acted spirit to bolster its faith upon
such material symbol than to find repose in any merely intellectual
conviction of truth!

Adele's intimacy with Rose and with her family retained all its old
tenderness, but that good fellow Phil was gone. A blithe and merry
companion he had been! Adele missed his kindly attentions more than she
would have believed. The Bowriggs have come to Ashfield, but their
clamorous friendship is more than ever distasteful to Adele. Over and
over she makes a feint of illness to escape the noisy hilarity. Nor,
indeed, is it wholly a feint. Whether it were that her state of moral
perturbation and unrest reacted upon the physical system, or that there
were other disturbing causes, certain it was that the roses were fading
from her cheeks, and that her step was losing day by day something of
its old buoyancy. It is even thought best to summon the village doctor
to the family council. He is a gossiping, kindly old gentleman, who
spends an easy life, free from much mental strain, in trying to make his
daily experiences tally with the little fund of medical science which he
accumulated thirty years before.

The serene old gentleman feels the pulse, with his head reflectively on
one side,--tells his little jokelet about Sir Astley Cooper, or some
other worthy of the profession,--shakes his fat sides with a cheery
laugh,--"And now, my dear," he says, "let us look at the tongue. Ah, I
see, I see,--the stomach lacks tone."

"And there's dreadful lassitude, sometimes, Doctor," speaks up Miss
Eliza.

"Ah, I see,--a little exhaustion after a long walk,--isn't it so, Miss
Maverick? I see, I see; we must brace up the system, Miss Johns,--brace
up the system."

And the kindly old gentleman prescribes his little tonics, of which
Adele takes some, and throws more out of the window.

Adele does not mend, and the rumor is presently current upon the street
that "Miss Adeel is in a decline." The spinster shows a solicitude in
the matter which almost touches the heart of the French girl. For Adele
had long before decided that there could be no permanent sympathy
between them, and had indulged latterly in no little bitterness of
speech toward her. But the acute spinster had forgiven all. Never once
had she lost sight of her plan for the ultimate disposal of Adele and of
her father's fortune. Of course the life of Adele was very dear to her,
and the absence of Phil she looked upon as Providential.

Weeks pass