"What seventy-five dollars? What does she mean?" Hugh exclaimed, but
his mother could not tell, unless it were that Alice, unknown to them,
had sent more than 'Lina asked for.
This seemed probable, and as it was the only solution of the mystery, he
accepted it as the real one, and returned to the letter, learning that
the bracelet was purchased, that it could not be told from the lost one,
that she was sporting it on Broadway every day, that she did not go to
the prince's ball just for the doctor's meanness in not procuring a
ticket when he had one offered to him for eighty dollars!
* * * * * "
I don't really suppose he could afford it," she wrote, "but it made me
mad just the same, and I pouted all day. I saw the ladies, though, after
they were dressed, and that did me some good, particularly as the Queen
of the South, Madam Le Vert, asked my opinion of her chaste, beautiful
toilet, just as if she had faith in my judgment.
"Well, after the fortunate ones were gone, I went to my room to pout,
and directly Mother Richards sent Johnny up to coax me, whereupon there
ensued a bit of a quarrel, I twitting him about that ambrotype of a
young girl, which Nell Tiffton found at the St. Nicholas, and which the
doctor claimed, seeming greatly agitated, and saying it was very dear to
him, because the original was dead. Well, I told him of it, and said if
he loved that girl better than me, he was welcome to have her. 'Lina
Worthington had too may eligible offers to play second fiddle to any
one.
"''Lina,' he said, 'I will not deceive you, though I meant to do so. I
did love another before ever I heard of you, a fair young girl, as pure,
as innocent as the angels. She is an angel now, for she is dead. Do not
ask further of her. Let it suffice that I loved her, that I lost her. I
shall never tell you more of her sad story. Let her never be named to me
again. It was long ago. I have met you since, have asked and wish you to
be my wife,'--and so we made it up, and I promised not to speak of my
rival. Pleasant predicament, I am in, but I'll worm it out of him yet.
I'll haunt him with her dead body."
* * * * * "
Oh, mother," and Hugh gasped for breath. "Is Ad--can she be anything to
us? Is my blood in her veins?"