nd on which
comes betimes the recollection of a father's kindly face, that in the
growing distance makes her isolation seem even more appalling.

Rose, good soul, detects these humors by a keen, girlish instinct, and,
gliding up to her, passes her arm around her,--

"What is it now, Adele, dear?"

And she, looking down at her, (for Adele was the taller by half a head,)
says,--

"What a good mother you have, Rose!"

"Only that!"--and Rose laughs gleefully for a moment, when, bethinking
herself where the secret grief lay, her sweet face is overcast in an
instant, and reaching up her two hands, she draws down the face of Adele
to hers, and kisses her on either cheek.

Phil, who is at a game of chess with Grace, pretends not to see this
side demonstration; but his next move is to sacrifice his only remaining
castle in the most needless manner.

Dame Tourtelot, too, has pressed her womanly prerogative of knowing
whatever could be known about the French girl who comes occasionally
with Miss Eliza to her tea-drinkings, and who, with a native taste for
music, is specially interested in the piano of Miss Almira.

"It must be very tedious," says the Dame, "to be so long away from home
and from those that love you. Almiry, now, hardly goes for a week to
Cousin Jerushy's at Har'ford but she is a-frettin' to be back in her old
home. Don't you feel it, Adeel?" (The Dame is not to be driven out of
her own notions of pronunciation by any French accents.) "But don't be
down-hearted, my child; it's God's providence that's brought you away
from a Popish country."

And she pushes her inquiries regarding the previous life of Adele with
an earnestness and an authoritative air which at times do not fail to
provoke a passionate retort. To this the old lady is wholly unused; and
condemning her straightway as a hot-headed Romanist, it is to be feared
that we must regard the Dame henceforth as one disposed to look upon the
least favorable lights which may appear, whether in the past history of
Adele or in the developments to come.

The spinster, also, who is mistress of the parsonage, though never
giving up her admiring patronage of Adele, and governing her curiosity
with far more tact than belongs to Dame Tourtelot, has yet shown a
persistent zeal in pushing her investigations in regard to all that
concerned the family history of her little _protegee_. She has lent an
eager ear to all the communications which Maverick has addressed t