Poor Adah! How white and cold she grew, listening to that air, and
gazing upon the face she had loved so well. It was changed since the
night when with his kiss warm on her lips he left her forever, changed,
and for the worse. There was a harder, a more reckless, determined
expression there, a look which better than words could have done, told
that self alone was the god he worshiped.
Once, as he walked up and down the room, passing so near to her that she
might have touched him with her hand, she felt an almost irresistible
desire to thrust her thick brown veil aside, and confronting him to his
face, claim from him what she had a right to claim, his name and a
position as his wife--only for Willie's sake, however; for herself she
did not wish it.
It was a relief when at last the roll of the cars was heard, and
buttoning his coat still closer around him, he turned toward the door,
half looking back to see if the veiled figure too had risen. It had, and
was standing close beside him, its outside garments sweeping his as the
crowd increased, pressing her nearer to him, but Adah passed back into
the ladies' room, and opening the rear door was out in the street again
almost before the train had left the station. George was gone--lost to
her forever! and with a piteous moan for her ruined life, Adah kept on
her way till the post office was reached.
There were four letters in the box--one for Mrs. Richards, from an
absent brother; one for Eudora, from Lottie Gardner; one for Asenath,
from an old friend, and at the bottom, last of all, one for Annie
Richards, faced with black, and bearing the initial "M." upon the seal
of wax.
Adah saw all this, but it conveyed no meaning to her mind except a vague
remembrance that at some time or other, very, very long years it seemed,
Anna had bidden her keep from her mother any letter directed to herself
in a mourning envelope. Adah retained just sense enough to do this, and
separating the letter from the others, thrust it into her pocket, and
then took her way back to Terrace Hill.
Willie was asleep; and as Pamelia, who brought him up, had thoughtfully
undressed and placed him in bed, there was nothing for Adah to do but
think. She should go away, of course; she could not stay there longer;
but how should she tell them why she went, and who would be her medium
for communication?