“Cannot you guess?—­don’t you know now who I am?  God forgive your brother, as I asked him to do, kneeling there by the very chair where he sat an hour since, talking to you of Lily.  I heard him, and the sound of his voice took power and strength away.  I could not move to let you know I was there, for I was, and I lay upon the floor till consciousness forsook me; and then, when I awoke again, you both were gone.

“I went to the depot, I saw him in his face to make assurance sure, and Anna, I—­oh, I don’t know what I am.  The world would not call me a wife, though I believed I was; but they cannot deal thus cruelly by Willie, or wash from his veins his father’s blood, for I—­I, who write this, I who have been a servant in the house where I should have been the mistress, am Lily—­wronged, deserted Lily—­and Willie is your brother’s child!  His father’s look is in his face.  I see it there so plainly now, and know why that boy portrait of your brother has puzzled me so much.  But when I came here I had no suspicion, for he won me, not as a Richards—­George Hastings, that was the name by which I knew him, and I was Adah Gordon.  If you do not believe me, ask him when he comes back if ever in his wanderings he met with Adah Gordon, or her guardian, Mr. Monroe.  Ask if he was ever present at a marriage where this same Adah gave her heart to one for whom she would then have lost her life, erring in that she loved the gift more than the giver; but God punished idolatry, and He has punished me, so sorely, oh so sorely; that sometimes my fainting soul cries out, ‘’Tis more than I can bear,’”

Then followed more particulars so that there should be no doubt, and then the half-crazed Adah took up the theme nearest to her heart, her boy, her beautiful Willie.  She could not take him with her.  She knew not where she was going, and Willie must not suffer.  Would Anna take the child?

“I do not ask that the new bride should ever call him hers,” she wrote; “I’d rather she would not.  I ask that you should give him a mother’s care, and if his father will sometimes speak kindly to him for the sake of the older time when he did love the mother, tell him—­Willie’s father, I mean—­tell him, oh I know not what to bid you tell him, except that I forgive him, though at first it was so hard, and the words refused to come; I trusted him so much, loved him so much, and until I had it from his own lips, believed I was his wife.  But that cured me; that killed the love, if any still existed, and now, if I could, I would not be his, unless it were for Willie’s sake.

“And now farewell.  God deal with you, dear Anna, as you deal with my boy.”