Maverick effects a diversion by proposing a jaunt of travel, in which Rose shall be their companion. Adele accepts the scheme with delight,--a delight, after all, which lies as much in the thought of watching the eager enjoyment of Rose as in any pleasant distractions of her own. The pleasure of Maverick is by no means so great as in that trip of a few years back. Then he had for companion an enthusiastic girl, to whom life was fresh, and all the clouds that seemed to rest upon it so shadowy, that each morning sun lifting among the mountains dispersed them utterly. Now, Adele showed the thoughtfulness of a woman,--her enthusiasms held in check by a more calm estimate of the life that opened before her,--her sportiveness overborne by a soberness, which, if it gave dignity, gave also a womanly gravity. Yet she did not lack filial devotion; she admired still that easy world-manner of his which had once called out her enthusiastic regard, but now queried in her secret heart if its acquisition had not involved cost of purity of conscience. She loved him too,--yes, she loved him; and her evening and morning kiss and embrace were reminders to him of a joy he might have won, but had not,--of a home peace that might have been his, but whose image now only lifted above his horizon like some splendid mirage crowded with floating fairy shapes, and like the mirage melted presently into idle vapor. It was a novel experience for Maverick to find himself (as he did time and again upon this summer trip in New England) sandwiched, of a Sunday, between his two blooming companions and some sober-sided deacon, in the pew of a country meeting-house. How his friend Papiol would have stared! And the suggestion, coming to him with the buzz of a summer fly through the open windows, did not add to his devotional sentiment. Yet Maverick would follow gravely the scramble of the singers through the appointed hymn with a sober self-denial, counting the self-denial a virtue. We all make memoranda of the small religious virtues when the large ones are missing. Upon the return to Ashfield there is found a new letter from Madam Maverick. She can restrain herself no longer. Under the advices of her brother, she will, with her maid, take the first safe ship leaving Marseilles for New York. She longs to bring Adele with herself, by special consecration, under the guardianship of the Holy Virgin. The Doctor is greatly grieved in view of the speedy departure of Adele, and tenfold grieved when Maverick lays before him the letter of the mother, and he sees the fiery zeal which the poor child must confront.