that it may
come to you very swiftly. It will come to you while you are with the
poor child,--our Adele. Greet her for me as warmly as you can. Tell her
I shall hope, God willing, to bring her into the bosom of his Holy
Church Catholic. I shall try and love her, though she remain a heretic;
but this will not be.

"If I can enough curb myself, I shall wait for your answer, Monsieur;
but it is necessary that I go yonder. Look for me; kiss our child for
me. And if you ever prayed, Monsieur, I should say, pray for

"_Votre amie_,

"JULIE."

The letter is of the nature of a revelation to Adele; her doubts
respecting Madame Arles vanish on the instant. The truth, as set forth
in her mother's language, blazes upon her mind like a flame. She loves
the grave none the less, but the mother by far the more. She, too,
wishes to greet her amid the scenes which she has known so long. Nor is
Maverick himself averse to this new disposition of affairs, if indeed he
possessed any power (which he somewhat doubts) of readjusting it. Seeing
the kindly intentions toward Adele, and the tolerant feeling (to say the
least) with which Mrs. Maverick will be met by these friends of the
daughter, he trusts that the mother's interviews with the Doctor, and a
knowledge of the kindly influences under which Adele has grown up, may
lessen the danger of a religious altercation between mother and child,
which has been his great bugbear in view of their future association.

A man of the world, like Maverick, naturally takes this common-sense
view of religious differences; why not compound matters, he thinks; and
he hints as much quietly to the parson. The old gentleman's spirit is
stirred to its depths by the intimation; like all earnest zealots, he
recognizes one only unswerving rule of faith, and that the faith in
which he has been reared. They who hold conflicting doctrines must
yield,--yield absolutely,--or there is no safety for them. In his eye
there was but one strait gate to the Celestial City, and that any
wearing the furbelows of Rome should ever enter thereat could only come
of God's exceeding mercy; for himself, it must always be a duty to cry
aloud to such to strip themselves clean of their mummery, and do works
"meet for repentance."

Adele, after her first period of exultation over the recent news is
passed, relapses--perhaps by reason of its excess--into something of her
old vague doubt and apprehension of coming evil. The tr