d, but
she begged to be alone. It was an April evening, the chilliness of the
earth just yielding to the coming summer; the frogs clamorous in all the
near pools, and filling the air with the harsh uproar of their voices;
the delicate grass-blades were just thrusting their tips through the
brown web of the old year's growth, and in sunny, close-trodden spots
showing a mat of green, while the fleecy brown blossoms of the elm were
tufting all the spray of the embowering trees. Here and there a village
loiterer greeted her kindly. They all knew Miss Adele. "They will all
know it to-morrow," she thought, "and then--then--"

With a swift but unsteady step she makes her way to the little
graveyard; she had gone there often, and there were those who said
wantonly that she went to say her prayers before the little cross upon
the tombstone she had placed over the grave of Madame Arles. Now she
threw herself prone upon the little hillock, with a low, sharp cry of
distress, like that of a wounded bird,--"My mother! my mother!"

Every word, every look of tenderness which the dead woman had lavished,
she recalls now with a terrible distinctness. Those loud, vague appeals
of her delirium come to her recollection with a meaning in them that is
only too plain; and then the tight, passionate clasp, when, strained to
her bosom, relief came at last. Adele lies there unconscious of the
time, until the night dews warn her away; she staggers through the gate.
Where next? She fancies they must know it all at the Elderkins',--that
she has no right there. Is she not an estray upon the world? Shall she
not--as well first as last--wander forth, homeless as she is, into the
night? And true to these despairing thoughts, she hurries away farther
and farther from the town. The frogs croak monotonously in all the
marshes, as if in mockery of her grief. On some near tree an owl is
hooting, with a voice that is strangely and pitifully human. Presently
an outlying farm-house shows its cheery, hospitable light through the
window-panes, and she is tempted to shorten her steps and steal a look
into the room where the family sits grouped around the firelight. No
such sanctuary for her ever was or ever can be. Even the lowing of a cow
in the yard, and the answering bleat of a calf within the barn, seem to
mock the outcast.

On she passes, scarce knowing whither her hurrying steps are bearing
her, until at last she spies a low building in the fields away upo