kind to me! I know the truth now,--the
mystery, the shame";--and she dropped her head upon his knees.

"Adaly, Adaly, my dear child!" said the old man with a great tremor in
his voice, "what does this mean?"

She was sobbing, sobbing.

"Adaly, my child, what can I do for you?"

"Pray for me, New Papa!" and she lifted her eyes upon him with a tender,
appealing look.

"Always, always, Adaly!"

"Tell me, New Papa,--tell me honestly,--is it not true that I can call
no one mother,--that I never could?"

The Doctor trembled: he would have given ten years of his life to have
been able to challenge her story, to disabuse her mind of the belief
which he saw was fastened past all recall. "Adaly," said he, "Christ
befriended the Magdalen,--how much more you, then, if so be you are the
unoffending child of----"

"I knew it! I knew it!" and she fell to sobbing again upon the knee of
the old gentleman, in a wild, passionate way.

In such supreme moments the mind reaches its decisions with electrical
rapidity. Even as she leaned there, her thought flashed upon that poor
Madame Arles who had so befriended her,--against whom they had cautioned
her, who had shown such intense emotion at their first meeting, who had
summoned her at the last, and who had died with that wailing cry, "_Ma
fille!_" upon her lip. Yes, yes, her mother indeed, who died in her
arms! (she can never forget that death-clasp.)

She hints as much to the Doctor, who, in view of his recent
communication from Maverick, will not gainsay her.

When she moved away at last, as if for a leave-taking, silent and
humiliated, the old man said to her, "My child, are you not still my
Adaly? God is no respecter of persons; his ministers should be like
him."

Whereupon Adele came and kissed him with a warmth that reminded him of
days long past.

She rejoiced in not having encountered the gray, keen eyes of the
spinster. She knew they would read unfailingly the whole extent of the
revelation that had dawned upon her. That the spinster herself knew the
truth, and had long known it, she was sure; and she recalled with a
shudder the look of those uncanny eyes upon the evening of their little
frolic at the Elderkins. She dreaded the thought of ever meeting them
again, and still more the thought of listening to the stiff, cold words
of consolation which she knew she would count it her duty to administer.

It was dusk when she left the Doctor's door; he would have attende