The dread of it had haunted him from the moment that he had heard of her hurried departure in quest of him. When he read Phebe's words, imploring him to follow them, the recollection had flashed across him of how the thread of Lord Riversdale's life had snapped under the strain of unusual anxiety and fatigue. Felicita's own delicate health had been failing for some months past. As swiftly as he could follow he had pursued them; but her impatient and feverish haste had prevented him from overtaking them in time. What might have been the result if he had reached her sooner he could not tell. That there could ever have been any knitting together again of the tie that had ever united them seemed impossible. Death alone, either hers or his, could have touched her heart to the tenderness of her farewell smile and gesture.

In after life Jean Merle never spoke of that hour of agony. But there was nothing in the past which dwelt so deeply or lived again so often in his memory. He had suffered before; but it seemed as nothing to the intensity of the anguish that had befallen him now. The image of Felicita's white and dying face lying against the darkened walls of the hovel where she had gone to seek him, was indelibly printed on his brain. He would see it till the hour of his own death.

He lifted her up, holding her once more in his arms, and clasping her to his heart, as he carried her through the village street to the hotel. Phebe walked beside him, as yet only thinking that Felicita had fainted. His old neighbors crowded out of their houses, scarcely recognizing Jean Merle in this Monsieur in his good English dress, but with redoubled curiosity when they saw who it was thus bearing the strange English lady in his arms. When he had carried her to the hotel, and up-stairs to the room where he had watched beside the stranger who had borne his name, he broke through the gathering crowd of onlookers, and fled to his familiar solitudes among the mountains.

He had always told himself that Felicita was dead to him. There had not been in his heart the faintest hope that she could ever again be anything more to him than a memory and a dream. When he was in England, though he had not been content until he had seen his children and his old home, he had never sought to get a glimpse of her, so far beyond him and above him. But now that she was indeed dead, those beloved eyes closed forever more from the light of the sun, and the familiar earth never again to be trodden by her feet, the awful chasm set between them made him feel as if he was for the first time separated from her. Only an hour ago and his voice could have reached her in words of entreaty and of passionate repentance and humble self-renunciation. They could have spoken face to face, and he might have had a brief interval for pouring out his heart to her. But there had been no word uttered between them. There had been only that one moment in which her soul looked back upon him with a glance of tenderness, before she was gone from him beyond recall. He came to himself, out of the confused agony of his grief, as the sun was setting. He found himself in a wild and barren wilderness of savage rocks, with a small black tarn lying at his feet, which just caught the glimmer of the setting sun on its lurid surface. The silence about him was intense. Gray clouds stretched across the mountains, out of which a few sad peaks of rock rose against the gray sky. The snowy dome of the Titlis towering above the rest looked down on him out of the shadow of the clouded heavens with a ghostly paleness. All the world about him was cold and wan, and solemn as the face of the dead. There was death up here and in the valley yonder; but down in the valley it bore too dear and too sorrowful a form.

As the twilight deepened, the recollection of Phebe's loneliness and her distress at his absence at last roused him. He could no longer leave her, bewildered by this new trouble, and with slow and reluctant steps he retraced his path through the deep gloom of the forests to the village. There was much to be turned over in his mind and to be decided upon before he reached the bustling hotel and the gaping throng of spectators, marvelling at Jean Merle's reappearance under circumstances so unaccountable. He had met with Phebe as she returned from starting Felicita in the first boat, and they had waited for the next. At Grafenort they had dismissed their carriage, thinking they could enter the valleys with less observation on foot; and perhaps meet with Felicita in such a manner as to avoid making his return known in Engelberg. He had turned aside to take shelter in his old hut, whilst Phebe went on to find Felicita, when his bitter cry of pain had called her back to him. The villagers would probably take him for a courier in attendance upon these ladies, if he acted as one when he reached the hotel. But how was he to act?

Two courses were open to him. There was no longer any reason to dread a public trial and conviction for the crime he had committed so many years ago. It was quite practicable to return to England, account plausibly for his disappearance and the mistake as to identity which had caused a stranger to be buried in his name, and take up his life again as Roland Sefton. It was improbable that any searching investigation should be made into his statements. Who would be interested in doing it? But the old memories and suspicions would be awakened and strengthened a hundred-fold by the mystery surrounding his return. No one could compel him to reveal his secret, he had simply to keep his lips closed in impenetrable silence. True he would be a suspected man, with a disgraceful secrecy hanging like a cloud about him. He could not live so at Riversborough, among his old towns-people, of whom he had once been a leader. He must find some new sphere and dwell in it, always dreading the tongue of rumor.

