“Your mother!” the stranger said. She broke out into audible weeping again, after comparative composure. “Oh, yes, I suppose I was—oh, yes, I suppose I was,” she said.
“You only suppose you were, and yet you are so fond as this of me?—which can be only,” said Dora, severely logical, “for her sake.”
The poor lady trembled, and was still for a moment; she then said, faltering: “We were so close together, she and I. We were like one. But a child is different—you are her and yourself too. But you are so young, my dearest, my dearest! You will not understand that.”
“I understand it partly,” said Dora; “but it is so strange that I never heard of you. Were my mother’s relations against my father? You must forgive me,” the girl said, withdrawing herself a little, sitting very upright; “but father, you know, has been everything to me. Father and I are one. I should like very much to hear about mamma, who must have died so long ago: but my first thought must always be for father, who has been everything to me, and I to him.”
A long minute passed, during which the stranger said nothing. Her head was sunk upon her breast; her hand—which was on Dora’s waist—quivered, the nervous fingers beating unconsciously upon Dora’s firm smooth belt.
“I have nothing, nothing to say to you against your father. Oh, nothing!—not a word! I have no complaint—no complaint! He is a good man, your father. And to have you cling to him, stand up for him, is not that enough?—is not that enough,” she cried, with a shrill tone, “whatever failed?”
“Then,” said Dora, pursuing her argument, “mamma’s relations were not friends to him?”
The lady withdrew her arm from Dora’s waist. She clasped her tremulous hands together, as if in supplication. “Nothing was done against him—oh, nothing, nothing!” she cried. “There was no one to blame, everybody said so. It was a dreadful fatality; it was a thing no one could have foreseen or guarded against. Oh, my Dora, couldn’t you give a little love, a little kindness, to a poor woman, even though she was not what you call a friend to your father? She never was his enemy—never, never!—never had an evil thought of him!—never wished to harm him—oh, never, never, never!” she cried.
She swayed against Dora’s breast, rocking herself in uncontrolled distress, and Dora’s heart was touched by that involuntary contact, and by the sight of an anguish which was painfully real, though she did not understand what it meant. With a certain protecting impulse, she put her own arm round the weeping woman to support her. “Don’t cry,” she said, as she might have said to a child.
“I will not cry. I will be very glad, and very happy, if you will only give me a little of your love, Dora,” the lady sobbed in a broken voice. “A little of your love,—not to take it from your father,—a little, just a little! Oh, my child, my child!”