expected she would be, although they were really comparative strangers.

It was not until a rather late hour that Alice joined him, sitting upon
the cool piazza, with Hugh as his companion. In summer Alice always wore
white, and now, as she came tripping down the long piazza, her muslin
dress floating about her like a snowy mist, her fair hair falling softly
about her face and on her neck, a few geranium leaves twined among the
glossy curls, and her lustrous eyes sparkling with excitement, both
Irving Stanley and Hugh held their breath and watched her as she came,
the one jealously and half angry that she was so beautiful, the other
admiringly and with a feeling of wonder at the beauty he had never seen
surpassed.

Alice was perfectly self-possessed, and greeted Mr. Stanley as she would
have greeted any friend--and she was glad to see him--spoke of Saratoga,
and then inquired for Mrs. Ellsworth about whom poor 'Lina had talked so
much.

Mrs. Ellsworth was well, Irving said, though very busy with her
preparations for going to Europe, adding "it was not so much pleasure
which was taking her there as by the hope that by some of the Paris
physicians her little deformed Jennie might be benefited. She had
secured a gem of a governess for her daughter, a young lady whom he had
not yet seen, but over whose beauty and accomplishments his staid sister
Carrie had really waxed eloquent."

Hugh cared nothing for that governess, and after a little, thinking he
was not wanted, stole quietly away, and being moodily inclined, rambled
off to 'Lina's grave, half wishing, as he stood there in the moonlight,
that he, too, was lying beside it.

"Were I sure of heaven, it would be a blessed thing to die," he thought,
"for this world has little in it to make me happy. Oh, Alice, Golden
Hair, I could almost wish we had never met, though, as I told her once,
I would rather have loved and lost her than never have loved her at
all."

Poor Hugh! He was mistaken with regard to Alice. She was not listening
to love words. She was telling Irving Stanley as much of 'Lina's sad
story as she thought necessary, and Irving, though really interested,
was, we must confess, too intent on watching the changing expressions of
her beautiful face to comprehend it clearly in all its complicated
parts.

He understood that 'Lina was not, and that a certain Adah Hastings was,
Mrs. Worthington's child; understood, too, that Adah was the wife of Dr.
Richards-