s
venture to the Mediterranean with Brindlock; he could hardly talk of
anything else. It's odd to find him so wrapped up in money-making."

"I hope he'll not be wrapped up in anything worse," said Mrs. Elderkin,
with a sigh.

"Nonsense, mother!" burst in the old Squire; "Reuben'll come out all
right yet."

"He says he means to know all sides of the world, now," says Phil, with
a little laugh.

"He's not so bad as he pretends to be, Phil," answered the Squire. "I
knew the Major's hot ways; so did you, Grace (turning to the wife). It's
a boy's talk. There's good blood in him."

And the two girls,--yonder, the other side of the hearth,--Adele and
Rose, have given over their little earnest comparison of views about the
colors, and sit stitching, and stitching, and thinking--and thinking--

L.

Phil had at no time given over his thought of Adele, and of the
possibility of some day winning her for himself, though he had been
somewhat staggered by the interview already described with Reuben. It is
doubtful, even, if the quiet _permission_ which this latter had granted
(or, with an affectation of arrogance, had seemed to grant) had not
itself made him pause. There are some things which a man never wants any
permission to do; and one of those is--to love a woman. All the
permissions--whether of competent authority or of incompetent--only
retard him. It is an affair in which he must find his own permit, by his
own power; and without it there can be no joy in conquest.

So when Phil recalled Reuben's expression on that memorable afternoon in
his chamber,--"You _may_ marry her, Phil,"--it operated powerfully to
dispossess him of all intention and all earnestness of pursuit. The
little doubt and mystery which Reuben had thrown, in the same interview,
upon the family relations of Adele, did not weigh a straw in the
comparison. But for months that "may" had angered him and made him
distant. He had plunged into his business pursuits with a new zeal, and
easily put away all present thought of matrimony, by virtue of that
simple "may" of Reuben's.

But now when, on coming back, he found her in his own home,--so tenderly
cared for by mother and by sister,--so coy and reticent in his presence,
the old fever burned again. It was not now a simple watching of her
figure upon the street that told upon him; but her constant
presence;--the rustle of her dress up and down the stairs; her fresh,
fair face every day at table; the tapp