Bad Hugh

"It's true, it's true," the doctor cried, tears rolling down his soiled

face; "but I never guessed it was you. Lily, I supposed it some ordinary

woman."

"So did Irving Stanley," was Adah's quiet, cutting answer; "but his

heart was open to sympathy, even for an ordinary woman."

The doctor could only moan, with his face still hidden in his hands,

until a sudden thought like a revelation flashed upon him, and

forgetting his wounded foot, he sprang like a tiger to the spot where

Adah sat, and winding his arm firmly around her, whispered hoarsely: "Adah, Lily, tell me you love this Irving Stanley. My wife loves another

than her husband."

Adah did not struggle to release herself from his close grasp. It was

punishment she ought to bear, she thought, but her whole soul loathed

that close embrace, and the loathing expressed itself in the tone of her

voice, as she replied: "Until within an hour I did not suppose you were my husband. You said

you were not in that letter; I have it yet; the one in which you told me

it was a mock marriage, as, by your own confession, it seems you meant

it should be."

"Oh, darling, you kill me, yet I deserve it all; but, Adah, I have

suffered enough to atone for the dreadful past; and I tried so hard to

find you. Forgive me, Lily, forgive," and falling again on his knees,

the wretched man poured forth a torrent of entreaties for her

forgiveness, her love, without which he should die.

Holding fast her cold hands, he pleaded with all his eloquence, until,

maddened by her silence, he even taunted her with loving another, while

her own husband was living.

Then Adah started, and pushing him away, sprang to her feet, while the

hot blood stained her face and neck, and a resentful fire gleamed from

her brown eyes.

"It is not well for you to reproach me with faithlessness," she said,

"you, who have dealt so treacherously by me; you, who deliberately

planned my ruin, and would have effected it but for the deeper-laid

scheme of one you say is my father. No thanks to you that I am a lawful

wife. You did not make me so of your own free will. You did to me the

greatest wrong a man can do a woman, then cruelly deserted me, and now

you would chide me for respecting another more than I do you."

"Not respecting him, Adah, no, not for respecting him. You should do

that. He's worthier than I; but, oh, Adah, Lily, wife, mother of my boy,

do you love Irving Stanley?"

He was sobbing bitterly, and the words came between the sobs, while he

tried to clutch her dress. Staggering backward against the wooden beam,

Adah leaned there for support, while she replied: "You would not understand if I should tell you the terrible struggle it

was for me to be thrown each day in the society of one as noble, as good

as Irving Stanley, and not come at last to feel for him as a poor

governess ought never to feel for the handsome, gifted brother of her

employer. Oh, George, I prayed against it so much, prayed to be kept

from the sin, if it were a sin, to have Irving Stanley mingled with

every thought. But the more I prayed, the more the temptation seemed

thrust upon me. The kinder, gentler, more attentive, grew his manners

toward me. He never treated me as a mere governess. It was more like an

equal at first, and then like a younger sister, so that few strangers

took me for a subordinate, so kind were both Mrs. Ellsworth and her

brother."