Adelaide returned her embrace gratefully; but then raised her eyes, and gazed inquiringly in the lady's face. Strange, mingled emotions thrilled through her bosom, not to be told, not to be separated. She saw a likeness to features that she knew and loved; she saw a likeness in the expression; she saw it in the peculiar light of the eyes: The tones of that lady's voice, too, were like his; and she had said to her, his bride, "You are with a mother." "But yet how could that be?" she asked herself. Ferdinand's mother had been long dead, she had been told; he himself believed that it was so. Even Father George, when revealing to her much of his history (more, indeed, than her lover knew himself), had never mentioned the existence of that parent; and yet there was something which made Adelaide still believe that she was indeed with the mother of him she loved. To hear the lady call Father George by the name which he had long ceased to use, did not surprise her at all; for both from words which he had himself spoken, and from the contemptuous epithet which her father had applied to Ferdinand, she was already aware that the monk was a member of that high house; but all her thoughts turned to the one question, Who was the kind and gentle being that sat beside her? What is like thought? Nothing that ever was created or devised. Rapid as the lightning, but yet not like it; not one broad glare extinguished as soon as seen, but full of combinations, rushing through innumerable channels, working out a thousand permanent results. Though in its process and celerity of operation, it has been well called "the lightning of the mind," it can, in all its attributes, be compared to nothing that earth has seen. All that I have related, and much more, passed through Adelaide's mind, and yet it required but the short interval occupied by the return of the caress which the lady gave her, for her thus to commune with herself. The pause was but momentary, and then the lady added, as if she had hardly stopped, "I will be to you as a mother, dear child." Those few words rendered all the poor girl's conclusions once more vague and undefined. It might be but a form of speech she had used, Adelaide thought; and Adelaide mused. "And are you like your father?" asked the lady at length; after having gazed for a minute or two on the countenance of the fair creature before her, while the long, dark lashes of the downcast eyes rested on her cheek as she meditated. "I do not know," answered Adelaide, looking suddenly up. "You do not know him, then?" "I never saw him," replied the lady, thoughtfully, and even gravely; but after a moment she went on--"We will ask each other no more questions, dear girl. Here you can stay in safety and peace. That is enough for the present; all the rest will soon be explained; and between two agitated and apprehensive hearts, like Yours and mine, it is better only to speak of things that may tranquillize and reassure us."