by, but still the tonics of the kindly old physician prove of
little efficacy. One day the Bowriggs come blustering in, as is their
wont.

"Such assurance! Did you ever hear the like? Madame Arles writes us that
she is coming to see Ashfield again, and of course coming to us. The air
of the town agrees with her, and she hopes to find lodgings."

The eyes of Adele sparkle with satisfaction,--not so much, perhaps, by
reason of her old sympathy with the poor woman, which is now almost
forgotten, as because it will give some change at least to the dreary
monotony of the town life.

"Lodgings, indeed!" says the younger Miss Bowrigg. "I wonder where she
will find them!"

It is a matter of great doubt, to be sure,--since the sharp speech of
the spinster has so spread the story of her demerits, that not a
parishioner of the Doctor but would have feared to give the poor woman a
home.

Adele still has strength enough for an occasional stroll with Rose, and,
in the course of one of them, comes upon Madame Arles, whom she meets
with a good deal of her old effusion. And Madame, touched by her
apparent weakness, more than reciprocates it.

"But you suffer, you are unhappy, my child,--pining at last for the sun
of Provence. Isn't it so, _mon ange_? No, no, you were never meant to
grow up among these cold people. You must see the vineyards, and the
olives, and the sea, Adele; you must! you must!"

All this, uttered in a torrent, which, with its _tutoiements_, Rose can
poorly comprehend.

Yet it goes straight to the heart of Adele, and her tongue is loosened
to a little petulant, fiery _roulade_ against the severities of the life
around her, which it would have greatly pained poor Rose to listen to in
any speech of her own.

But such interviews, once or twice repeated, come to the knowledge of
the watchful spinster, who clearly perceives that Adele is chafing more
and more under the wonted family regimen. With an affectation of tender
solicitude, she volunteers herself to attend Adele upon her short
morning strolls, and she learns presently, with great triumph, that
Madame Arles has established herself at last under the same roof which
gives refuge to the outcast Boody woman. Nothing more was needed to seal
the opinion of the spinster, and to confirm the current village belief
in the heathenish character of the French lady. Dame Tourtelot was
shrewdly of the opinion that the woman represented some Popish plot for
the abducti