Bad Hugh

Something in the expression of her face as she turned toward Mrs.

Worthington made that lady start, while her heart throbbed with an

indefinable emotion. Who was Adah Hastings, and why was she so drawn

toward her?

Addressing to her some indifferent remark, she gradually led the

conversation backward to the subject of her early home, asking again

what she could remember, but Adah was scarcely more satisfactory than on

the previous night. Memories she had of a gentle lady, who must have

been her mother, of a lad who called her sister, and kissed her

sometimes, of a cottage with grass and flowers, and bees buzzing beneath

the trees.

"Are you faint?" Hugh asked, quickly, as his mother turned white as

ashes, and leaned against the mantel.

She did not seem to hear him, but continued questioning Adah.

"Did you say bees? Were there many?"

"Oh, yes, so many, I remember, because they stung me once," and Adah

gazed dreamily into the fire, as if listening again to the musical hum

heard in that New England home, wherever it might have been.

"Go on, what more can you recall?" Mrs. Worthington said, and Adah

replied: "Nothing but the waterfall in the river. I remember that near our door."

During this conversation, Hugh had been standing by the table, where lay

a few articles which he supposed belonged to Adah. One of these was a

small double locket, attached to a slender chain.

"The rascal's, I presume," he said to himself, and taking it in his

hand, he touched the spring, starting quickly as the features of a

young-girl met his view. How radiantly beautiful the original of that

picture must have been, and Hugh gazed long and earnestly upon the sweet

young face, and its soft, silken curls, some shading the open brow, and

others falling low upon the uncovered neck. Adah, lifting up her head,

saw what he was doing, and said: "Don't you think her beautiful?"

"Who is she?" Hugh asked, coming to her side, and passing her the

locket.

"I don't know," Adah replied. "She came to me one day when Willie was

only two weeks old and my heart was so heavy with pain. She had heard I

did plain sewing and wanted some for herself. She seemed to me like an

angel, and I've sometimes thought she was, for she never came again. In

stooping over me the chain must have been unclasped. I tried to find her

when I got well, but my efforts were all in vain, and so I've kept it

ever since. It was not stealing, was it?"

"Of course not," Hugh said, while Adah, opening the other side, showed

him a lock of dark brown hair, tied with a tiny ribbon, in which was

written, "In memoriam, Aug. 18."