g tears streamed down his
face as he gazed yearningly upon the dead body of his first-born.

LXVII.

In the autumn of 1845, three years after the incidents related in our
last chapter, Mr. Philip Elderkin, being at that time president of a
railroad company, which was establishing an important connection of
travel that was to pass within a few miles of the quiet town of
Ashfield, was a passenger on the steamer Caledonia, for Europe. He
sailed, partly in the interest of the company,--to place certain
bonds,--and partly in his own interest, as an intelligent man, eager to
add to his knowledge of the world.

At Paris, where he passed some time, it chanced that he was one evening
invited to the house of a resident American, where, he was gayly
assured, he would meet with a very attractive American heiress, the only
daughter of a merchant of large fortune.

Philip Elderkin--brave, straightforward fellow that he was--had never
forgotten his early sentiment. He had cared for those French graves in
Ashfield with an almost religious attention. In all the churchyard there
was not such scrupulously shorn turf, or such orderly array of bloom. He
counted--in a fever of doubt--upon a visit to Marseilles before his sail
for home.

But at the _soiree_ we have mentioned he was amazed and delighted to
meet, in the person of the heiress, Adele Maverick,--not changed
essentially since the time he had known her. That life at
Marseilles--even in the well-appointed home of her father--has none of
that domesticity which she had learned to love; and this first winter in
Paris for her does not supply the lack. That she has a great company of
admirers it is easy to understand; but yet she gives a most cordial
greeting to Phil Elderkin,--a greeting that by its manner makes the
pretenders doubtful. Philip finds it possible to reconcile the demands
of his business with a week's visit to Marseilles. To the general
traveller it is not a charming region. The dust abounds; the winds are
terrible; the sun is scalding. But Mr. Philip Elderkin found it
delightful. And, indeed, the country-house of Mr. Maverick had
attractions of its own; attractions so great that his week runs over
into two,--into three. There are excursions to the Pont du Gard, to the
Arene of Arles. And, before he leaves, he has an engagement there (which
he has enforced by very peremptory proposals) for the next spring.

On his return to Ashfield, he reports a very successful tr