st trace of melancholy.

CHAPTER XVI.

SHADOW AND SUNSHINE.

What was Adele doing? She was not engaged. It was one of Jacques'
inventions, or rather deductions, from what he saw.

She was being gradually drawn towards the abyss, where her soul
would lose all that it possessed that was divine, and into which, to
all appearances, she was finally to plunge, pushed by an unseen
hand, drawn thither by a magic power.

She shuddered. After all her dreams of happiness, Fate had condemned
her to this. How often had she pictured herself, the possessor of
true love, streams of happiness flowing into her heart. She had
formed a high ideal of life; the present did not satisfy her. Hope
had sustained her, and that hope, that idea of a pure, refined,
elevated and noble life, chastened by love, was now dwindling away
and she seemed destined to join the great multitude of ordinary
beings.

Still, she hesitated. She dared not trust her future happiness to a
man for whom she barely felt friendship.

One day, her father, being in a better mood than was his wont, told
her that she ought to make up her mind about whom she wanted to
marry.

"It is not my intention to marry young," she said; "I want you to
leave me quiet for a whole year."

"Nonsense;" replied her father, "but if you promise me that in a
year you will be Tom Soher's betrothed, I shall be satisfied."

"I cannot promise you that," she replied; "but I shall tell you what
I intend to do; perhaps I shall never marry."

"Tom Soher is a sensible man," said her father, satisfying himself
with her answer. "When he was younger, he did drink a little too
much perhaps, but he is altogether reformed now. We must not blame
people who try to lead a new life. I know he can still drink a few
glasses of cider, but what do you want? Was not cider made to be
drunk? For my part, I prefer a man like him to half-a-dozen of those
white-faced teetotalers. They look as if they had just been dug
up--like a fresh parsnip."

"I think Tom Soher would do much better to abstain from alcohol
altogether, especially as he has been one of its slaves," remarked
Adele.

Pretending not to hear her, or thinking this remark unworthy of
notice, the farmer went on with unusual fervour: "Marry him, Adele;
save our family and his from ruin and disgrace, and make your old
dad happy. I will teach him to work and to be thrifty; we shall get
along splendidly."

There was some more talk, and the f