"Do I? How absurd! It is simply a habit. I have nothing to dread."
"Of course not; but it seems to me rather a pity for you to get confirmed in nervous habits while you are so young."
Lady Doris laughed, but it seemed to the countess the ring of music was wanting in the sound.
"I shall correct myself, now that I know," she replied.
Then Lady Linleigh crossed the room, and laid her hands on the golden head. She bent down and kissed the beautiful face.
"Do not be annoyed that I am so uneasy over you, Doris; I love you almost as though I were your own mother."
The low voice trembled, and the calm eyes grew dim with tears.
"My own mother?" repeated Lady Doris, and for once something like the music of true feeling sounded in her exquisite voice. "You are too young, Lady Linleigh, to be quite like my own mother; you are like an elder sister to me. I wonder if things would have been very different for me if she had lived, and I had known her?"
"Different?" asked the countess, eagerly. "In what way could they be different?"
"I wonder if she would have been fond of me—if I could have told her all my girlish follies and troubles? I have an idea that no one can be like one's own mother."