d_ 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, Adele 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. Adele 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 answ
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