CHAPTER XLIV.
THE MEETING.
For once, in a way, fortune favored Dora. She managed to catch the connecting train at Morecome Junction, and, as a consequence, arrived at Crumplesea—tired and dusty, but still full of enthusiasm—at a quarter to seven that same evening.
It was the night of the opening of the Crumplesea Opera House, and she found the whole town placarded with gaudy posters of “The Beauty of Gotham”—glaring, highly colored things, depicting women with impossible tresses of an impossible shade of yellow, frisking about in skirts above their knees.
But in that first glance she had seen the name, “Miss Rosalind Montague-Vance,” emblazoned over the boldest and the most conspicuous of them all, and she had felt an added shame because of that.
Not that she had any idea that the bearer of it could be in any way, even the remotest, connected with herself—for there were hundreds of “Vances” in the world; even Miss Skimmers having had more than one of them enrolled among her pupils in Dora’s time—but that the knowledge of there being a woman bearing a name the same as her own, who could let her pictures be shown in public, made the shame of it seem a personal matter.
“How it must shock poor little mother, if she has seen it, too,” she said to herself. “Fancy having one’s name flaunted about by a creature like that, and in the very town where one lives! It must be awful.”
The change of the five-pound note that had been sent her was still in her pocket—there had not been time to stop anywhere and buy the new frock she had been told to do—and hastily summoning a cabman to her aid, she gave him the necessary directions, and was soon speeding away to Minorca Villa with her shabby old valise on the top of the vehicle.
Her destination was a rather shabby little brick house in a side street—there were such things as “apartments” to be had in Crumplesea, and all the available ones were engaged for Mr. Milton Dante’s company—and here at this flat-fronted, dejected-looking little building, Dora’s long journey from Miss Skimmers’ seat of learning came to an end.
“Come in, miss,” said the landlady—who opened the door in person. “The maid, she’s away—’aving been sent a’ errand by your sweet ma. You’re Miss Montague-Vance’s daughter, of course; anybody could see that at a glance, for you’re the livin’ image of ’er. ’Ere, Sarah! come and take the young lady’s luggage and carry it up to the room Miss Montague-Vance selected for ’er. Come in, miss; your sweet ma, she’s awaitin’ of yer—’aving but recent come back from a drive round the town with Mr. Bodwin, as owns the opera ’ouse, and Mr. Dante, as runs the company.”
All this was Greek to Dora. As a matter of fact, she hardly heard it, for her mind was in a whirl between settling with the cabman and realizing that she was now under the same roof with her unknown mother. She scarcely knew what was said or done, until she was led down a short and narrow passage, and the woman beside her was knocking at the door before which they both stood.