extract:
"I am thinking, to-day, of the past, Sarah, and I grow a very child again
as I recall the dreary years which have gone over my head, since last I
trod the shores of my fatherland. You, Sarah, know much of my history.
You know that I was awkward, eccentric, uncouth, and many years
older than my handsomer, more highly gifted brother; and yet with all
this fearful odds against me, you know that I ventured to love the gentle,
fair-haired Fanny, your adopted sister. You know this, I say, but you do
not know how madly, how passionately such as I can love--did love;
nor how the memory of Fanny's ringing laugh, and the thought of the
sunny smile, with which I knew she would welcome me home again,
cheered me on my homeward voyage, when in the long night-watches I
paced the vessel's deck, while the stars looked coldly down upon me,
and there was no sound to break the deep stillness, save the heavy swell
of the sea. At the village inn where I stopped for a moment ere going to
my father's house, I first heard that her hand was plighted to another,
and in my wild frenzy, I swore that my rival, whoever it might be,
should die!
"It was my youngest brother--he, who, on the sad night when our
mother died, had laid his baby head upon my bosom, and wept himself
to sleep--he whose infant steps I had guided, bearing him often in my

arms, lest he should 'dash his foot against a stone.' And his life I had
sworn to take, for had he not come between me and the only object I
had ever loved? There was no one stirring about the house, for it was
night, and the family had retired. But the door was unfastened, and I
knew the way upstairs. I found him, as I had expected, in our old room,
and all alone; for Richard was away. Had he been there, it should make
no difference, I said, but he was absent, and John was calmly sleeping
with his face upturned to the soft moonlight which came in through the
open window. I had not seen him for two long years, and now there
was about him a look so much like that of my dead mother when she
lay in her coffin bed, that the demon in my heart was softened, and I
seemed to hear her dying words again, 'I can trust you, Nathaniel; and
to your protection, as to a second mother, I commit my little boy.'
"The little boy, whose curls were golden then, was now a brown- haired
man--my brother--the son of my angel mother, whose spirit, in that
dark hour of my temptation, glided into the silent room, and stood
between me and her youngest born, so that he was not harmed, and I
was saved from the curse of a brother's blood.
"'Lead us not into temptation,' came back to me, just as I had said it
kneeling at my mother's side; and covering my face with my hands, I
thanked God, who had kept me from so great a sin. Bending low, I
whispered in his ear his name, and in a moment his arms were around
my neck, while he welcomed me back to the home, which, he said, was
not home without me. And then, when the moon had gone down, and
the stars shone too faintly to reveal his blushes, he told me the story of
his happiness, to