And his son and daughter? How would they regard him if he maintained an obstinate and ambiguous silence towards them? They were no longer little children, scarcely separate from their father, seeing through his eyes, and touching life only through him. They were separate individuals, living souls, with a personality of their own, the more free from his influence because of his long absence and supposed death. It was a young man he must meet in Felix, a critic and a judge like other men; but with a known interest in the criticism and the judgment he had to pass upon his father, and less apt to pass it lightly. His son would ponder deeply over any account he might give of himself. Hilda, too, was at a sensitive and delicate point of girlhood, when she would inevitably shrink from any contact with the suspicion and doubt that would surround this strange return after so many years of disappearance.

Yet how could he let them know the terrible fraud he had committed for their mother's sake and with her connivance? Felix knew of his other defalcations; but Hilda was still ignorant of them. If he returned to them with the truth in his lips, they would lose the happy memory of their mother and their pride in her fame. He understood only too well how dominant must have been her influence over them, not merely by the tender common ties of motherhood, but by the fascinating charm of her whole nature, reserved and stately as it had been. He must betray her and lessen her memory in their sorrowful esteem. To them, if not to the world, he must disclose all, or resolve to remain a stranger to them forever. During the last six months it had seemed to him that a humble path lay before him, following which he might again live a life of lowly discipleship. He had repented with a bitter repentance, and out of the depths into which he had fallen he had cried unto God and been delivered. He believed that he had received God's forgiveness, as he knew that he had received men's forgiveness. Out of the wreck of his former life he had constructed a little raft and trusted to it bearing him safely through what remained of the storm of life. If Felicita had lived he would have remained in the service of his father's old friend, proving himself of use in numberless ways; not merely as an attendant, but in assisting him with the affairs of the bank, with which he was more conversant, from his early acquaintanceship with the families transacting business with it, than the stranger who was acting manager could be. He had not been long enough in Riversborough to gain any influence in the town as a poor foreigner, but there had been a hope dawning within that he might again do some good in his native place, the dearer to him because of his long and dreary banishment. In time he might perform some work worthy of his forefathers, though under another name. If he could so live as to leave behind him the memory of a sincere and simple Christian, who had denied himself daily to live a righteous, sober, and godly life, and had cheerfully taken up his cross to follow Christ, he would in some measure atone for the disgrace Roland Sefton's defalcations had brought upon the name of Christ.

This humble, ambitious career was still before him if he could forego the joy of making himself known to his children—a doubtful joy. For had he not cut himself from them by his reckless and despairing abandonment of them in their childhood? He could bring them nothing now but sorrow and shame. The sacrifice would be on their side, not his. It needs all the links of all the years to bind parents and children in an indestructible chain; and if he attempted to unite the broken links it could only be by a knowledge of their mother's error as well as his. Let him sacrifice himself for the last and final time to Felicita and the fair name she had made for herself.

He was stumbling along in the dense darkness of the forest with no gleam of light to guide him on his way, and his feet were constantly snared in the knotted roots of the trees intersecting the path. So must he stumble along a dark and rugged track through the rest of his years. There was no cheering gleam beckoning him to a happy future. But though it was thorny and obscure it was not an ignoble path, and it might end at last even for him in the welcome words, "Well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

His mind was made up before he reached the valley. He could not unravel the warp and woof of his life. The gossamer threads of the webs he had begun to weave about himself so lightly in the heyday of his youth and prosperity and happiness had thickened into cables and petrified; it was impossible to break through the coil of them or find a way out of it. Roland Sefton had died many years ago. Let him remain dead.



CHAPTER XXV.

THE FINAL RESOLVE.

It was dark, with the pitchy darkness of a village street, where the greater part of the population were gone to bed, when he passed through Engelberg towards the hotel, where Phebe must be awaiting his return anxiously. In carrying out his project it would be well for him to have as little as possible to do with the inmates of the hotel, and he approached it cautiously. All the ground-floor was dark, except for a glimmer of light in a little room at the end of a long passage; but the windows of the salon on the floor above were lit up, and Jean Merle stepped quietly up the staircase unheard and unseen.

