he, seizing her hand again, "from this very hour!"

An instant she seemed to waver; then came over her the memory of her
father's injunction,--the mystery, too, that overshadowed her own life.

"I cannot,--I cannot, Reuben!"

"Is this final?" said he, calmly.

"Final."

She sighed it rather than spoke aloud; the next instant she had slipped
away through the shrubbery, with a swift, cruel rustle of her silken
dress, toward the parsonage.

Reuben lingered in the orchard until he saw the light flashing through
the muslin hangings of her window. She had gone early to her chamber.
She had kissed the crucifix that was her mother's with a fervor that
sprang as much from devotion as from sentiment. She had sobbed out her
prayer, and with sobs had buried her sweet face in the pillow.

Could Reuben have seen or conceived all this, he might have acted
differently.

As it was, he entered the Doctor's study an hour later, with the utmost
apparent coolness.

"Well, father," said he, "I have offered marriage to your motherless and
pious French _protegee_, and she declines."

"My poor son!" said the Doctor.

But his sympathy was not so much with any possible feeling of
disappointment as with the chilling heartlessness and unbelief that
seemed to boast themselves in his speech.

"It will be rather dull in Ashfield now, I fancy," continued Reuben,
"and I shall slip off to New York to-morrow and take a new taste of the
world."

And the Doctor (as if to himself) said despairingly, "'_Whom He will He
hardeneth._'"

"But father," said Reuben, (without notice of the old gentleman's
ejaculation,) "don't let Aunt Eliza know of this,--not a word, or she
will be fearfully cruel to the poor child."

There was a grave household in the parsonage next morning. Reuben
rebelled in heart, in face, and in action against the tediously long
prayer of the parson, though the old gentleman's spirit was writhing
painfully in his pleadings. The aunt was more pious and austere than
ever. Adele, timid and shrinking, yet with a beautiful and a trustful
illumination in her eye, that for days, and weeks, and months, lingered
in the memory of the parson's son.

Later in the day Reuben went to make his adieus to the Elderkins. The
old Squire was seated in his door busied with the "Weekly Courant,"
which had just come in.

"Aha, Master Reuben," (this was his old-fashioned way,) "you're looking
for that lazy fellow, Phil, I suppose. You'll find hi