"What can you do?" Hugh asked, and Adah replied:

"I don't know, but God will find me something. I never worked much, but
I can learn, and I can already sew neatly, too; besides that, a few days
before I decided to come here, I advertised in the _Herald_ for some
place as governess or ladies' waiting maid. Perhaps I'll hear from
that."

"It's hardly possible. Such advertisements are thick as blackberries,"
Hugh said, and then in a few brief words, he marked out Adah's future
course.

George Hastings might or might not return to claim her, and whether he
did or didn't, she must live meantime, and where so well as at Spring
Bank, or who, next to Mr. Hastings, was more strongly bound to care for
her than himself?"

"To be sure, he did not like women much," he said; "their artificial
fooleries disgusted him. There wasn't one woman in ten thousand that was
what she seemed to be. But even men are not all alike," he continued,
with something like a sneer, for when Hugh got upon his favorite hobby,
"women and their weaknesses," he generally grew bitter and sarcastic.
"Now, there's the one of whom you are continually thinking. I dare say
you have contrasted him with me and thought how much more elegant he was
in his appearance. Isn't it so?" and Hugh glanced at Adah, who, in a
grieved tone, replied:

"No, Mr. Worthington, I have not compared you with him--I have only
thought how good you were."