This done, Mrs.Worthington felt easier, and as Hugh looked tired and worried, she left him for a time, having first called Muggins to gather up the fragments of 'Lina's letter which Hugh had thrown upon the carpet.
"Yes, burn every trace of it," Hugh said, watching the child as she picked up piece by piece, and threw them into the grate.
"I means to save dat ar.

I'll play I has a letter for Miss Alice," Mug thought, as she came upon a bit larger than the others, and unwittingly she hid in her bosom that portion of the letter referring to herself and Harney! This done, she too left the room, and Hugh was at last alone.
He had little hope now that he would ever win Alice, so jealously sure was he that Irving was preferred before him, and he whispered sadly to himself: "I can live on just the same, I suppose.

Life will be no more dreary than it was before I knew her.

No, nor half so dreary, for 'it is better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.' That is what Adah said once when I asked what she would give never to have met that villain." As it frequently happens that when an individual is talked or thought about, that individual appears, so Adah now came in, asking how Hugh was, and if she should not sit a while with him.
Hugh's face brightened at once, for next to Alice he liked best to have Adah with him.

With 'Lina's letter still fresh in his mind it was very natural for him to think of what was said of Augusta Stanley, and after Adah had sat a moment, he asked if she remembered such a person at Madam Dupont's school, or Lottie Gardner either.
"Yes, I remember them both," and Adah looked up quickly.