“And husband, too,” chimed in the doctor, eagerly, “thank him for me, Adah. You are glad to find me?”
There was a 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, 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 was 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 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 to Europe, and was anxious to secure some 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 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. It had troubled her somewhat to know what name to take, but she decided finally upon Adah Gordon as the one by which she was known ere George Hastings crossed her path, and in her note to Mrs. Ellsworth she signed herself “A Gordon.” 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.
Adah did not tell Dr. Richards, and perhaps she did not herself know how surprised and delighted Mrs. Ellsworth was with the fair, girlish creature, announced to her as Miss Gordon, and who won her heart before five minutes were gone, making her think it of no consequence to inquire concerning her at Madam ——’s school, where she said she had once been a pupil.
Naturally very impulsive and unsuspecting, Mrs. Ellsworth usually acted upon her likes or dislikes, and Adah was soon installed as governess to the delighted little Jennie, who learned to love her gentle teacher with a love almost amounting to idolatry.
“You were in Europe, then, and that is the reason why we could not find you,” Dr. Richards said, adding, after a moment, “And Irving Stanley went with you—was your companion all the while?”
“Yes, all the while,” and Adah’s cold fingers worked nervously at the wisp of hay she was twisting in her hand. “We came home sooner than we intended, as he was anxious to join the army. I had seen him before—he was in the cars when Willie and I were on our way to Terrace Hill. Willie had the ear-ache, and he was so kind to us both.”
Adah looked fixedly now at the craven doctor, who could not meet her glance, for well he remembered the dastardly part he had played in that scene, where his own child was screaming with pain, and he sat selfishly idle.