Lina should be his wife,
and he need not trouble Anna further; so he had bidden her adieu, and
was gone again, the carriage which bore him away bringing back Adah and
her boy.

Jim opened the wide door for her, and showing her first into the parlor,
but finding that dark and cold, he ushered her next into a little
reception-room, where the Misses Richards received their morning calls.

Willie seemed perfectly at home, seating himself upon a little stool,
covered with some of Miss Eudora's choicest worsted embroidery, a piece
of work of which she was very proud, never allowing anything to touch
it lest the roses should be jammed, or the raised leaves defaced. But
Willie cared neither for leaves, nor roses, nor yet for Miss Eudora, and
drawing the stool to his mother's side, he sat kicking his little heels
into a worn place of the carpet, which no child had kicked since the
doctor's days of babyhood. The tender threads were fast giving way to
the vigorous strokes, when two doors opposite each other opened
simultaneously, and both Mrs. Richards and Eudora appeared.

"Are you--ah, yes--you are the lady who Jim said wished to see me," Mrs.
Richards began, bowing politely to Adah, who had not yet dared to look
up, and who when at last she did raise her eyes, withdrew them at once,
more abashed, more frightened, more bewildered than ever, for the face
she saw fully warranted her ideas of a woman who could turn a waiting
maid from her door just because she was a waiting maid.

Something seemed choking Adah and preventing her utterance, for she did
not speak until Mrs. Richards said again, this time with a little less
suavity and a little more hauteur of manner, "Have I had the honor of
meeting you before?"--then with a low gasp, a mental petition for help,
Adah rose up and lifting to Mrs. Richards' cold, haughty face, her soft,
brown eyes, where tears were almost visible, answered faintly: "We have
not met before. Excuse me, madam, but my business is with Miss Anna, can
I see her please?"

There was something supplicating in the tone with which Adah made this
request, and it struck Mrs. Richards unpleasantly. She answered
haughtily, though still politely, "My daughter is sick. She does not see
visitors. It will be impossible to admit you to her chamber, but I will
take your name and your errand."

Adah felt as if she should sink beneath the cold, cruel scrutiny to
which she knew she was subjected by the woman on her right