words of endearment are coupled with
that sunny face.

He even prepares his toilette to meet her, as a lover might do to meet
his affianced. And the meeting, when it comes, only deepens the pride.
Graceful? Yes! That bound toward him,--can anything be fuller of grace?
Natural? The look and the speech of Adele are to Maverick a new
revelation of Nature. Loving? That clinging kiss of hers was worth his
voyage over the sea.

And she, too, is so beautifully proud of her father! She has loved the
Doctor for his serenity, his large justice, notwithstanding his
stiffness and his awkward gravity; but she regards with new eyes the
manly grace of her father, his easy self-possession, his pliability of
talk, his tender attention to her comfort, his wistful gaze at her, so
full of a yearning affection, which, if the Doctor had ever felt, he had
counted it a duty to conceal. Nay, the daughter, with a womanly eye,
took pride in the aptitude and becomingness of his dress,--so different
from what she had been used to see in the clumsy toilette of the Doctor,
or of the good-natured Squire Elderkin. Henceforth she will have a new
standard of comparison, to which her lovers, if they ever declare
themselves, must submit.

Adele, 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, Adele? 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, Adele?"

"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