uth--if it be
truth--is so strange!--so mysteriously strange that she shall indeed
clasp her mother to her heart; the grave yonder is so real! and that
fearful embrace in death so present to her! Or it may be an anticipation
of the fearful spiritual estrangement that must ensue, and of which she
seems to find confirmation in the earnest talk and gloomy forebodings of
the Doctor.

Maverick effects a diversion by proposing a jaunt of travel, in which
Rose shall be their companion. Adele accepts the scheme with delight,--a
delight, after all, which lies as much in the thought of watching the
eager enjoyment of Rose as in any pleasant distractions of her own. The
pleasure of Maverick is by no means so great as in that trip of a few
years back. Then he had for companion an enthusiastic girl, to whom life
was fresh, and all the clouds that seemed to rest upon it so shadowy,
that each morning sun lifting among the mountains dispersed them
utterly.

Now, Adele showed the thoughtfulness of a woman,--her enthusiasms held
in check by a more calm estimate of the life that opened before
her,--her sportiveness overborne by a soberness, which, if it gave
dignity, gave also a womanly gravity. Yet she did not lack filial
devotion; she admired still that easy world-manner of his which had once
called out her enthusiastic regard, but now queried in her secret heart
if its acquisition had not involved cost of purity of conscience. She
loved him too,--yes, she loved him; and her evening and morning kiss and
embrace were reminders to him of a joy he might have won, but had
not,--of a home peace that might have been his, but whose image now only
lifted above his horizon like some splendid mirage crowded with floating
fairy shapes, and like the mirage melted presently into idle vapor.

It was a novel experience for Maverick to find himself (as he did time
and again upon this summer trip in New England) sandwiched, of a Sunday,
between his two blooming companions and some sober-sided deacon, in the
pew of a country meeting-house. How his friend Papiol would have stared!
And the suggestion, coming to him with the buzz of a summer fly through
the open windows, did not add to his devotional sentiment. Yet Maverick
would follow gravely the scramble of the singers through the appointed
hymn with a sober self-denial, counting the self-denial a virtue. We all
make memoranda of the small religious virtues when the large ones are
missing.

Upon the