Whilst they were still debating the matter, a carriage drew up before the door, and Catharine darted out of the room with the speed of an arrow. In a moment she returned, followed by Mrs. Somers, and a lady whom Ada recognized in an instant, and starting from her seat, she found herself in the arms of Mrs. Darrington.
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CHAPTER VI.
“Et l’on revient toujours à ses premiers amours.”
(This is the veriest nonsense ever penned. It chimes in with our story and we use it, but without endorsing it the least in the world.)
That night Ada relieved her full heart, by talking over the events of the last six months to her mother, who listened, as only a mother can listen, till midnight. Mrs. Somers had scarcely kissed her daughter’s cheek and left the room, when Ada rose, unlocked one of her bureau drawers, and took thence an antiquated-looking rose-wood box. Under heaps of broken chains and old fashioned jewels lay a dingy little emerald ring; she seized upon it, and uttered an exclamation of pleasure, as she found that it fitted her third finger. She then replaced her box, kissed the ring, and murmured a “good-night” to the giver.
Some weeks after, Ada, her diamond and her emerald, became, one and all, the property of James. Dr. B. was at the wedding, and Catharine related to him every circumstance connected with what she styled “Ada’s pompous apostasy from the faith of her girlhood;” beginning with the drowning, and ending with the resumption of the emerald ring. Dr. B. evinced such lively interest in her story, that she proclaimed him to be the best listener she had ever met with in her life.
The day after the wedding, Johnny Wilson was favored with a large consignment of wedding-cake; and in after life, when, through Ada’s means, he had risen in station and fortune, he was heard to declare that he had marked with a white stone the day on which he had been nearly crushed to death by the horses of Mrs. James Darrington Stanley.