cheek--gave a completed beauty to her appeals.

Reuben saw that Phil was terribly in earnest in his love, and he
fancied, with some twinges, that he saw indications on the part of Adele
of its being not wholly unacceptable. Rose, too, seemed not disinclined
to receive the assiduous attentions of the young minister, who had
become a frequent visitor in the Elderkin household, and who preached
with an unction and an earnestness that touched her heart, and that made
her sigh despondingly over the outcast son of the old pastor. Watching
these things with a look studiedly careless and indifferent, Reuben felt
himself cut off more than ever from such charms or virtues as might
possibly have belonged to continued association with the companions of
his boyhood, and nerved himself for a new and firmer grip upon those
pleasures of the outer world which had not yet proved an illusion. There
were moments--mostly drifting over him in silent night-hours, within his
old chamber at the parsonage--when it seemed to him that he had made a
losing game of it. The sparkling eyes of Adele, suffused with tears,--as
in that memorable interview of the garden,--beam upon him, promising, as
then, other guidance; they gain new brilliance, and wear stronger
entreaty, as they shine lovingly upon him from the distance--growing
greater and greater--which now lies between them. Her beauty, her grace,
her tenderness, now that they are utterly beyond reach, are tenfold
enticing; and in that other sphere to which, in his night revery, they
seem translated, the joyous face of Rose, like that of an attendant
angel, looks down regretfully, full of a capacity for love to which he
must be a stranger.

He is wakened by the bells next morning,--a Sunday morning, may be.
There they go,--he sees them from the window,--the two comely damsels,
picking their way through the light, fresh-fallen snow of March. Going
possibly to teach the catechism; he sneers at this thought, for he is
awake now. Has the world no richer gift in store for him? That Sophie
Bowrigg is a great fortune, a superb dancer, a gorgeous armful of a
woman. What if they were to join their fortunes and come back some day
to dazzle these quiet townsfolk with the splendor of their life? His
visits in Ashfield grow shorter and more rare. There is nothing
particularly alluring. We shall not meet him there again until we meet
him for the last time.

Mr. Catesby is an "acceptable preacher." He unfolds