Upon this point, however, Ada had some doubts; for if beauty were what he desired, she still possessed it to an uncommon degree, and it did not seem to move him in the least. Rumor, indeed, said they were on the eve of marriage, but she knew better, for never yet had he really told her in earnest that he loved her. It is true that years before, when she first came a weeping orphan to Cedar Grove, he had devoted himself to her entirely, feeling, perhaps, a little proud of his _ward_, to whom he sometimes talked of _love_, or hinted vaguely of the time when she would be his bride, as they wandered together beneath the whispering pines, which grew around his home, and once, when she was in Boston, he had actually made up his mind to offer himself immediately and take her to Sunny Bank as its mistress. To this resolution he was urged by her cousin, a strong-minded woman, who, in visiting at Cedar Grove, had labored to impress upon him the sense of the duty he owed not only to her father but to Ada herself, who was represented as loving him devotedly, and who was said to have made a vow never to marry unless it were her guardian. Very artfully, too, did Mrs. Johnson insinuate that her illness, of which they had heard, had its origin in “hope deferred which maketh the heart sick.” The knowledge that a beautiful girl loves you—nay, is dying for you, is sufficient, I suppose, to touch the feelings of men less susceptible to female charms than Richard Delafield, and acting upon the impulse of the moment, he started off without, however, leaving any word as to his destination. Arrived in Boston, he went to the Revere House, where, as we know, he casually heard of Ada’s engagement with Herbert Langley. To say he was not disappointed would hardly be just, for his self-pride was touched in knowing that Ada had given her affections to another, and that other not a very worthy object, if the word of his gossiping informer was to be trusted. Too much displeased even to see her, he had left the city immediately, declaring that he would never again think of marriage with any one. As the reader will remember, Ada heard of him through one of her acquaintance, and from something her cousin had written, she half guessed the nature of his visit. Accordingly on her return to Georgia she several times in his presence laughingly referred to the gossiping story, which, she said, some of the Bostonians got up concerning her and a _millionaire_, positively denying it, and wishing people would let her alone! But all this was to no purpose. Mr. Delafield’s impulse had subsided, and though his manner towards her was always kind, affectionate, and brotherly, he never spoke to her of love or marriage, except sometimes to ask her teasingly if “if they were not both of them almost old enough to get married.”