uld recognize.

That look in Willie's face had almost grown to a certainty with Alice,
who saw Anna, or Asenath, or Eudora, and sometimes John himself in every
move of the little fellow. Silently Adah read the note, her paled cheeks
turning scarlet at what 'Lina had said of herself and Mrs. Ellsworth.
The Richards family were nothing to her. She only seized upon and
treasured up the words "with a child about whose father we know
nothing." Slowly the tears gathered in her eyes and finally fell in
torrents as Alice asked:

"What made her cry?"

"Oh, Miss Johnson," and Adah hid her face in Alice's lap, "I'm thinking
of George--of Willie's father. Will he never come back, or the world
know that I thought I was a lawful wife? Yes, and I sometimes believe so
now, or I should surely go wild, Miss Johnson," and Adah lifted up her
head, disclosing a face which Alice scarcely recognized, for the strange
expression there. "Miss Johnson, if I knew that George deliberately
planned my ruin under the guise of a mock marriage, and then when it
suited him deserted me as a toy of which he was tired, I should hate
him!--hate him!"

"I frighten you, Miss Johnson," she said, as she saw how Alice shrank
away from the dark eyes in which there was a fierce, resentful gleam,
unlike sweet Adah Hastings. "I used to frighten myself when I saw in my
eyes the demon which whispered suicide."

"Oh, Adah," said Alice, "you could not have dreamed that!"

"I did," and Adah spoke sadly now. "It was kind in God to save me, and
I've tried to love Him better since; but there's something savage in my
nature, something I must have inherited from one of my parents, and
sometimes my heart, which at first was full of love for George, goes out
against him for his base treachery."

"And yet you love him still?" Alice said, as she smoothed the beautiful
brown hair.

"I suppose I do. A kind word from him would bring me back, but will it
ever be spoken? Shall we ever meet again?"

"Where did he go?" Alice asked.

"He went to Europe, so he said."

There was a voluntary shudder as Alice recalled the time when Dr.
Richards came home from Europe, and she had been flattered with his
attentions.

"I may be unjust to him," she thought, then to Adah she said: "As you
have told me your story in part, will you tell me the whole?"

There was no vindictiveness now in Adah's face, nothing save a calm,
gentle expression such as it was used to wear, and the soft bro