He had not told her Lily’s story, as he meant to do. There was no necessity for that, for the matter was fixed. ’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 ushered her into a little reception room, where the Misses Richards received their morning calls. Drawing a deep arm chair to the fire, Adah sat down before the cheerful blaze, and looked around her with that strange feeling one experiences where everything is new. 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 not 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. They had heard from Jim that a stranger was there, and as all the cross questionings concerning Adah elicited only the assertion, that “she _was_ a lady,” both had made a slight change in their toilet ere starting for the room which they reached together, Mrs. Richards taking in at once the fit and material of Adah’s traveling dress, deciding that the collar, unbuttoned and shoved back from the throat, was real mink, as were the wristlets on which a pair of small white hands were folded together. She noticed, too, the tiny linen cuffs, with the neat gold buttons which Alice had made Adah wear. Everything was in keeping, and their visitor was a lady. This was her decision, while Eudora noticed only Willie on the bouquet which had cost her so much labor, and the alarming size of that worn spot in the carpet where the little high heeled slipper still was busy. Her first impulse was to seize him by the arm and transfer him to some other locality, but the beauty of his face diverted her attention, and she involuntarily drew a step nearer to the child, fascinated by him, just as her mother was attracted towards Adah. “Are you—ah, yes—you are the lady who Jim said wished to see me,” the latter 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.