Adèle, enjoying this easy familiarity with such a pattern of manhood,—as she fondly imagines her father to be,—indulges in full, hearty story of her experiences, at school, with Miss Johns, with the Elderkins, with all those whom she has learned to call friends. And Maverick listens, as he never listened to a grand opera in the theatre of Marseilles.
"And so you have stolen a march upon them all, Adèle? I suppose they haven't a hint of the person you were to meet?"
"All,—at least nearly all, dear papa; there was only good Madame Arles, to whom I could not help saying that I was coming to see you."
A shade passed over the face of Maverick, which it required all his self-possession to conceal from the quick eye of his daughter.
"And who, pray, is this Madame Arles, Adèle?"
"Oh, a good creature! She has taught me French; no proper teaching, to be sure; but in my talk with her, all the old idioms have come back to me: at least, I hope so."
And she rattles on in French speech, explaining how it was,—how they walked together in those sunny noontides at Ashfield; and taking a girlish pride in the easy adaptation of her language to forms which her father must know so well, she rounds off a little torrent of swift narrative with a piquant, coquettish look, and says,—
"N'est ce pas, que j'y suis, mon père?"
"Parfaitement, ma chère," says the father, and drops an admiring kiss upon the glowing cheeks of Adèle.
But the shade of anxiety has not passed from the face of Maverick.