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!” “Are you my mother’s sister?” the girl asked solemnly. The stranger raised her head again, with a look which Dora did not understand. Her eyes were full of tears, and of a wistful appeal which said nothing to the creature to whom it was addressed. After a moment, with a pathetic cry of pain and self-abandonment, she breathed forth a scarcely intelligible “Yes". “Then now I know,” said Dora, in a more satisfied tone. She was not without emotion herself. It was impossible to see so much feeling and not to be more or less affected by it, even when one did not understand, or even felt it to be extreme. “Then I will call you aunt, and we shall know where we are,” she added. “I am very glad to have relations, as everybody has them. May I mention you to father? It must be long since you quarrelled, whatever it was about. I shall say to him: ‘You need not take any notice, but I am glad, very glad, to have an aunt like other girls’.” “No, no, no, no--not to him! You must not say a word.” “I don’t know how I can keep a secret from father,” Dora said. “Oh, child,” cried the lady, “do not be too hard on us! It would be hard for him, too, and he has been ill. Don’t say a word to him--for his own sake!” “It will be very strange to keep a secret from father,” Dora said reflectively. Then she added: “To be sure, there have been other things--about the nurses, and all that. And he is still very weak. I will not mention it, since you say it is for his own sake.”