The lady sobbed, and held out her hands. Dora was not altogether pleased with her appearance. She might have cried at home, the girl thought. When you go out to pay a call, or even to make inquiries, you should make them and not cry: and there was something that was ridiculous in the position of the veil, ready to topple over in its heavy folds of crape. She watched it to see when the moment would come. “Why ‘my poor mamma’?” said Dora. “Is it because mother is dead?” “There are enough of reasons,” Miss Bethune said hastily. Dora flung back her head with a sudden resistance and defiance. “I don’t know about mother. She has been dead ever since I remember; but she was my mother, and nobody has any right to be sorry for her, as though that were a misfortune.” “She is a little perverse thing,” said Miss Bethune, “but she has a great spirit. Dora, come here. I will go and see about your papa’s beef tea, while you come and speak to this lady.” She stooped over the girl for a moment as she passed her going out. “And be kind,” she whispered; “for she’s very ill, poor thing, and very broken. Be merciful in your strength and in your youth.” Dora could not tell what this might mean. Merciful? She, who was still only a child, and, to her own consciousness, ordered about by everybody, and made nothing of. The stranger sat on the sofa, trembling and sobbing, her face of a sallow paleness, her eyes half extinguished in tears. The heavy folds of the crape hanging over her made the faded countenance appear as if looking out of a cave. “I am afraid you are not well,” said Dora, drawing slowly near. “No, I am not at all well. Come here and sit by me, will you? I am--dying, I think.” “Oh, no,” said Dora, with a half horror, half pity. “Do not say that.” The poor lady shook her head. “I should not mind, if perhaps it made people a little forgiving--a little indulgent. Oh, Dora, my child, is it you, really you, at last?” 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.”