since a respect for Mr.
Maverick's opinions and advice was almost a part of Adele's religion.

XLV.

We left Miss Eliza Johns in her chamber, swaying back and forth in her
rocking-chair, and resolutely confronting the dire news which the Doctor
had communicated. What was to be done? Never had so serious a problem
been presented to her for solution. There were both worldly and
religious motives, as the spinster reckoned them, for plucking out of
her heart all the growing tenderness which she had begun to feel toward
Adele; and the sudden discomfiture of that engaging, ambitious scheme
which she had fondled so long prompted a feeling of resentment which was
even worse than worldly.

How would you have treated the matter, Madam? Would your Christian
charities have shrunk from the ordeal? But whatever might have been the
other sins of the spinster, there was in her no disposition to shrink
from the conclusions to which her logic of propriety and respectability
might lead. Adele was to be discarded, but not suddenly. All her art
must be employed to disabuse Reuben of any lingering tenderness. The
Doctor's old prejudice against French blood must be worked to its
utmost. But there must be no violent clamor,--above all, no disclosure
of the humiliating truth. Maverick (the false man!) must be instructed
that it would be agreeable to the Johns family--nay, that their sense of
dignity demanded--that he should reclaim his child at an early day. On
this last score, it might be necessary, indeed, to practise very adroit
management with the Doctor; but for the rest, she had the amplest
confidence in her own activity and discretion.

She was not the woman to sleep upon her plans, when once they were
decided on; and she had no sooner forecast her programme than she took
advantage of the lingering twilight to arrange her toilette for a call
upon the Elderkins. Of course she led off the Doctor in her trail. The
spinster's "marching orders," as he jocularly termed them, the good man
was as incapable of resisting as if he had been twenty years a husband.

In a few swift words she unfolded her design.

"And now, Benjamin, don't, pray, let your sentiment get the better of
you, in regard to this French girl. Think of the proprieties in the
case, Benjamin,--the proprieties,"--which she enforced by a little shake
of her forefinger.

Whenever it came to a question of the "proprieties," the Doctor was
conscious of his weakness. What, i