“Had I done differently he might have been living now, and you have been spared much pain, but you’ll forgive me. I’m an old woman. I am breaking fast, and soon shall follow my boy, but while I live I wish for peace, and you must love me, Lily, because I was his mother,” and the hand of her who had conceded so much, rested entreatingly upon the bowed head of the young girl beside her. There was no acting there, Adah knew, and clasping the trembling hand she involuntarily whispered,
“I will love you, my mother.”
“And stay with me, too?” Mrs. Richards continued, her voice choked with the sobs she could not repress, when she heard herself called mother by the girl she had so wronged. “Anna is gone, my other daughters are old. We are lonely in this great house. We need somebody young to cheer our solitude, and you will stay, as mistress, if you choose, or as a petted youngest daughter.”
This was an unlooked for trial to Adah. She had not dreamed of living at Terrace Hill. But Adah had never consulted her own happiness, and as she listened to the pleading tones of the woman who surely had some heart, some noble qualities, she felt that ’twas her duty to remain there for a time at least, and so she replied at last,
“I expected to live with my own mother, but for the present my home shall be here with you.”
“God bless you, darling,” and the proud woman’s lips touched the fair cheek, while the proud woman’s hand smoothed again the soft short curls, pushing them back from the white brow, as she murmured, “You are very beautiful, my child, just as John said you were.”
It was hard for Adah to tell Mrs. Worthington that she could not make one of the circle who would gather around the home fireside, but she did at last, standing firmly by her decision, and saying in reply to her mother’s entreaties, “It is my duty. They need me more than you, who have both Hugh and Alice.”
Adah was right, so Hugh said, and Alice, too, while Irving Stanley said nothing. He must have found much that was attractive about the little town of Snowdon, for he lingered there long after there was not the least excuse for staying. He did not go often to Terrace Hill, and when he did, he never asked for Adah, but so long as he could see her on Sundays when, with the Richards’ family, she walked quietly up the aisle, her cheek flushing as she passed him, and so long as he occasionally met her at Mrs. Worthington’s rooms, or saw her riding in the Richards carriage, so long was he content to stay. But there came a time when he must go, and then he asked for Adah, and in the presence of her mother-in-law invited her to go with him to her husband’s grave. She went, taking Willie with her, and there, with that fresh mound between them, Irving Stanley told her what the dying soldier had said, and asked if it should be so.
“Not now, not yet,” he continued, as Adah’s eyes were bent upon that grave, “but by and by, will you do your husband’s bidding and be my wife?”
“I will,” and taking Willie’s hand Adah put it with hers into the broad, warm palm which clasped them both, as Irving whispered, “Your child shall be mine, and never need to know that I am not his father.”