During the excitement of the last few days, the pain in his head had in
a measure been forgotten, but it had come back this morning with
redoubled force, and the veins upon his forehead looked almost like
bursting with their pressure of feverish blood. Hugh did not think it
possible for him to be sick, and he tried hard to forget the giddy, half
blinding pain warning him of danger, and after forcing himself to sip a
little coffee in which he would indulge this morning, he ordered Claib
to bring out the covered buggy, as he was going up to Lexington, hoping
thus to obtain a sight of Alice without being himself seen, or at least
known as Hugh Worthington.
CHAPTER XVIII.
MEETING OF ALICE AND HUGH.
Could ’Lina have seen Hugh that morning as he emerged from a fashionable
tailor’s shop, she would scarcely have recognized him, so greatly was he
improved by the entire new suit in which he had been indulging, and
which gave him so stylish an appearance that Hugh for a moment felt
uncomfortable, and was glad that one whole hour must elapse before the
cars from Cincinnati were due as he could thus become a little
accustomed to himself and not be so painfully conscious. The hour passed
rapidly away, and its close found Hugh waiting at the terminus of the
Lexington and Cincinnati Railroad. A moment more, and the broad platform
was swarming with passengers, conspicuous among whom were an old lady
and a young, both dressed in black, both closely veiled and both entire
strangers, as was evinced by their anxiety to know what they were next
to do, or where to go.
“These are ours,” the young lady said, pointing to a huge pile of
trunks, distinctly marked “A. J.,” and Hugh drew so near to her that her
long black veil swept against his coat, as she held out her checks in
her ungloved hand.
Hugh noticed the hand, saw that it was very small and white and fat, but
the face he could not see, and he looked in vain for the magnificent
hair about which even his mother had waxed eloquent, and which was now
put plainly back, so that not a vestige of it was visible. Still Hugh
felt sure that this was Alice Johnson, so sure that when he had
ascertained the hotel where she would wait for the Frankfort train, he
followed on, and entering the back parlor, the door of which was partly
closed, sat down as if he too were a traveller, waiting for the train.
It never occurred to Hugh that he was acting the part of an
eaves-dropper, so anxious he was to see Alice without being seen, and
taking up an old paper, he pretended to be greatly interested in its
columns, which, for any information he gleaned from them, might as well
have been bottom side up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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