She had intended going immediately after the sale at Mosside, but Willie had been ailing ever since, and that had detained her.

Everything which Alice could do for her had been done.

Old Sam, at thoughts of parting with his little charge, had cried his dim eyes dimmer yet.

Mrs.Worthington, too, had wept herself nearly sick, for now that the parting drew near she began to feel how dear to her was the young girl who had come to them so strangely.
"More like a daughter you seem to me," she had said to Adah, in speaking of her going; "and once I had a wild--" here she stopped, leaving the sentence unfinished, for she did not care to tell Adah of the shock it had given her when Hugh first pointed out to her the faint mark on Adah's forehead.
It was fainter now even than then, for with increasing color and health it seemed to disappear, and Mrs.Worthington could scarcely see it, when with a caressing movement of her hand she put the silken hair back from Adah's brow and kissed the bluish veins.
"There is none there.

It was all a fancy," she murmured to herself, and then thinking of 'Lina, she said to Adah what she had all along meant to say, that if the Richards' family should question her of 'Lina, she was to divulge nothing to her disparagement, whether she were rich or poor, high or low.