Left to himself, the youth would very likely have found enough to admire in the face and figure and pleasantly subdued enthusiasm of Adele; but the counter irritant of the spinster's speech drove him away on many an evening to the charming fireside of the Elderkins, where he spent not a few beguiling hours in listening to the talk of the motherly mistress of the household, and in watching the soft hazel eyes of Rose, as they lifted in eager wonderment at some of his stories of the town, or fell (the long lashes hiding them with other beauty) upon the work where her delicate fingers plied with a white swiftness that teased him into trains of thought which were not wholly French. Adele has taken a melancholy interest in decking the grave of the exiled lady, which she has insisted upon doing out of her own resources, and thus has doubled the little legacy which Madame Aries had left to the outcast woman and child with whom she had joined her fate, and who, with good reason, wept her death bitterly. Hour upon hour Adele pondered over that tragic episode, tasking herself to imagine what message the dying woman could have had to communicate, and wondering if the future would ever clear up the mystery. To the good Doctor it seemed only a strange Providence, by which the religious convictions of Adele should be deepened and made sure. And in no way were the results of those convictions more beautifully apparent than in the efforts of Adele to overcome her antipathies to the spinster. It is doubtful, indeed, if a bolder challenge can be made to the Christian graces of any character whatever than that which demands the conquest of social prejudices which have grown into settled aversion. With all the stimulus of her new Christian endeavor, Adele sought to think charitably of Miss Eliza. Yet it was hard; always, that occasional cold kiss of the spinster had for Adele an iron imprint, which drove her warm blood away, instead of summoning it to response. For her, Miss Eliza's staple praises of Reuben, and her adroit stories of the admiration and attachment of Mrs. Brindlock for her nephew, were distasteful to the last degree. Coarse natures never can learn upon what fine threads the souls of the sensitive are strung.