an me, he was welcome to have her. 'Lina
Worthington had too may eligible offers to play second fiddle to any
one.

"''Lina,' he said, 'I will not deceive you, though I meant to do so. I
did love another before ever I heard of you, a fair young girl, as pure,
as innocent as the angels. She is an angel now, for she is dead. Do not
ask further of her. Let it suffice that I loved her, that I lost her. I
shall never tell you more of her sad story. Let her never be named to me
again. It was long ago. I have met you since, have asked and wish you to
be my wife,'--and so we made it up, and I promised not to speak of my
rival. Pleasant predicament, I am in, but I'll worm it out of him yet.
I'll haunt him with her dead body."

* * * * *

"Oh, mother," and Hugh gasped for breath. "Is Ad--can she be anything to
us? Is my blood in her veins?"

"Yes, Hugh, she's your half-sister. Forgive me that I made her so," and
the poor mother wept over the heartless girl. "But go on," she
whispered. "See where 'Lina is now," and Hugh read on, learning that old
Mother Richards had returned home, that Anna had written a sweet,
sisterly note, welcoming her as John's bride to their love, that she had
answered her in the same gracious strain, heightening the effect by
dropping a few drops of water here and there, to answer for tears wrung
out by Anna's sympathy, that Mrs. Ellsworth and her brother, Irving
Stanley, came to the hotel, that Irving had a ticket to the ball offered
him, but declined, just because he did not believe in balls, that having
a little 'axe to grind,' she had done her best to cultivate Mrs.
Ellsworth, presuming a great deal on their courtship, and making herself
so agreeable to her child, a most ugly piece of deformity, that cousin
Carrie, who had hired a furnished house for the winter, had invited her
to spend the season with her, and she was now snugly ensconced in most
delightful quarters on Twenty-second Street, between Fifth and Sixth
Avenues.

* * * * *

"Sometimes," she wrote, "I half suspect Mrs. Ellsworth did not think I
would jump at her invitation so quick, but I don't care. The doctor, for
some reason or other, has deferred our marriage until spring, and dear
knows I am not coming back to horrid Spring Bank any sooner than I can
help.

"By the way, I'm somewhat haunted with the dread that, after all, Adah
may take it into her willful head to go t