During the excitement of the last few days, the pain in his head had in a measure been forgotten, but it had come back this morning with redoubled force, and the veins upon his forehead looked almost like bursting with their pressure of feverish blood. Hugh did not think it possible for him to be sick, and he tried hard to forget the giddy, half blinding pain warning him of danger, and after forcing himself to sip a little coffee in which he would indulge this morning, he ordered Claib to bring out the covered buggy, as he was going up to Lexington, hoping thus to obtain a sight of Alice without being himself seen, or at least known as Hugh Worthington.
CHAPTER XVIII.
MEETING OF ALICE AND HUGH.
Could ’Lina have seen Hugh that morning as he emerged from a fashionable tailor’s shop, she would scarcely have recognized him, so greatly was he improved by the entire new suit in which he had been indulging, and which gave him so stylish an appearance that Hugh for a moment felt uncomfortable, and was glad that one whole hour must elapse before the cars from Cincinnati were due as he could thus become a little accustomed to himself and not be so painfully conscious. The hour passed rapidly away, and its close found Hugh waiting at the terminus of the Lexington and Cincinnati Railroad. A moment more, and the broad platform was swarming with passengers, conspicuous among whom were an old lady and a young, both dressed in black, both closely veiled and both entire strangers, as was evinced by their anxiety to know what they were next to do, or where to go.
“These are ours,” the young lady said, pointing to a huge pile of trunks, distinctly marked “A. J.,” and Hugh drew so near to her that her long black veil swept against his coat, as she held out her checks in her ungloved hand.
Hugh noticed the hand, saw that it was very small and white and fat, but the face he could not see, and he looked in vain for the magnificent hair about which even his mother had waxed eloquent, and which was now put plainly back, so that not a vestige of it was visible. Still Hugh felt sure that this was Alice Johnson, so sure that when he had ascertained the hotel where she would wait for the Frankfort train, he followed on, and entering the back parlor, the door of which was partly closed, sat down as if he too were a traveller, waiting for the train. It never occurred to Hugh that he was acting the part of an eaves-dropper, so anxious he was to see Alice without being seen, and taking up an old paper, he pretended to be greatly interested in its columns, which, for any information he gleaned from them, might as well have been bottom side up.
Meantime, in the room adjoining, Alice divested herself of her dusty wrappings, and taking out her combs and brushes, began to arrange her hair, talking the while to Densie, her nurse, reclining on the sofa. How the tones of that voice thrilled on Hugh’s ear like some forgotten music, heard he knew not when or where, and how still he sat, when at last the conversation turned upon his mother and ’Lina, about whom Alice talked freely, never dreaming of Hugh’s proximity.
It would seem that Alice’s own luxuriant tresses suggested her first remark, for she said to Densie, “That Miss Worthington had beautiful hair, so glossy, and so wavy, too. I wonder she never curls it. It looks as if she might.”
A smile fitted over Hugh’s face as he thought of the tags, and wondered what Alice would say could she see Ad early in the morning, with a red silk handkerchief, tied round her head by way of covering what he called tags, “It would take a steam engine to make Ad’s hair curl,” he said to himself, while Alice continued, “I did not like her eyes; they were too much like coals of fire, when they flashed angrily on that poor Lulu, who evidently was not well posted in the duties of a waiting-maid. If mother had not so decided, I should shrink from being an inmate of Mrs. Worthington’s family. I like her very much, but I am afraid I shall not get on with ’Lina.”
“I know you won’t. I honor your judgment,” was Hugh’s mental comment, while Alice went on.
“And what she told me of her brother was not calculated to impress me favorably.”