Bad Hugh

"Mr. Stanley seemed quite blue after you went away. I should not be

surprised to hear of his being at Spring Bank some day. Isn't it funny

that you had to go right there? Perhaps it's as well for you that Hugh

is sick. You will got a better impression. Au revoir."

Not a word was there in this letter of the doctor, but Alice understood

it all the same. He was the attraction which kept the selfish girl from

her brother's side. "May she be happy with him, if, indeed, he has a

right to win her," was Alice's mental comment, shuddering as she

recalled the time when she was pleased with the handsome doctor, and

silently thanking God, who had saved her from much sorrow. Hearing Mrs.

Worthington in the hall, and remembering what 'Lina said concerning the

dress, she stepped to the door and delivered the message, wondering that

Mrs. Worthington should seem so confounded, and stammer so, as she

turned to Adah, just coming up the stairs, and said: "Have you ever done anything with that old muslin 'Lina gave you?"

"Never till to-day," Adah replied; "when it occurred to me that if this

hot weather lasted, I might find it comfortable, provided I could fix

it, so I sent Mug for it, and she is ripping the waist."

Mrs. Worthington was not a good dissembler, and her next question was: "Did you find anything in the pocket?"

"Yes, my letter, written weeks ago. Your daughter must have forgotten

it. I intrusted it to her care the day Miss Tiffton called."

Adah was just thinking of speaking freely to Alice Johnson concerning

her future course, when Mrs. Worthington met her in the upper hall.

"I'll go to her now," she said, as Mrs. Worthington left her, and

knocking timidly at Alice's door, she asked permission to enter.

"Oh, certainly, I have something to tell you," Alice said, motioning her

to a chair, and sitting down beside her. "Miss Worthington sent me a

note in which she speaks of you."

"Of me?" and Adah colored slightly. "I did not know she ever thought of

me. Why did she not come with her mother?"

"She is enjoying herself so much is the reason she gives, though I fancy

there is another more powerful one. Perhaps the note will enlighten

you," and Alice passed it to Adah, not so much to show her how heartless

'Lina was, as to see if in what she had said of the Richards family

there was not something which Adah would recognize.

That look in Willie's face had almost grown to a certainty with Alice,

who saw Anna, or Asenath, or Eudora, and sometimes John himself in every

move of the little fellow. Silently Adah read the note, her paled cheeks

turning scarlet at what 'Lina had said of herself and Mrs. Ellsworth.

The Richards family were nothing to her. She only seized upon and

treasured up the words "with a child about whose father we know

nothing." Slowly the tears gathered in her eyes and finally fell in

torrents as Alice asked: "What made her cry?"