The doctor started from his chair, and embraced his daughters with joy mixed with wonder; for he knew they had always disliked Adeline.--True; but then, she was prosperous, and their superior. Little minds love to bestow protection; and it was easy to be generous to the fallen Adeline Mowbray: had her happiness continued, so would their hatred. 'Then it is a settled point, is it not dame?' asked the doctor, chucking his wife under the chin; when, to his great surprise and consternation, she threw his hand indignantly from her, and vociferated, 'She shall never live within a ride of our house, I can assure you, Dr Norberry.' The doctor was petrified into silence, and the girls could only articulate 'La! mamma?' But what could produce this sudden and violent change? Nothing but a simple and natural operation of the human mind. Though a very kind husband, and an indulgent father, Dr Norberry was suspected, though unjustly, of being a very gallant man: and some of Mrs Norberry's good-natured friends had occasionally hinted to her their sorrow at hearing such and such reports; reports which were indeed destitute of foundation; but which served to excite suspicions in the mind of the tenacious Mrs Norberry. And what more likely to re-awaken them than the young and frail Adeline Mowbray living in a cottage of her husband's, protected, supported, and visited by him! The moment this idea occurred, its influence was unconquerable; and with a voice and manner of determined hostility she made known her resolves in consequence of it. After a pause of dismay and astonishment, the doctor cried, 'Dame, what have you gotten in your head? What, all on a sudden, has had such an ugly effect on you?' 'Second thoughts are best, doctor; and I now feel that it would be highly improper for you, with daughters grown up, to receive with such marked kindness a single young woman at a cottage of yours, who is going to lie-in.' 'But, my dear, it is a different case, when I do it to keep her out of the way of further harm.' 'That is more than I know, Dr Norberry,' replied the wife bridling, and fanning herself. 'Whew!' whistled the doctor; and then addressing his daughters, 'Girls, you had better go to bed; it grows late.' The young ladies obeyed; but first hung round their mother's neck, as they bade her good night, and hoped she would not be so cruel to the poor deluded Adeline. Mrs Norberry angrily shook them off, with a peevish--'Get along, girls.' The doctor cordially kissed, and bade God bless them; while the door closed and left the loving couple alone. What passed, it were tedious to repeat: suffice that after a long altercation, continued even after they were retired to rest, the doctor found his wife, on this subject, incapable of listening to reason, and that, as a finishing stroke, she exclaimed, 'It does not signify talking, Dr Norberry, while I have my senses, and can see into a mill-stone a little, the hussey shall never come near us.'