Something in the expression of her face as she turned toward Mrs.
Worthington made that lady start, while her heart throbbed with an
indefinable emotion. Who was Adah Hastings, and why was she so drawn
toward her?
Addressing to her some indifferent remark, she gradually led the
conversation backward to the subject of her early home, asking again
what she could remember, but Adah was scarcely more satisfactory than on
the previous night. Memories she had of a gentle lady, who must have
been her mother, of a lad who called her sister, and kissed her
sometimes, of a cottage with grass and flowers, and bees buzzing beneath
the trees.
"Are you faint?" Hugh asked, quickly, as his mother turned white as
ashes, and leaned against the mantel.
She did not seem to hear him, but continued questioning Adah.
"Did you say bees? Were there many?"
"Oh, yes, so many, I remember, because they stung me once," and Adah
gazed dreamily into the fire, as if listening again to the musical hum
heard in that New England home, wherever it might have been.
"Go on, what more can you recall?" Mrs. Worthington said, and Adah
replied: "Nothing but the waterfall in the river. I remember that near our door."
During this conversation, Hugh had been standing by the table, where lay
a few articles which he supposed belonged to Adah. One of these was a
small double locket, attached to a slender chain.
"The rascal's, I presume," he said to himself, and taking it in his
hand, he touched the spring, starting quickly as the features of a
young-girl met his view. How radiantly beautiful the original of that
picture must have been, and Hugh gazed long and earnestly upon the sweet
young face, and its soft, silken curls, some shading the open brow, and
others falling low upon the uncovered neck. Adah, lifting up her head,
saw what he was doing, and said: "Don't you think her beautiful?"
"Who is she?" Hugh asked, coming to her side, and passing her the
locket.
"I don't know," Adah replied. "She came to me one day when Willie was
only two weeks old and my heart was so heavy with pain. She had heard I
did plain sewing and wanted some for herself. She seemed to me like an
angel, and I've sometimes thought she was, for she never came again. In
stooping over me the chain must have been unclasped. I tried to find her
when I got well, but my efforts were all in vain, and so I've kept it
ever since. It was not stealing, was it?"
"Of course not," Hugh said, while Adah, opening the other side, showed
him a lock of dark brown hair, tied with a tiny ribbon, in which was
written, "In memoriam, Aug. 18."