r, when Reuben so opened the way to her belief, and associated
himself so intimately with the culmination of her religious faith, he
seemed to her for a time the very impersonation of her girlish
fancy,--so tender, so true, so trustful. Her religious enthusiasm
blended with and warmed her sentiment; and never had she known such
hours of calm enjoyment, or such hopeful forecast of her worldly future,
as in those golden days when the hearts of both were glowing (or seemed
to be) with a common love. It was not that this sentiment in her took
any open form of expression; her instinctive delicacy so kept it under
control that she was but half conscious of its existence. But it was
none the less true that the sad young pilgrim, who had been a brother,
and who had unlocked for her the Beautiful Gate, wore a new aspect. Her
heart was full of those glittering estimates of life, which come at rare
intervals, in which duties and affections all seem in delightful accord,
working each their task, and glowing through all the reach of years,
until the glow is absorbed in the greater light which shines upon
Christian graves. But Reuben's desertion from the faith broke this
phantasm. Her faith, standing higher, never shook; but the sentiment
which grew under its cover found nothing positive whereby to cling, and
perished with the shock. Besides which, her father's injunction came to
the support of her religious convictions, and made her disposition to
shake off that empty fancy tenfold strong. Had Reuben, in those days of
his exaltation, made declaration of his attachment, it would have met
with a response that could have admitted of no withdrawal, and her heart
would have been leashed to his, whatever outlawry might threaten him.
She thanked Heaven that it had not been thus. Her ideal was still
unstained and unbroken; but it no longer found its type in the
backsliding Reuben. It is doubtful, indeed, if her sentiment at this
period, by mere force of rebound, and encouraged by her native charities
and old proclivities, did not rally about young Elderkin, who had
equipped himself with many accomplishments of the world, and who, if he
made no pretensions to the faith she had embraced, manifested an
habitual respect that challenged her gratitude.

As for Reuben, after his enthusiasm of the summer had vanished, he felt
a prodigious mortification in reflecting that Adele had been so closely
the witness of his short-lived hallucination. It humi