arch of her with his heart upon his lip and a great fire in his brain.
Not a little pride in affronting opinion may have kindled the glow of
his sudden resolve. There was an audacity in it that tempted and regaled
him. Why should he, whose beliefs were so uncertain, who had grown into
doubts of that faith on which all the conventional proprieties about him
reposed,--why should he not discard them, and obey a single, strong,
generous instinct? When a man's religious sensibilities suffer recoil as
Reuben's had done, there grows up a new pride in the natural emotions of
generosity; the humane instincts show exceptional force; the skeptics
become the teachers of an exaggerated philanthropy.

Did he love her beyond all others? Yesterday he could not have told;
to-day, under the fervor of his audacity and of his pride, his love
blazes in a fiery flame. It seethes around the memory of her lithe,
graceful figure in a whirl of passion. Those ripe red lips shall taste
the burning heat of his love and tenderness. He will guard, cherish,
protect, and the iron aunt may protest, or the world talk as it will.
"Adele!" "Adele!" His heart is full of the utterance, and his step wild
with tumultuous feeling, as he rushes away to find her,--to win her,--to
bind together their destinies forever!

XLVII.

It was a mellow evening of later October. Mists hung in all the hollows
of the hills. Within the orchard, where Adele was strolling, a few
golden apples still shone among the bronzed leaves. She saw Reuben
coming swiftly through the garden; but his eager step faltered as he
came near her. Even the serene look of girlhood has a power in it to
make impassioned confidence waver, and enthusiasms suffer recoil. He
meets her at last with an assumption of his every-day manner, which she
cannot but see presently is underlaid with a tempest of struggling
feeling to which he is a stranger. He has taken her hand and placed it
in his arm,--a little coquettish device to which he was wont; but he
keeps the little hand in his with a nervous clasp that is new, and that
makes her tremble all the more when his speech grows impassioned, and
the easy compliments of his past days of frolicsome humor take a depth
of tone which make her heart thrill strangely. Meantime, they had come
to the garden-end of the walk.

"It's late, Reuben, and I must go indoors," said she, with a quiet that
she did not feel.

"We'll take one more turn, Adele; you _must_." And h