quite sure of the date, but it
was at any rate shortly after the establishment of the Reverend
Theophilus Catesby at Ashfield,--the Doctor was in the receipt of a new
letter from his friend Maverick, which set all his old calculations
adrift. It was not Madame Arles, after all, who was the mother of Adele;
and the poor gentleman found that he had wasted a great deal of needless
sympathy in that direction. But we shall give the details of the news
more succinctly and straightforwardly by laying before our readers some
portions of Maverick's letter.

"I find, my dear Johns," he writes, "that my suspicions in regard to a
matter of which I wrote you very fully in my last were wholly untrue.
How I could have been so deceived, I cannot even now fairly explain; but
nothing is more certain, than that the person calling herself Madame
Arles (since dead, as I learn from Adele) was not the mother of my
child. My mistake in this will the more surprise you, when I state that
I had a glimpse of this personage (unknown to you) upon my visit to
America; and though it was but a passing glimpse, it seemed to
me--though many years had gone by since my last sight of her--that I
could have sworn to her identity. And coupling this resemblance, as I
very naturally did, with her devotion to my poor Adele, I could form but
one conclusion.

"The mother of my child, however, still lives. I have seen her. You will
commiserate me in advance with the thought that I have found her among
the vile ones of what you count this vile land. But you are wrong, my
dear Johns. So far as appearance and present conduct go, no more
reputable lady ever crossed your own threshold. The meeting was
accidental, but the recognition on both sides absolute, and, on the part
of the lady, so emotional as to draw the attention of the _habitues_ of
the cafe where I chanced to be dining. Her manner and bearing, indeed,
were such as to provoke me to a renewal of our old acquaintance, with
honorable intentions,--even independent of those suggestions of duty to
herself and to Adele which you have urged.

"But I have to give you, my dear Johns, a new surprise. All overtures of
my own toward a renewal of acquaintance have been decisively repulsed. I
learn that she has been living for the past fifteen years or more with
her brother, now a wealthy merchant of Smyrna, and that she has a
reputation there as a _devote_, and is widely known for the charities
which her brother's means