“Who is he talking about, Hugh? Does he mean me? My head throbs so, I don’t quite understand,” ’Lina said piteously, while Hugh held the poor aching head against his bosom, crushing the orange blossoms, and whispering softly, “He means Adah.” “Yes, Adah,” the convict rejoined. “John Richards fancied Adah Gordon, as she was called, but loved his pride and position more. I’ll do you justice, though, young man, I believe at one time you really and truly loved my child, and but for your mother’s letters might have married her honorably. But you were afraid of that mother. Your pride was stronger than your love; but I was determined that you should have my daughter, and proposed a mock marriage——” “Monster! _You, her father_, planned that fiendish act!” and Alice’s blue eyes flashed indignantly upon him, while Hugh, forgetting that the idea was not new to him, walked up before the “monster,” as if to lay him at his feet. “Listen, while I explain, and you will see the monster had an object,” returned the stranger, speaking to Alice, instead of Hugh. “It was the great wish of my heart that my daughter should marry into a good family,—one which would give her position, and when I saw how much John Richards was pleased with her, I said _he_ should be her husband, for the Richards were known to me by reputation. “From what I knew of John I thought he would hardly dare marry my daughter outright, and so I cautiously suggested a mock marriage, saying, by way of excusing myself that as I was only Adah’s guardian, I could not feel towards her as a near relative would feel,—that, as I had already expended large sums of money on her, I was getting tired of it, and would be glad to be released, hinting, by way of smoothing the fiendish proposition, my belief that, from constant association, he would come to love her so much that at last he would really and truly make her his wife. He seemed shocked, and if I remember rightly, called me a brute, and all that; but little by little I gained ground, until at last he consented, stipulating that she should not know his real name, which he knew I had discovered. It seems strange that a father should wish his child to marry one who would consent to act so base a part, but I knew there was nothing unkind in the doctor’s nature, and I trusted that his fondness for Adah and her influence over him would bring it right at last.