“Anna,” she whispered; and lighting her little lamp, she sat down to write the letter which would tell Anna Richards who was the waiting-maid to whom she had been so kind. Adah was very calm when she began that letter, and as it progressed, she seemed turning into stone, so insensible she was to what, without that rigidity of nerve, would have been a task more painful than she could well endure. “Dear Anna,” she wrote. “Forgive me for calling you so this once, for indeed I cannot help it. I am going away from you; and when, in the morning, you wait for me to come as usual, I shall not be here. I could not stay and meet your brother when he returns. Oh, Anna, Anna, how shall I begin to tell you what I know will grieve and shock your pure nature so dreadfully? “I love to call you Anna now, for you seem near to me; and believe me, while I write this to you, I am conscious of no feeling of inferiority to any one bearing your proud name. I am, or should have been, _your sister_; and Willie!—oh, my boy, when I think of him, I seem to be going mad! “Cannot you guess?—don’t you know now who I am? God forgive your brother, as I asked him to do, kneeling there by the very chair where he sat an hour since, talking to you of _Lily_. I heard him, and the sound of his voice took power and strength away. I could not move to let you know I was there, and I lay upon the floor till consciousness forsook me; and then, when I woke again, you both were gone. “I went to the depot, I saw him in his face to make assurance sure, and Anna, I,—oh I don’t know what I am. The world would not call me a wife, though I believed I was; but they cannot deal thus cruelly by Willie, or wash from his veins his father’s blood, for I—,who write this, I who have been a servant in the house where I should have been the mistress, am _Lily_—wronged, deserted Lily—and Willie is your brother’s child! His father’s looks are in his face. But when I came here I had no suspicion, for he won me as _George Hastings_; that was the name by which I knew him, and I was _Adah Gordon_. If you do not believe me, ask him when he comes back if ever in his wanderings he met with Adah Gordon, or her guardian, Mr. Redfield. Ask if he was ever present at a marriage where this Adah gave her heart to one for whom she would then have lost her life, erring in that she loved the _gift_ more than the _giver_; but God punishes idolatry, and he has punished me, so sorely, oh so sorely, that sometimes my fainting soul cries out, ‘’tis more than I can bear.’”