“All that must be decided by time, Dora—time and the doctor, who, though we scoff at him sometimes, knows better, after all, than you or me. But I want you to think a little of the poor lady you are going to see.”
“What am I going to see? Oh, that lady? I don’t know if father will wish me to see her. Oh, I did not know what it was you wanted of me. I cannot go against father, Miss Bethune, when he is ill and does not know.”
“You will just trust to another than your father for once in your life, Dora. If you think I am not a friend to your father, and one that would consider him in all things——”
The girl walked on silently, reluctantly, for some time without speaking, with sometimes a half pause, as if she would have turned back. Then she answered in a low voice, still not very willingly: “I know you are a friend".
“You do not put much heart in it,” said Miss Bethune, with a laugh. The most magnanimous person, when conscious of having been very helpful and a truly good friend at his or her personal expense to another, may be pardoned a sense of humour, partially bitter, in the grudging acknowledgment of ignorance. Then she added more gravely: “When your father knows—and he shall know in time—where I am taking you, he will approve; whatever his feelings may be, he will tell you it was right and your duty: of that I am as sure as that I am living, Dora.”
“Because she is my aunt? An aunt is not such a very tender relation, Miss Bethune. In books they are often very cold comforters, not kind to girls that are poor. I suppose,” said Dora, after a little pause, “that I would be called poor?”
“You are just nothing, you foolish little thing! You have no character of your own; you are your father’s daughter, and no more.”
“I don’t wish to be anything more,” cried Dora, with her foolish young head held high.
“And this poor woman,” said Miss Bethune, exasperated, “will not live long enough to be a friend to any one—so you need not be afraid either of her being too tender or unkind. She has come back, poor thing, after long years spent out of her own country, to die.”
“To die?” the girl echoed in a horrified tone.