ccount I gave you of her sudden death, and how she died without ever
telling me anything of herself,--though I believe it was in her mind to
do so, at the last."

No, of a truth, such a letter had never been received by Maverick, and
he cursed the mails royally for it, since it might have prevented the
need of any such disclosure as he had made to his friend Johns. When the
present missive of Adele came to him, he was entering the brilliant Cafe
de L'Orient at Marseilles, in company with his friend Papiol. The news
staggered him for a moment.

"Papiol!" said he, "_mon ami_, Julie is dead!"

"_Parbleu!_ And among your Puritans, yonder? She must have made a
piquant story of it all!"

"Not a word, Papiol! She has kept by her promise bravely."

"_Tant mieux_: it will give you good appetite, _mon ami_."

For a moment the better nature of Maverick had been roused, and he
turned a look of loathing upon the complacent Frenchman seated by him
(which fortunately the stolid Papiol did not comprehend). For a moment,
his thought ran back to a sunny hillside near to the old town of Arles,
where lines of stunted, tawny olives crept down the fields,--where
fig-trees showed their purple nodules of fruit,--where a bright-faced
young peasant-girl, with a gay kerchief turbaned about her head with a
coquettish tie, lay basking in the sunshine. He heard once more the trip
of her voice warbling a Provencal song, while the great ruin of the
Roman _arene_ came once more to his vision, with its tufting shrubs and
battered arches rising grim and gaunt into the soft Southern sky; the
church-bells of the town poured their sweet jangle on his ear again, the
murmur of distant voices came floating down the wind, and again the
pretty Provencal song fluttered on the balmy air; the coquettish turban
was in his eye, the plump, soft hand of the pretty Provencal girl in his
grasp, and her glossy locks touched his burning cheek. So much, at
least, that was Arcadian; and then (in his glowing memory still) the
loves, the jealousies, the delusions, the concealments, the
faithlessness, the desertion, the parting! And now,--now the chief
actress in this drama that had touched him so nearly lay buried in a New
England grave, with his own Adele her solitary mourner!

"It was your friend the Doctor who gave the good woman absolution, I
suppose," said Papiol, tapping his snuff-box, and gathering a huge pinch
between thumb and finger.

"Not even that comfort,