Why, I hate and despise you myself for the wrong you have done my sister," and Hugh's tall form seemed to take on an increased height as he stood, gazing down on one who could not meet his eye, but cowered and hid his face.
It was the first time Hugh had called Adah "my sister," and it seemed to fill every nook and corner of his great heart with unutterable love for the absent girl.

"Sister, sister," he kept repeating to himself, and as he did so, his resentful indignation grew toward the man who had so cruelly deceived her, until at last he abruptly left the room, lest his hot temper should get the mastery, and he knock down his dastardly brother-in-law, as he greatly wished to do.
It was a sad house at Spring Bank that night, and only the negroes were capable of any enjoyment.

Terrified at first at what by dint of listening they saw and heard, they assembled in the kitchen, and together rehearsed the strange story, wondering if none of the tempting supper prepared with so much care would be touched by the whites.

If not, they, of course, had the next best right, and when about midnight Mrs.Worthington passed hurriedly through the dining-room, the table gave evidence that somebody had partaken of the marriage feast, and not very sparingly either.

But she did not care, her thoughts were divided between the distant Adah, her daughter--her own--the little brown-eyed child she had been so proud of years ago, and the moaning, wretched girl upstairs, 'Lina, tossing distractedly from side to side; now holding her throbbing head, and now thrusting out her hot, dry hands, as if to keep off some fancied form, whose hair, she said, was white as snow, and who claimed to be her mother.
The shock had been a terrible one to 'Lina--terrible in more senses than one.