Bad Hugh

"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.