?

The chance villagers, seeing her lithe figure, her well-fitting pelisse,
her jaunty hat, her blooming cheeks, may have said, "There goes a
fortunate one!" But if the thought of poor Adele took one shape more
than another, as she returned that day from a visit to her sweet friend
Rose, it was this: "How drearily unfortunate I am!" And here a little
burst of childish laughter breaks on her ear. Adele, turning to the
sound, sees that poor outcast woman who had been the last and most
constant attendant upon Madame Arles coming down the street, with her
little boy frolicking beside her. Obeying an impulse she was in no mood
to resist, she turns back to the gate to greet them; she caresses the
boy; she has kindly words for the mother, who could have worshipped her
for the caress she has given to her outcast child.

"I likes you," says the sturdy urchin, sidling closer to the parsonage
gate, over which Adele leans. "You's like the French ooman."

Whereupon Adele, in the exuberance of her kindly feelings, can only lean
over and kiss the child again.

Miss Johns, looking from her chamber, is horrified. Had it been summer,
she would have lifted her window and summoned Adele. But she never
forgot--that exemplary woman--the proprieties of the seasons, any more
than other proprieties; she tapped upon the glass with her thimble, and
beckoned the innocent offender into the parsonage.

"I am astonished, Adele!"--these were her first words; and she went on
to belabor the poor girl in fearful ways,--all the more fearful because
she spoke in the calmest possible tones. She never used others, indeed;
and it is not to be doubted that she reckoned this forbearance among her
virtues.

Adele made no reply,--too wise now for that; but she winced, and bit her
lip severely, as the irate spinster "gave Miss Maverick to understand
that an intercourse which might possibly be agreeable to her French
associations could never be tolerated at the home of Dr. Johns. For
herself, she had a reputation for propriety to sustain; and while Miss
Maverick made a portion of her household, she must comply with the rules
of decorum; and if Miss Maverick were ignorant of those rules, she had
better inform herself."

No reply, as we have said,--unless it may have been by an impatient
stamp of her little foot, which the spinster could not perceive.

But it is the signal, in her quick, fiery nature, of a determination to
leave the parsonage, if the thing b