"I know now the secret of your caution in respect to Reuben; you have been unwilling that your child should bring any possible shame to the household of a friend! Trust to me,—trust to me, papa, your sensitiveness cannot possibly be keener, if it be more generous, than my own. Yet I have never told you—what I have since learned—of the unselfish devotion of Reuben, which declared itself when he knew all,—all. Would I not be almost tempted to thank him with—myself? Yet, trust me, if I have written him with an almost unmaidenly warmth, I have called to his mind the great gulf that must lie between us.
"Is the old godmother, of whom you used to speak, still alive? It seems that I should love to hang about her neck in memory of days gone; it seems that I should love the warm sky under which I was born,—I am sure I should love the olive orchards, and the vines, and the light upon the sea. I feel as if I were living in chains now. When, when will you come to break them, and set me free?"
In those days of May, when the leaflets were unfolding, and when the downy bluebells were lifting their clustered blossoms filled with a mysterious fragrance, like the breath of young babes, Adèle loved to linger in the study of the parsonage; more than ever the good Doctor seemed a "New Papa,"—more than ever his eye dwelt upon her with a parental smile. It was not that she loved Rose less, that she lingered here so long; but she could not shake off the conviction that some day soon Rose might shrink from her. The good Doctor never would. Nor can it be counted strange if there, in the study so familiar to her childhood, she should recall the days when she had frolicked down the orchard, when Reuben had gathered flowers for her, when life seemed enchanting. Was it enchanting now?
The Doctor was always gravely kind. "Have courage, Adaly, have courage!" he was wont to say, "God orders all things right."
And somehow, when she hears him say it, she believes it more than ever.
Ten days, a fortnight, and a month pass, and there is no acknowledgment from Reuben of her grateful letter. He does not count it worth his while, apparently, to break his long silence; or, possibly, he is too much engrossed with livelier interests to give a thought to this episode of his old life in Ashfield. Adèle is disturbed by it; but the very disturbance gives her new courage to combat faithfully the difficulties of her position. "One cheering word I would have thought he might have given me," said she.
The appeal to her father, too, has no answer. Before it reaches its destination, Maverick has taken ship for America; and, singularly enough, it is fated that the letter of Adèle should be first opened and read—by her mother.
LVII.
Some time in mid-May of this year Maverick writes:—
"My dear Johns,—I shall again greet you, God willing, in your own home, some forty days hence, and I shall come as a repentant Benedick; for I now wear the dignities of a married man. Your kind letter counted for a great deal toward my determination; but I will not affect to conceal from you, that my tender interest in the future of Adèle counted for a great deal more. As I had supposed, the communication to Julie (which I effected through her brother) that her child was still living, and living motherless, woke all the tenderness of her nature. I cannot say that the sudden change in her inclinations was any way flattering to me; but knowing her recent religious austerities, I was prepared for this. I shall not undertake to describe to you our first interview, which I can never forget. It belongs to those heart-secrets which cannot be spoken of; but this much I may tell you,—that, if there was no kindling of the old and wayward love, there grew out of it a respect for her present severity and elevation of character that I had never anticipated. At our age, indeed, (though, when I think of it, I must be many years your junior,) a respect for womanly character most legitimately takes the place of that disorderly sentiment which twenty years ago blazed out in passion.