We left Miss Eliza Johns in her chamber, swaying back and forth in her rocking-chair, and resolutely confronting the dire news which the Doctor had communicated. What was to be done? Never had so serious a problem been presented to her for solution. There were both worldly and religious motives, as the spinster reckoned them, for plucking out of her heart all the growing tenderness which she had begun to feel toward Adele; and the sudden discomfiture of that engaging, ambitious scheme which she had fondled so long prompted a feeling of resentment which was even worse than worldly. How would you have treated the matter, Madam? Would your Christian charities have shrunk from the ordeal? But whatever might have been the other sins of the spinster, there was in her no disposition to shrink from the conclusions to which her logic of propriety and respectability might lead. Adele was to be discarded, but not suddenly. All her art must be employed to disabuse Reuben of any lingering tenderness. The Doctor's old prejudice against French blood must be worked to its utmost. But there must be no violent clamor,--above all, no disclosure of the humiliating truth. Maverick (the false man!) must be instructed that it would be agreeable to the Johns family--nay, that their sense of dignity demanded--that he should reclaim his child at an early day. On this last score, it might be necessary, indeed, to practise very adroit management with the Doctor; but for the rest, she had the amplest confidence in her own activity and discretion. She was not the woman to sleep upon her plans, when once they were decided on; and she had no sooner forecast her programme than she took advantage of the lingering twilight to arrange her toilette for a call upon the Elderkins. Of course she led off the Doctor in her trail. The spinster's "marching orders," as he jocularly termed them, the good man was as incapable of resisting as if he had been twenty years a husband. In a few swift words she unfolded her design. "And now, Benjamin, don't, pray, let your sentiment get the better of you, in regard to this French girl. Think of the proprieties in the case, Benjamin,--the proprieties,"--which she enforced by a little shake of her forefinger. Whenever it came to a question of the "proprieties," the Doctor was conscious of his weakness. What, indeed, could the poor man know about the proprieties, as set forth by Miss Johns, that he should presume to argue against them? What, indeed, can any man do, when a woman bases herself on the "proprieties"?