“When the marriage was over, _Mr. Hastings_ took his wife to another part of the city, hiding her from his fashionable associates, staying with her most of the time, and appearing to love her so much that I thought it would not be long before I should venture to tell him the truth. It would be better to write it, I thought, and so I left her with him while I went South on—the very laudable business of stealing negroes from one State and selling them in another. At Cincinnati, I wrote to the doctor, confessing the whole, but it seems my letter never reached him, for, though I did not know it then, the car containing that mail was burned, and my letter was burned with it. Some of you know that I was caught in my traffic, and that the negro stealer, Sullivan, was safely lodged in prison, from which he was released but a day since. Fearing there might be some mistake, I wrote from my prison home to Adah herself, but suppose it did not reach New York till after she had left it.” A casual observer would have said that Mrs. Worthington had heard less of that strange story than anyone else, so motionless she sat, but not a word was missed by her in the entire narrative, and when the narrator concluded, she said anxiously, “And that child, the lawful wife of this young man, was she mine, or was she the servant girl’s?” A little apart from the others, his arms folded tightly together, and his eyes fixed upon the convict, stood Hugh. “Answer her,” he said, gravely, as the convict did not reply. “Tell her if Adah be her child, or,——_’Lina_,——which?” Had a clap of thunder cleft the air around her, ’Lina could not have started up sooner than she did. It was the _very first suspicion_ which had crossed her brain, and her life seemed dying out, as half way between Mrs. Worthington and the convict she stood with hands outstretched and livid lips, which tried to speak, but could only moan convulsively. The convict took his eyes away from _her_, pitying her so much, as he said, “_Adah_ is my lawful child. I kept her, and sent the other back. It was a bold act, and I wonder it was not questioned, but Adaline’s eyes were not so black then as they are now, and though five months older than the other, she was small for her age, and two years sometimes change a child materially; so Eliza took it for granted that the girl she received as Adaline, and whose real name was Matilda, was her own; but Adah Hastings is _her_ daughter and Hugh’s half sister while this young woman is—the child of myself and the servant girl.” Alice, Anna, and the doctor looked aghast, while Mrs. Worthington murmured audibly, “Adah, darling Adah, and Willie, precious Willie—oh, I want them here now!”