And so Maverick--not a little disconcerted at the thought that he cannot now, as once, fathom all the depths of his child's sensibilities--sets himself resolutely to the work of preparation for departure. His _affaires_ may keep him a month, and involve a visit to one or two of the principal cities; then, ho for _la belle France_! Adele certainly lends a cheerful assent. He cannot doubt--with those repeated kisses on his cheek and brow--her earnest filial affection; and if her sentiment slips beyond his control, or parries all his keenness of vision, what else has a father, verging upon sixty, to expect in a daughter, tenderly affectionate as she may be? Maverick's philosophy taught him to "take the world as it is." Only one serious apprehension of disquietude oppressed him; the doubts and vagaries of Adele would clear themselves under the embrace of Julie; but in respect to the harmony of their religious beliefs he had grave doubts. There had grown upon Adele, since he had last seen her, a womanly dignity, which even a mother must respect; and into that dignity--into the woof and warp of it--were inwrought all her religious sympathies. Was his home yonder, across the seas, to become the scene of struggles about creeds? It certainly was not the sort of domestic picture he had foreshadowed to himself at twenty-five. But at sixty a man blows bubbles no longer--except that of his own conceit. The heart of Maverick was not dead in him; a kiss of Adele wakened a thrilling, delicious sensation there, of which he had forgotten his capability. He followed her graceful step and figure with an eye that looked beyond and haunted the past--vainly, vainly! Her "Papa!"--sweetly uttered--stirred sensibilities in him that amazed himself, and seemed like the phantoms of dreams he dreamed long ago. But in the midst of Maverick's preparations for departure a letter came to hand from Mrs. Maverick, which complicated once more the situation. LXI. The mother has read the letter of her child,--the letter in which appeal had been made to the father in behalf of the "unworthy" one whom the daughter believed to be sleeping in her grave. The tenderness of the appeal smote the poor woman to the heart. It bound her to the child she scarce had seen by bonds into which her whole moral being was knitted anew. But we must give the letter entire, as offering explanations which can in no way be better set forth. The very language kindles the ardor of Adele. Her own old speech again, with the French echo of her childhood in every line.