Adele felt a tender gratitude toward Reuben, which it seemed to her the boisterous affection of the spinster could never approach. She apprehended his spiritual perplexities more keenly than the austere aunt, and saw with what strange ferment his whole nature was vexed. Had he been a brother by blood, she could not have felt for him more warmly. And if she ever allowed herself to guess at a nearer tie, it was not to Miss Eliza that she would have named the guess,--not even, thus far, to herself. As yet there was a soft fulness in her heart that felt no wound,--at least no wound in which her hope rankled. Whether Reuben were present or away, her songs rose, with a sweeter, a serener, and a loftier cheer than of old under the roof of the parsonage; and, as of old, the Doctor laid down his book and listened, as if an angel sang. XLII. In the summer of 1840 the Doctor received a letter from Maverick which overwhelmed him with consternation; and its revelations, we doubt not, will, prove as great a surprise to our readers. "My good friend Johns," he wrote, "I owe you a debt of gratitude which I can never repay; you have shown such fatherly interest in my dear child,--you have so guided and guarded her,--you have so abundantly filled the place which, though it was my duty, I had never the worthiness to fill, that I have no words to thank you. And now you have crowned all by giving her that serene trust"---- "Not I! not I!" says the Doctor to himself,--"only God's mercy,--God's infinite mercy!"--and he continues, "that serene trust in Heaven which will support her under all trials. Poor child, she will need it all!" "And that this man," pursues the Doctor meditatively, "who thinks so wisely, should be given over still to the things of this world!" "I hear still further,--from what sources it will be unnecessary for me now to explain,--that a close intimacy has grown up latterly between your son Reuben and my dear Adele, and that this intimacy has provoked village rumors of the possibility of some nearer tie. These rumors may be, perhaps, wholly untrue; I hope to Heaven they are, and my informant may have exaggerated only chance reports. But the knowledge of them, vague as they are, has stimulated me to a task which I ought far sooner to have accomplished, and which, as a man of honor, I can no longer defer. I know that you think lightly of any promptings to duty which spring only from a sense of honor; and before you shall have finished my letter I fear that you will be tempted to deny me any claim to the title. Indeed, it has been the fear of forfeiting altogether your regard that has kept me thus far silent, and has caused me to delay, from year to year, that full explanation which I can no longer with any propriety or justice withhold.