CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE DAY OF THE WEDDING Dr.Richards had arrived at Spring Bank.

Hugh was the first to meet him.
For a moment he scrutinized the stranger's face earnestly, and then asked if they had never met before.
"Not to my knowledge," the doctor replied in perfect good faith, for he had no suspicion that the man eying him so closely was the one witness of his marriage with Adah, the stranger whom he scarcely noticed, and whose name he had forgotten.
Once fully in the light, where Hugh could discern the features plainer, he began to be less sure of having met his guest before, for that immense mustache and those well-trimmed whiskers had changed the doctor's physiognomy materially.
'Lina was glad to see the doctor.

She had even cried at his delay, and though no one knew it, had sat up nearly the whole preceding night, waiting and listening by her open window for any sound to herald his approach.
As the result of this long vigil, her head ached dreadfully the next day, and even the doctor noticed her burning cheeks and watery eyes, and feeling her rapid pulse asked if she were ill.
She was not, she said; she had only been troubled because he did not come, and then for once in her life she did a womanly act.

She laid her head in the doctor's lap and cried, just as she had done the previous night.

He understood the cause of her tears at last, and touched with a greater degree of tenderness for her than he had ever before experienced, he smoothed her glossy black hair, and asked: "Would you be very sorry to lose me ?" Selfish and hard as she was, 'Lina loved the doctor, and with a shudder as she thought of the deception imposed on him, and a half regret that she had so deceived him, she replied: "I am not worthy of you.