Dora suffered her hand to be taken, suffered herself to be drawn close, and a tremulous kiss pressed upon her cheek. She did not know how to respond. She felt herself entangled in the great crape veil, and her face wet with the other’s tears. She herself was touched by pity, but by a little contrariety as well, and objection to this sudden and so intimate embrace.
“I am very, very sorry if you are ill,” she said, disengaging herself as gently as possible. “My father has been very ill, so I know about it now; but I don’t know you.”
“My darling,” the poor lady said. “My darling, my little child! my Dora, that I have thought and dreamed of night and day!”
Dora was more than ever confused. “But I don’t know you at all,” she said.
“No, that is what is most dreadful: not at all, not at all!—and I dying for the sight of you, and to hold you in my arms once before I die.”
She held the girl with her trembling arms, and the two faces, all entangled and overshadowed by the great black veil, looked into each other, so profoundly unlike, not a line in either which recalled or seemed to connect with the other. Dora was confounded and abashed by the close contact, and her absolute incapacity to respond to this enthusiasm. She put up her hands, which was the only thing that occurred to her, and threw quite back with a subdued yet energetic movement that confusing veil. She was conscious of performing this act very quietly, but to the stranger the quick soft movement was like energy and strength personified.
“Oh, Dora,” she said, “you are not like me. I never was so lively, so strong as you are. I think I must have been a poor creature, always depending upon somebody. You could never be like that.”
“I don’t know,” said Dora. “Ought I to have been like you? Are we such near relations as that?”
“Just as near as—almost as near as—oh, child, how I have longed for you, and thought of you! You have never, never been out of my mind—not a day, Dora, scarcely an hour. Oh, if you only knew!”
“You must then have been very fond of my mother,” Dora said a little stiffly. She might have been less cold had this enthusiasm been less great.