g first called Muggins to gather up the fragments of 'Lina's letter
which Hugh had thrown upon the carpet.

"Yes, burn every trace of it," Hugh said, watching the child as she
picked up piece by piece, and threw them into the grate.

"I means to save dat ar. I'll play I has a letter for Miss Alice," Mug
thought, as she came upon a bit larger than the others, and unwittingly
she hid in her bosom that portion of the letter referring to herself and
Harney! This done, she too left the room, and Hugh was at last alone.

He had little hope now that he would ever win Alice, so jealously sure
was he that Irving was preferred before him, and he whispered sadly to
himself:

"I can live on just the same, I suppose. Life will be no more dreary
than it was before I knew her. No, nor half so dreary, for 'it is better
to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.' That is what Adah
said once when I asked what she would give never to have met that
villain."

As it frequently happens that when an individual is talked or thought
about, that individual appears, so Adah now came in, asking how Hugh
was, and if she should not sit a while with him.

Hugh's face brightened at once, for next to Alice he liked best to have
Adah with him. With 'Lina's letter still fresh in his mind it was very
natural for him to think of what was said of Augusta Stanley, and after
Adah had sat a moment, he asked if she remembered such a person at Madam
Dupont's school, or Lottie Gardner either.

"Yes, I remember them both," and Adah looked up quickly. "Lottie was
proud and haughty, though quite popular with most of the girls, I
believe; but Augusta--oh, I liked her so much. Do you know her?"

"No; but Ad, it seems, has ingratiated herself into the good graces of
Mrs. Ellsworth, this Augusta's sister. There's a brother, too'--"

"Yes, I remember. He came one day with Augusta, and all the girls were
so delighted. I hardly noticed him myself, for my head was full of
George. It was there I met him first, you know."

There was a shadow now on Adah's face, and she sat silent for some time,
thinking of the past, while Hugh watched the changes of her beautiful
face, wondering what was the mystery which seemed to have shrouded the
whole of her young life.

"You have done me a great deal of good," he said; "and sometimes I think
it's wrong in me to let you go away, when, if I kept you, you might
teach me how to be a good man--a Christian man, I mean."