I do feel Adah's leaving us very much; but that is not all.

I have wished to talk with you a long time--wished to tell you how I feel.

May I, Alice ?--may I open to you my whole heart, and show you what is there ?" For a moment Alice felt a thrill of fear--a dread of what the opening of his heart to her might disclose.

Then she remembered Golden Hair, whose name she had never heard him breathe, save as it passed his delirious lips.

It was of her he would talk; he would tell her of that hidden love whose existence she felt sure was not known at Spring Bank.
Alice would rather not have had this confidence, for the deep love-life of such as Hugh Worthington seemed to her a sacred thing; but he looked so white, so careworn, so much as if it would be a relief, that Alice answered at last: "Yes, Hugh, you may tell, and I will listen." He began by telling Alice first of his early boyhood, uncheered by a single word of sympathy save as it came from dear Aunt Eunice, who alone understood the wayward boy whom people thought so bad.
"Even she did not quite understand me," he said; "she did not dream of that hidden recess in my heart which yearned so terribly for a human love--for something or somebody to check the evil passions so rapidly gaining the ascendant.