Though Agnes always held a large place in his heart, David was very impressionable. In the next few years he thought himself in love a good many times, but when finally he met Dora Spenlow, the daughter of one of the members of the law firm with which he was studying, he knew that all his other love-affairs had been only fancies. Dora was blue-eyed, with cheeks like a pink sea-shell, and looked like a fairy. David fell head over ears in love with her the first time he ever saw her. He lost his appetite, and took to wearing tight gloves and shoes too small for him, and he used to put on his best clothes and walk around her house in the moonlight and do other extravagant things.

They found a good deal of trouble in their love-making, for Dora was under the care of none other than the terrible sister of Mr. Murdstone, who had made David so miserable in his childhood, but he and Dora used to meet sometimes, and they sent each other letters through one of Dora\'s girl friends. David, perhaps, would not have done this if he had thought he would have a fair chance to win Dora; but with his old enemy, Miss Murdstone, against him, he was afraid to tell her father of his love. But one day he told it to Dora, and she promised to marry him.[Pg 121]

Good luck, however, never comes without a bit of bad luck. Soon after this David came home to his rooms one night to find his aunt, Miss Betsy Trotwood, there, with her trunk and Mr. Dick, kites and all. She told David she had no other place to go; that she had lost all of her money and was quite ruined.

This was misfortune indeed, for it seemed to put his hope of marrying Dora a great deal further away; but David faced the situation bravely and began at once to look for something to do outside of the law office to earn money enough to support them all.

In this trouble Agnes was his true friend. He had written her already of his love for Dora and she had advised him. Through her now he found employment as secretary to his old schoolmaster, Doctor Strong, who had given up the school at Dover and had moved to London. He told Dora, of course, all about his changed prospects, but Dora was like a little butterfly who knew only how to fly about among flowers; she hardly knew what poverty meant, and thought he was scolding when he told her.

David worked hard in the morning at Doctor Strong\'s, in the afternoons at the law office, and in the evenings he studied shorthand so he might come to be a newspaper reporter. And all this while he wrote to Dora every day.

It was one of these letters that at last betrayed[Pg 122] their secret. Dora dropped it from her pocket and Miss Murdstone picked it up. She showed it to Dora\'s father and he............