return to Ashfield there is found a new letter from Madam
Maverick. She can restrain herself no longer. Under the advices of her
brother, she will, with her maid, take the first safe ship leaving
Marseilles for New York. She longs to bring Adele with herself, by
special consecration, under the guardianship of the Holy Virgin.

The Doctor is greatly grieved in view of the speedy departure of Adele,
and tenfold grieved when Maverick lays before him the letter of the
mother, and he sees the fiery zeal which the poor child must confront.

Over and over in those last interviews he seeks to fortify her faith; he
warns her against the delusions, the falsities, the idolatries of Rome;
he warns her to distrust a religion of creeds, of human authority, of
traditions. Christ, the Bible,--these are the true monitors; and "Mind,
Adaly," says he, "hold fast always to the Doctrine of the Westminster
Divines. That is sound,--that is sound!"

LXII.

Reuben went with a light heart upon his voyage. The tender memories of
Ashfield were mostly lived down. (Had the letter of Adele ever reached
him, it might have been far different.) Rose, Phil, the Tourtelots, the
Tew partners (still worrying through a green old age), the
meeting-house, even the Doctor himself and Adele, seemed to belong to a
sphere whose interests were widely separate from his own, and in which
he should appear henceforth only as a casual spectator. The fascinations
of his brilliant business successes had a firm grip upon him. He
indulges himself, indeed, from time to time, with the fancy that some
day, far off now, he will return to the scenes of his boyhood, and
astonish some of the old landholders by buying them out at a fabulous
price, and by erecting a "castle" of his own, to be enlivened by the
fairy graces of some sylph not yet fairly determined upon. Surely not
Rose, who would hardly be equal to the grandeur of his proposed
establishment, if she were not already engrossed by that "noodle" (his
thought expressing itself thus wrathfully) of an assistant minister.
Adele,--and the name has something in it that electrifies, in spite of
himself,--Adele, if she ever overcomes her qualms of conscience, will
yield to the tender persuasions of Phil. "Good luck to him!"--and he
says this, too, with a kind of wrathful glee.

Still, he builds his cloud castles; some one must needs inhabit them.
Some paragon of refinement and of beauty will one day appear, for whose
tripp