"God tell me what to do with Willie?" she sobbed, starting suddenly as
the answer to her prayer seemed to come at once. "Oh, can I do that?"
she moaned; "can I leave him here?"
At first her whole soul recoiled from it, but when she remembered Anna,
and how much she loved the child, her feelings began to change. Anna
would love him more when she knew he was poor Lily's and her own
brother's. She would be kind to him for his father's sake, and for the
sake of the girl she had professed to like. Mrs. Richards, too, would
not cast him off. She thought too much of the Richards' blood, and there
was surely enough in Willie's veins to wipe out all taint of hers.
Willie should be bequeathed to Anna. It would break her heart to leave
him, were it not already broken, but it was better so. It would be
better in the end. He would forget her in time, forget the girlish woman
he had called mamma, unless sweet Anna told him of her, as perhaps she
might. Dear Anna, how Adah longed to fold her arms about her once and
call her sister, but she must not. It might not be well received, for
Anna had some pride, as her waiting maid had learned.
"A waiting maid!" Adah repeated the name, smiling bitterly as she
thought. "A waiting maid in his own home! Who would have dreamed that I
should ever come to this, when he painted the future so grandly?"
Then there came over her the wild, yearning desire to see his face once
more, to know if he had changed, and why couldn't she? They supposed her
gone to the office, and she would go there now, taking the depot on the
way.
* * * * *
Apart in the ladies' room at Snowdon depot, a veiled figure sat--Dr.
Richards' deserted wife--waiting for him, waiting to look on his face
once more ere she fled she knew not whither. He came at last, Jim's
voice speaking to his horses heralding his approach.
The group of rough-looking men gathered about the office did not suit
his mood, and so he came on to the ladies' apartment, just as Adah knew
he would. Pausing for a moment on the threshold, he looked hastily in,
his glance falling upon the veiled figure sitting there so lonely and
motionless. She did not care for him, she would not object to his
presence, so he came nearer to the stove, poising his patent leathers
upon the hearth, thrusting both hands into his pockets, and even humming
to himself snatches of a song, which Lily used to sing up the three
flights of stairs in that New York boarding house.