There was a knock at the door, and Jim appeared, inquiring if the doctor would have the carriage brought round. It was nearly time to go, and with the whispered words to Anna, “I have told you what no one else must ever know,” the doctor descended with his sister to the parlor, where his mother was waiting for him. The opening and shutting of the door caused a draught of air, which, falling on the fainting Adah, restored her to consciousness, and struggling to her feet, she tried to think what it was that had happened. She remembered it soon, and with a shudder listened to know if George was still in the adjoining chamber. All was quiet there. He had gone, and tottering into the room, she knelt by the chair where she knew he had sat. Then, as the last expiring throe of her love for him swept over her, she essayed to wind her trembling arms around the chair, as she would once have twined them about him. “Oh, George! George!” she gasped, calling him still George, for, she almost hated that other name. “Oh, George, I did love you so much,” and she laid her poor, tired head upon the chair as if it had been his lap. “I loved you so much, but it is over now, or it soon will be. I feel its death struggles at my heart. You are worse than I believed. You have made me an outcast, and Willie ——” The sentence ended with the wailing cry—“My boy, my boy! that such a heritage should be yours.” Adah could not pray then, although she tried, but the fitting words would not come, and with her head still resting on his chair, she looked the terrible reality in the face, and saw just where she stood. Heretofore the one great hope, that she was really a wife, had buoyed her up when everything else was dark. Like a drowning person grasping at a straw, she had clung to that, even against her better judgment, but now it was swept away, and with it the semblance of a name. He had deceived her even there, and she had accepted the _Hastings_ as something tangible. He was a greater villain than she had imagined a man could be, and again her white lips essayed to curse him, but the rash act was stayed by the low words whispered in her ear, “Forgive as ye would be forgiven.” “If it were not for Willie, I might, but oh! my boy, my boy disgraced,” was the rebellious spirit’s answer, when again the voice whispered, “And who art thou to contend against thy God? Know you not that I am the Father of the fatherless.” There were tears now in Adah’s eyes, the first which she had shed. “I’ll try,” she murmured, “try to forgive the wrong, but the strength must all be thine,” and then, though there came no sound or motion; her heart went out in agonizing prayer, that she might forgive even as she hoped to be forgiven.