Indeed, Miss Eliza and the Doctor (the latter from the best of motives) had scrupulously kept from Adele all knowledge of Madame Arles's impatient and angry solicitude during her illness. And when Adele, on those first sunny days of her convalescence, learned incidentally that her countrywoman was still a resident of the village, it pained her grievously to think that she had heard no tender message from her during all that weary interval of sickness, and she was more than half inclined (though she did not say this) to adopt the harshest judgments of the spinster. There was not a visitor at the parsonage, indeed, but, if the name were mentioned, sneered at the dark-faced, lonely woman, who was living such a godless life, and associating, as if from sheer bravado, with those who were under the ban of all the reputable people of Ashfield. When, therefore, Adele, on one of her early walks with Reuben, after her recovery was fully established, encountered, in a remote part of the village, Madame Arles, trailing after her the little child of shame,--and yet darting toward the French girl, at first sight, with her old effusion,--Adele met her coolly, so coolly, indeed, that the poor woman was overcome, and, hurrying the little child after her, disappeared with a look of wretchedness upon her face that haunted Adele for weeks and months. Thereafter very little was seen of Madame Arles upon the principal street of the village; and her avoidance of the family of the parsonage was as studied and resolute as either the Doctor or Miss Eliza could have desired. A moment of chilling indifference on the part of Adele had worked stronger repulse than all the harsh rebuffs of the elder people; but of this the kind-hearted French girl was no way conscious: yet she _was_ painfully conscious of a shadowy figure that still, from time to time, stole after her in her twilight walks, and that, if she turned upon it, shrank stealthily from observation. There was a mystery about the whole matter which oppressed the poor girl with a sense of terror. She could not doubt that the interest of her old teacher in herself had been a kindly one; but whatever it might have been, that interest was now so furtive, and affected such concealment, that she was half led to entertain the cruellest suspicions of Miss Eliza, who did not fail to enlarge upon the godlessness of the stranger's life, and to set before Adele the thousand alluring deceits by which Satan sought to win souls to himself.