"And husband, too," chimed in the doctor, eagerly, "thank Him for me,
Adah. You are glad to find me?"
There was pleading in his tone--earnest pleading, for the terrible
conviction was fastening itself upon him, that not as they once parted
had he and Adah met. For full five minutes Adah lay upon the hay, her
whole soul going out in a prayer of thankfulness for her great joy, and
for strength to bear the bitterness mingling with her joy. Her face was
very white when she lifted it up at last, but her manner was composed,
and she questioned the doctor calmly of Spring Bank, of Alice, of Hugh,
of Anna, but could not trust herself to say much to him of Willie, lest
her calmness should give way, and a feeling spring up in her heart of
something like affection for Willie's father. Alas, for the miserable
man. He had found his wife, his Adah, but there was between them a gulf
which his own act had built, and which he never more might pass. He
began to suspect it, and ere she had finished the story of her
wanderings, which at his request she told, he knew there was no
pulsation of her heart which beat for him. He asked her where she had
been since she fled from Terrace Hill, and how she came to be in Mrs.
Ellsworth's family.
There was a moment's hesitancy, as if she were deciding how much to tell
him of the past, and then resolving to keep nothing back which he might
know, she told him how, with a stunned heart and giddy brain, she had
gone to Albany, and mingling with the crowd had mechanically followed
them down to a boat just starting for New York. That, by some means, she
never knew how, she found herself in the saloon, and seated next to a
feeble, deformed little girl, who lay upon the sofa, and whose sweet,
childish voice said to her pityingly: "Does your head ache, lady, or what makes you so white?"
She had responded to that appeal, talking kindly to the little girl,
between whom and herself the friendliest of relations were established
and whose name she learned was Jenny Ellsworth. The mother she did not
then see, as, during the journey down the river she was suffering from a
nervous headache, and kept her room. From the child and child's nurse,
however, she heard that Mrs. Ellsworth was going ere long to Europe, and
was anxious to secure some young and competent person to act in the
capacity of Jenny's governess. Instantly Adah's decision was made. Once
in New York she would by letter apply for the situation, for nothing
then could so well suit her state of mind as a tour to Europe, where she
would be far away from all she had ever known. Very adroitly she
ascertained Mrs. Ellsworth's address, wrote to her a note the day
following her arrival in New York, and the day following that, found her
in Mrs. Ellsworth's parlor at the Brevoort House, where for a few days
she was stopping. She had been greatly troubled to know what name to
give, but finally resolved to take her own, the one by which she was
known ere George Hastings crossed her path. Adah Maria Gordon was, as
she supposed, her real name, so in her note to Mrs. Ellsworth she signed
herself "Maria Gordon," omitting the Adah, which might lead to her being
recognized. From her little girl Mrs. Ellsworth had heard much of the
sweet young lady, who was so kind to her on the boat, and was thus
already prepossessed in her favor.