“She don’t know I was there, though,” he thought, and that gave him some comfort.
But Adah did know, and she meant he should know she did. Keeping her eyes still fixed upon him, she continued,
“I heard Mr. Stanley talking of you once to his sister, and among other things he spoke of your dislike for children, and referred to an occasion in the cars, when a little boy, for whom his heart ached, was suffering acutely and for whom you evinced no interest, except to say that you hated children, and to push his feet from your lap. I never knew till then that you were so near to me.”
“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, you love Irving Stanley. My wife loves another than her husband.”
Adah did not struggle to release herself from his grasp, 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.