“To see me?”
The drooping head was thrown back with a pride that was haughty and almost scornful. A princess could not have treated a rash intruder more completely de haut en bas. “To me! what could you have to say to me?” the girl seemed to say, in the tremendous superiority of her sixteen years.
The young man laughed a little—one is not very wise at five and twenty on the subject of girls, yet he had experience enough to be amused by these remnants of the child in this half-developed maiden. “You are going this way?” he said, turning in the direction in which she had been going. “Then let me tell you while we walk. Miss Dora, you must remember this is not all presumption or intrusion on my side. I come from a lady who has a right to send you a message.”
“I did not say you were intrusive,” cried Dora, blushing for shame.
“You only looked it,” said young Gordon; “but you know that lady is my aunt too—at least, I have always called her aunt, for many, many years.”
“Ought I to call her aunt?” Dora said. “I suppose so indeed, if she is my mother’s sister.”
“Certainly you should, and you have a right; but I only because she allows me, because they wished it, to make me feel no stranger in the house. My poor dear aunt is very ill—worse, they say, than she has ever been before.”
“Ill?” Dora seemed to find no words except these interjections that she could say.
“I hope perhaps they may be deceived. The doctors don’t know her constitution. I think I have seen her just as bad and come quite round again. But even Miller is frightened: she may be worse than I think, and she has the greatest, the most anxious desire to see you, as she says, before she dies.”
“Dies?” cried Dora. “But how can she die when she has only just come home?”