d no meaning save as
expressive of a deep yearning for motherly guidance and motherly
affection.

Mrs. Elderkin, with her kindly instinct, had seen the perplexity of
Adele, and had said to her one day, "Ady, my dear, is the thought not
grateful to you that you will meet your mother once more, and be clasped
in her arms?"

"If I could,--if I could!" said Adele, with a burst of tears.

"But you will, my child, you will. The Doctor has shown us the letters
of your father. Nothing can be clearer. Even now she must be longing to
greet you."

"Why does she not come, then?"--with a tone that was almost taunting.

"But, Adele, my dear, there may be reasons of which you do not know or
which you could not understand."

"I could,--I do!" said Adele, with spirit mastering her grief. "'T is
not my mother, my true mother; she is in the graveyard; I know it!"

"My dear child, do not decide hastily. We love you; we all love you. You
know that. And whatever may happen, you shall have a home with us. I
will be a mother to you, Adele."

The girl kissed her good hostess, and the words lingered on her ear long
after nightfall. Why not her mother? What parent could be more kind?
What home more grateful? And should she bring dishonor to it then? Could
she be less sensitive to that thought than her father had already shown
himself? She perceives, indeed, that within a short time, and since the
later communications from her father, the manner of those who had looked
most suspiciously upon her has changed. But they do not know the secret
of that broidered kerchief,--the secret of that terrible death-clasp,
which she never, never can forget. She will be true to her own sense of
honor; she will be true, too, to her own faith,--the faith in which she
has been reared,--whatever may be the persuasions of that new relative
beyond the seas whom she so dreads to meet.

Indeed, it is with dreary anticipations that she forecasts now her
return to that _belle France_ which has so long borne olive-branches
along its shores for welcome; she foresees struggle, change,
hypocrisies, may be,--who can tell?--and she begins to count the weeks
of her stay amid the quiet of Ashfield in the same spirit in which
youngsters score off the remaining days of the long vacation. Adele
finds herself gathering, and pressing within the leaves of some
cherished book, little sprays of dead bloom that shall be, in the dim
and mysterious future, mementoes of the walks,