Have you noticed it ?" "'Lina pointed it out last night, but to me it seemed a spreading vein, nothing more.

Hugh!" and Mrs.Worthington grasped his arm with a vehemence unusual to her accustomed quiet manner, "you seem to know Adah's later history.

Do you know her earlier?
Who is she?
Where did she come from ?" "I'm going to her now; will you come, too ?" she said, and accordingly both together ascended to the chamber where Adah sat before the fire with Willie on her lap, her glossy hair, which Lulu's skillful fingers had arranged, combed smoothly down upon her forehead, so as to hide the mysterious mark, if mark there were, on that fair skin.
Something in the expression of her face as she turned toward Mrs.
Worthington made that lady start, while her heart throbbed with an indefinable emotion.

Who was Adah Hastings, and why was she so drawn toward her?
Addressing to her some indifferent remark, she gradually led the conversation backward to the subject of her early home, asking again what she could remember, but Adah was scarcely more satisfactory than on the previous night.

Memories she had of a gentle lady, who must have been her mother, of a lad who called her sister, and kissed her sometimes, of a cottage with grass and flowers, and bees buzzing beneath the trees.
"Are you faint ?" Hugh asked, quickly, as his mother turned white as ashes, and leaned against the mantel.
She did not seem to hear him, but continued questioning Adah.
"Did you say bees?
Were there many ?" "Oh, yes, so many, I remember, because they stung me once," and Adah gazed dreamily into the fire, as if listening again to the musical hum heard in that New England home, wherever it might have been.
"Go on, what more can you recall ?" Mrs.Worthington said, and Adah replied: "Nothing but the waterfall in the river.