ing of her light feet along the
hall; the little musical bursts of laughter (not Rose's,--oh, no!) that
came from time to time floating through the open door of his chamber.
All this Rose saw and watched with the highest glee,--finding her own
little, quiet means of promoting such accidents,--and rejoicing (as
sisters will, where the enslaver is a friend) in the captivity of poor
Phil. For an honest lover, propinquity is always dangerous,--most of
all, the propinquity in one's own home. The sister's caresses of the
charmer, the mother's kind looks, the father's playful banter, and the
whisk of a silken dress (with a new music in it) along the balusters you
have passed night and morning for years, have a terrible executive
power.

In short, Adele had not been a month with the Elderkins before Phil was
tied there by bonds he had never known the force of before.

And how was it with Adele?

That strong, religious element in her,--abating no jot in its
fervor,--which had found a shock in the case of Reuben, met none with
Philip. He had slipped into the mother's belief and reverence, not by
any spell of suffering or harrowing convictions, but by a kind of
insensible growth toward them, and an easy, deliberate, moderate living
by them, which more active and incisive minds cannot comprehend. He had
no great wastes of doubt to perplex him, like Reuben, simply because his
intelligence was of a more submissive order, and never tested its faiths
or beliefs by that delicately sensitive mental apparel with which Reuben
was clothed all over, and which suggested a doubt or a hindrance where
Phil would have recognized none;--the best stuff in him, after all, of
which a hale, hearty, contented man can be made,--the stuff that takes
on age with dignity, that wastes no power, that conserves every element
of manliness to fourscore. Too great keenness does not know the name of
content; its only experience of joy is by spasms, when Idealism puts its
prism to the eye and shows all things in those gorgeous hues, which
to-morrow fade. Such mind and temper shock the _physique_, shake it
down, strain the nervous organization; and the body, writhing under
fierce cerebral thrusts, goes tottering to the grave. Is it strange if
doubts belong to those writhings? Are there no such creatures as
constitutional doubters, or, possibly, constitutional believers?

It would have been strange if the calm, mature repose of Phil's
manner,--never disturbed ex