gnizing, under
all, his serene trust, and gratefully conscious of his tender regard and
constant watchfulness. But, more than all, it was a subject of confusion
to her, that the prim and austere Miss Eliza, whose pride and
selfishness her keen eye could not fail to see, should be possessed of a
truer faith than the poor stranger whose gentleness, and suffering so
patiently borne, seemed in a measure to Christianize and dignify
character. And if she dropped a hint of these doubts, as she sometimes
did, in the ear of the motherly Mrs. Elderkin, that good woman took her
hand tenderly,--"My dear Adele, we are all imperfect; but God sees with
other eyes than ours. Trust Him,--trust Him above all, Adele!"

Yes, she trusts Him,--she knows she trusts Him. Why not? Whom else to
trust? No tender motherly care and guidance; the father, by these years
of absence, made almost a stranger. The low voice of her native land,
that comes to her ear with a charming flow from the lips of her new
teacher, never to speak of her doubts or questionings; the constrained
love of the Doctor, her New Papa, framing itself, whenever it touches
upon the deeper motives of her nature, in stark formulas of speech, that
blind and confound her; the spinster sister talking kindly, but
commending the tie of her hat-ribbons in the same tone with which she
urges adherence to some cumbrous enunciation of doctrine. And Adele
cherishes her little friendships (most of all with Rose); not alive as
yet to any tenderer and stronger passion that shall engross her, and
make or mar her life; swinging her reticule, as in the days gone by,
under the trees that embower the village street; loving the bloom, the
verdure, the singing of the birds, but with every month now--as she
begins to fathom the abyss of life with her own thought--grown more
serious. It is always thus: the girl we toyed with yesterday with our
inanities of speech is to-morrow, by some sudden reach of womanly
thought, another creature,--out of range, and so alert, that, if we
would conquer her, we must bring up our heaviest siege-trains.

XXXII.

In the summer of 1837, Maverick, who had continued eminently successful,
determined to sail for America, and to make good his promise of a visit
to the Doctor and Adele. It may appear somewhat inexplicable that a
father should have deferred to so late a day the occasion of meeting and
greeting an only child. That his attachment was strong, his letters,
full