Adèle, with her quick ear and eye, has no difficulty in discovering the ground of the Doctor's uneasiness and of Miss Eliza's frequent questionings in regard to her intercourse with the new teacher. "I am sure they think you very bad," she said to Madame Arles, one day, in a spirit of mischief. "Bad! bad! Adèle, why? how?"--and that strange tortuous look came to her eye, with a quick flush to her cheeks. "Ah, now, dear Madame, don't be disturbed; 'tis only your religion they think so bad, and fear you will mislead me. _Tenez!_ this little rosary" (and she displays it to the eye of the wondering Madame Arles) "they would have taken from me." Madame pressed the beads reverently to her lips, while her manner betrayed a deep religious emotion, (as it seemed to Adèle,) which she had rarely seen in her before. "And you claimed it, my child?" "Not for any faith I had in it; but it was my mother's." The good woman kissed Adèle. "You must long to see her, my child!" A shade of sorrow and doubt ran over the face of the girl. This did not escape the notice of Madame Arles, who, with a terribly dejected and distracted air, replaced the rosary in her hands. "_Mon ange!_" (in this winsome way she was accustomed at times to address Adèle) "we cannot talk of these things. I have promised as much to the Doctor; it is better so; he is a good man." Adèle sat toying for a moment with the rosary upon her fingers, looking down; then, seeing that woe-begone expression that had fastened upon the face of her companion, she sprang up, kissed her forehead, and, restoring thus--as she knew she could do--a cheeriness to her manner, resumed her lesson. But from this time forth she showed an eagerness to unriddle, so far as she might, the mystery of that faith which the Doctor clothed in his ponderous discourses,--weighed down and oppressed by his prolixity, and confounded by doctrines she could not comprehend, yet recognizing, under all, his serene trust, and gratefully conscious of his tender regard and constant watchfulness. But, more than all, it was a subject of confusion to her, that the prim and austere Miss Eliza, whose pride and selfishness her keen eye could not fail to see, should be possessed of a truer faith than the poor stranger whose gentleness, and suffering so patiently borne, seemed in a measure to Christianize and dignify character. And if she dropped a hint of these doubts, as she sometimes did, in the ear of the motherly Mrs. Elderkin, that good woman took her hand tenderly,--"My dear Adèle, we are all imperfect; but God sees with other eyes than ours. Trust Him,--trust Him above all, Adèle!"