Then followed more particulars so that there should be no doubt, and
then the half-crazed Adah took up the theme nearest to her heart, her
boy, her beautiful Willie. She could not take him with her. She knew not
where she was going, and Willie must not suffer. Would Anna take the
child?
"I do not ask that the new bride should ever call him hers," she wrote;
"I'd rather she would not. I ask that you should give him a mother's
care, and if his father will sometimes speak kindly to him for the sake
of the older time when he did love the mother, tell him--Willie's
father, I mean--tell him, oh I know not what to bid you tell him, except
that I forgive him, though at first it was so hard, and the words
refused to come; I trusted him so much, loved him so much, and until I
had it from his own lips, believed I was his wife. But that cured me;
that killed the love, if any still existed, and now, if I could, I would
not be his, unless it were for Willie's sake.
"And now farewell. God deal with you, dear Anna, as you deal with my
boy."
Calmly, steadily, Adah folded up the missive, and laying it with the
mourning envelope, busied herself next in making the necessary
preparations for her flight. Anna had been liberal with her in point of
wages, paying her every week, and paying more than at first agreed upon;
and as she had scarcely spent a penny during her three months' sojourn
at Terrace Hill, she had, including what Alice had given to her, nearly
forty dollars. She was trying so hard to make it a hundred, and so send
it to Hugh some day; but she needed it most herself, and she placed it
carefully in her little purse, sighing over the golden coin which Anna
had paid her last, little dreaming for what purpose it would be used.
She would not change her dress until Anna had retired, as that might
excite suspicion; so with the same rigid apathy of manner she sat down
by Willie's side and waited till Anna was heard moving in her room. The
lamp was burning dimly on the bureau, and so Anna failed to see the
frightful expression of Adah's face, as she performed her accustomed
duties, brushing Anna's hair, and letting her hands linger caressingly
amid the locks she might never touch again.
It did strike Anna that something was the matter; for when Adah spoke to
her, the voice was husky and unnatural. Still, she paid no attention
until the chapter was read as usual and "Our Father" said; then, as Adah
lingered a moment, still kneeling by the bed, she laid her soft hand on
the young head, and asked, kindly, "if it ached."