He looked at the child. The hard gloom melted from his eyes, and drawing her to his bosom he dissolved into tears.
I took his hand and kissed it. I pressed my lips down on the child’s feet, and smoothed her mourning frock with my hands. Tears were flashing like hail-stones down my own cheeks, and yet there was joy in my heart. Though a child, I knew that the worst part of his grief had passed away. Poor little Cora, how she clung and wept, and nestled in his bosom! His strange coldness had seemed like a second death to the child. I felt that both were happier, and looked on with a glow of the heart.
“My child—my poor, poor orphan,” he murmured, kissing her forehead, while one little pale cheek was pressed to his bosom—“my orphan, my orphan”——
“What is an orphan, papa?” questioned the child, lifting up her face, and gazing at him through her tears. “What is an orphan?”
“It is a child who has no mother, Cora,” was the low and mournful reply.
My heart listened, and I felt to its innermost fold that there was a mysterious sisterhood between the child and myself.
Cora had withdrawn from her father’s bosom, and sat upright on his knee listening to him. There was a moment’s silence, and then, for the first time, he seemed perfectly conscious of my presence.
“And who is this?” he inquired, laying his hand on my head with mournful kindness.
“I am an orphan like her,” was my answer.
“Poor child!” he murmured, gently smoothing my hair again. “But how came you here? You have been crying too—what has grieved you?”