“It’s so strange.  I found in the hall, near my door, a tiny ambrotype of a young girl, who must have been very beautiful—­such splendid hair, soft brown eyes, and cheeks like carnation pinks.  I wondered much whose it was, for I knew the owner must be sorry to lose it.  Father suggested that we put a written notice in the business office, and that very afternoon Dr. Richards knocked at our door, saying the ambrotype was his.  ‘I would not lose it for the world,’ he said, ’as the original is dead,’ and he looked so sad that I pitied him so much; but I have the strangest part yet to tell.  You are sure she cannot hear?” and walking to the open window, Ellen glanced down the long piazza to where Adah’s dress was visible.

“I looked at the face so much that I never can forget it, particularly the way the hair was worn, combed almost as low upon the forehead as you wears yours, and just as that Mrs. Hastings wears hers.  I noticed it the moment I came in; and, ’Lina, Mrs. Hastings is the original of that ambrotype, I’m sure, only the picture was younger, fresher-looking, than she.  But they are the same, I’m positive, and that’s why I started so when I first saw this Adah.  Funny, isn’t it?”

’Lina knew just how positive Ellen was with regard to any opinion she espoused, and presumed in her own mind that in this point, as in many others, she was mistaken.  Still she answered that it was queer, though she could not understand what Adah could possibly be to Dr. Richards.

“Call her in for something and I’ll manage to question her.  I’m so curious and so sure,” Ellen said, while ’Lina called:  “Adah, Miss Tiffton wishes to see how my new blue muslin fits.  Come help me try it on.”

Obedient to the call Adah came, and was growing very red in the face with trying to hook ’Lina’s dress, when Ellen casually remarked: 

“You lived in New York, I think?”

“Yes, ma’am,” was the reply, and Ellen continued: 

“Maybe I saw some of your acquaintances.  I was there a long time.”

Oh, how eagerly Adah turned toward her now, the glad thought flashing upon her that possibly she meant George.  Maybe he’d come home.

“Whom did you see?” she asked, her eyes fixed wistfully on Ellen, who replied: 

“Oh, a great many.  There was Mr. Reed, and Mr. Benedict, and Mr. Ward, and—­well, I saw the most of Dr. Richards, perhaps.  Do you know either of them?”

“No, I never heard of them before,” was the reply, so frankly spoken that Ellen was confounded, for she felt sure that Dr. Richards was a name entirely new to Adah.

“I thought you were mistaken,” ’Lina said, when the dress was taken off and Adah gone.  “A man such as you describe the doctor would not care for a poor girl like Adah.  Is his home at New York, and are you sure he’ll be at Saratoga?”

“He said so; and I think he told me his mother and sisters were in some such place as Snow-down, or Snow-something.”