In short, Adele had not been a month with the Elderkins before Phil was tied there by bonds he had never known the force of before. And how was it with Adele? That strong, religious element in her,--abating no jot in its fervor,--which had found a shock in the case of Reuben, met none with Philip. He had slipped into the mother's belief and reverence, not by any spell of suffering or harrowing convictions, but by a kind of insensible growth toward them, and an easy, deliberate, moderate living by them, which more active and incisive minds cannot comprehend. He had no great wastes of doubt to perplex him, like Reuben, simply because his intelligence was of a more submissive order, and never tested its faiths or beliefs by that delicately sensitive mental apparel with which Reuben was clothed all over, and which suggested a doubt or a hindrance where Phil would have recognized none;--the best stuff in him, after all, of which a hale, hearty, contented man can be made,--the stuff that takes on age with dignity, that wastes no power, that conserves every element of manliness to fourscore. Too great keenness does not know the name of content; its only experience of joy is by spasms, when Idealism puts its prism to the eye and shows all things in those gorgeous hues, which to-morrow fade. Such mind and temper shock the _physique_, shake it down, strain the nervous organization; and the body, writhing under fierce cerebral thrusts, goes tottering to the grave. Is it strange if doubts belong to those writhings? Are there no such creatures as constitutional doubters, or, possibly, constitutional believers? It would have been strange if the calm, mature repose of Phil's manner,--never disturbed except when Adele broke upon him suddenly and put him to a momentary confusion, of which the pleasant fluttering of her own heart gave account,--strange, if this had not won upon her regard,--strange, if it had not given hint of that cool, masculine superiority in him, with which even the most ethereal of women like to be impressed. There was about him also a quiet, business-like concentration of mind which the imaginative girl might have overlooked or undervalued, but which the budding, thoughtful woman must needs recognize and respect. Nor will it seem strange, if, by contrast, it made the excitable Reuben seem more dismally afloat and vagrant. Yet how could she forget the passionate pressure of his hand, the appealing depth of that gray eye of the parson's son, and the burning words of his that stuck in her memory like thorns? Phil, indeed, might have spoken in a way that would have driven the blood back upon her heart; for there was a world of passionate capability under his calm exterior. She dreaded lest he might. She shunned all provoking occasion, as a bird shuns the grasp of even the most tender hand, under whose clasp the pinions will flutter vainly.