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. “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?”