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Rh merely suggested. Cheerfulness was one of her strong points, as it is of all really modern people. Of course we rearranged ourselves with as good a semblance of it on our own part as we could muster. I cannot say that the excellence of our midday repast suffered at all. Adelina was far too capable to allow that. But it was attended by a certain sense of gloom unknown to us hitherto. Whether this was because Adelina waited on us in her best attire, or proceeded from the mere fact of her having been at Church when we hadn't, I cannot say. Superior virtue often does have a depressing effect, particularly when coupled, as it was in Adelina's case, with an invincible, though restrained, consciousness of the same. Situations you can explain are never quite so hard to bear as those you suffer in an atmosphere of delicately-tempered, but subtly reproachful silence.

Adelina had no faults and revealed no lapses—except the grammatical ones before alluded to, which, of course, had no humbling virtue, since she wasn't aware of them. Everything she did turned out well, and everything she elected not to do turned out better than if she had done it. Providence seemed always