you shall not go so. See! I will
promise; you shall keep the boy, and I will let him go. He is all you
have, perhaps, and I--I have so much! Do you not believe me? I will go
away this very day and leave no trace behind. He will pine, but it will
pass--a boy's first fancy. I promised him my picture, but you shall take
it. There! Now go, go, before I regret what I do. He has such a
voice!--but never mind, you shall not be robbed by me. Farewell, poor
lady; I, too, may grow old some day. But hear one little word of advice
from my lips: The boy has waked up to life; he will never be again the
child you have known. Though I go, another will come; take heed!"

That night, in the silence of her own room, Miss Elisabetha prayed a
little prayer, and then, with firm hand, burned the bright picture to
ashes.

Wild was the grief of the boy; but the fair enchantress was gone. He
wept, he pined; but she was gone. He fell ill, and lay feverish upon
his narrow bed; but she was none the less gone, and nothing brought her
back. Miss Elisabetha tended him with a great patience, and spoke no
word. When he raved of golden hair, she never said, "I have seen it";
when he cried, "Her voice, her angel-voice!" she never said, "I have
heard it." But one day she dropped these words: "Was she not a false
woman, Theodore, who went away not caring, although under promise to see
you, and to give you her picture?" And then she walked quietly to her
own room, and barred the door, and wept; for the first time in her pure
life she had burdened her soul with falsehood--yet would she have done
it ten times over to save the boy.

Time and youth work wonders; it is not that youth forgets so soon; but
this--time is then so long. Doro recovered, almost in spite of himself,
and the days grew calm again. Harder than ever worked Miss Elisabetha,
giving herself hardly time to eat or sleep. Doro studied a little
listlessly, but he no longer cared for his old amusements. He had freed
his pets: the mocking-birds had flown back to the barrens, and the young
alligators, who had lived in the sunken barrel, found themselves
unexpectedly obliged to earn their own living along the marshes and
lagoons. But of music he would have none; the piano stood silent, and
his guitar had disappeared.

"It is wearing itself away," thought the old maid; "then he will come
back to me." But nightly she counted her secret store, and, angered at
its smallness, worked harder and harder, w