Poor Adah! How white and cold she grew, listening to that air, and

gazing upon the face she had loved so well. It was changed since the

night when with his kiss warm on her lips he left her forever, changed,

and for the worse. There was a harder, a more reckless, determined

expression there, a look which better than words could have done, told

that self alone was the god he worshiped.

Once, as he walked up and down the room, passing so near to her that she

might have touched him with her hand, she felt an almost irresistible

desire to thrust her thick brown veil aside, and confronting him to his

face, claim from him what she had a right to claim, his name and a

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position as his wife--only for Willie's sake, however; for herself she

did not wish it.

It was a relief when at last the roll of the cars was heard, and

buttoning his coat still closer around him, he turned toward the door,

half looking back to see if the veiled figure too had risen. It had, and

was standing close beside him, its outside garments sweeping his as the

crowd increased, pressing her nearer to him, but Adah passed back into

the ladies' room, and opening the rear door was out in the street again

almost before the train had left the station. George was gone--lost to

her forever! and with a piteous moan for her ruined life, Adah kept on

her way till the post office was reached.

There were four letters in the box--one for Mrs. Richards, from an

absent brother; one for Eudora, from Lottie Gardner; one for Asenath,

from an old friend, and at the bottom, last of all, one for Annie

Richards, faced with black, and bearing the initial "M." upon the seal

of wax.

Adah saw all this, but it conveyed no meaning to her mind except a vague

remembrance that at some time or other, very, very long years it seemed,

Anna had bidden her keep from her mother any letter directed to herself

in a mourning envelope. Adah retained just sense enough to do this, and

separating the letter from the others, thrust it into her pocket, and

then took her way back to Terrace Hill.

Willie was asleep; and as Pamelia, who brought him up, had thoughtfully

undressed and placed him in bed, there was nothing for Adah to do but

think. She should go away, of course; she could not stay there longer;

but how should she tell them why she went, and who would be her medium

for communication?




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