Phebe was sitting by a table, her head buried in her arms, which rested upon it—a forlorn and despondent attitude. She lifted up her face as he entered and gazed pitifully into his; but for a minute or two neither of them spoke. He stood just within the door, looking towards her as he had done on the fateful night when Felicita had told him that she chose his death rather than her share of the disgrace attaching to his crime. This day just drawn to a close had been the bitterest fruit of the seed then sown. Jean Merle's face, on which there was stamped an expression of intense but patient suffering, steadfastly met Phebe's aching eyes.

"She is dead!" she murmured.

"I knew it," he answered.

"I did not know what to do," she went on after a slight pause, and speaking in a pitiful and deprecating tone.

"Poor Phebe!" he said; "but I am come to tell you what I have resolved to do—what seems best for us all to do. We must act as if I was only what I seem to be, a stranger to you, a passing guide, who has no more to do with these things than any other stranger. We will do what I believe she would have desired; her name shall be as dear to us as it was to her; no disgrace shall stain it now."

"But can you never throw off your disguise?" she asked, weeping. "Must you always be what you seem to be now?"

"I must always be Jean Merle," he replied. "Roland Sefton cannot return to life; it is impossible. Let us leave her children at least the tender memory of their mother; I can bear being unknown to them for what remains to me of life. And we do no one any harm, you and I, by keeping this secret."

"No, we wrong no one," she answered. "I have been thinking of it ever since I was sure she was dead, and I counted upon you doing this. It will save Felix and Hilda from bitter sorrow, and it would keep her memory fair and true for them. But you—there will be so much to give up. They will never know that you are their father; for if we do not tell them now, we must never, never betray it. Can you do it?"

"I gave them up long ago," he said; "and if there be any sacrifice I can make for them, what should withhold me, Phebe? God only knows what an unutterable relief it would be to me if I could lay bare my whole life to the eyes of my fellow-men and henceforth walk in their sight in simple honesty and truthfulness. But that is impossible. Not even you can see my whole life as it has been. I must go softly all my days, bearing my burden of secrecy."

"I too shall have to bear it," she murmured almost inaudibly.

"I shall start at once for Stans," he went on, "and go to Lucerne by the first boat in the morning. You shall give me a telegram to send from there to Canon Pascal, and Felix will be here in less than three days. I must return direct to Riversborough. I must not perform the last duties to the dead; even that is denied to me."

"But Felicita must not be buried here," exclaimed Phebe, her voice faltering, with an accent of horror at the thought of it. A shudder of repugnance ran through him also. Roland Sefton's grave was here, and what would be more natural than to bury Felicita beside it?

"No, no," he cried, "you must save me from that, Phebe. She must be brought home and buried among her own people. Promise to save her and me from that."

"Oh, I promise it," she said; "it shall never be. You shall not have that grief."

"If I stayed here myself," he continued, "it would make it more difficult to take up my life in Riversborough unquestioned and unsuspected. It can only be by a complete separation now that I can effect my purpose. But I can hardly bear to go away, Phebe."

The profound pitifulness of Phebe's heart was stirred to its inmost depths by the sound of his voice and the expression of his hopeless face. She left her seat and drew near to him.

"Come and see her once more," she whispered.

Silently he made a gesture of assent, and she led the way to the adjoining room. He knew it better than she did; for it was here that he had watched all the night long the death of the stranger who was buried in Roland Sefton's grave. There was little change in it to his eyes. The bare walls and the scanty homely furniture were the same now as then. There was the glimmer of a little lamp falling on the tranquil figure on the bed. The occupant of this chamber only was different, but oh! the difference to him!

"Do not leave me, Phebe!" he cried, stretching out his hand towards her, as if blind and groping to be led. She stepped noiselessly across the uncarpeted floor and looked down on the face lying on the pillow. The smile that had been upon it in the last moment yet lingered about the mouth, and added an inexpressible gentleness and tenderness to its beauty. The long dark eyelashes shadowed the cheeks, which were suffused with a faint flush. Felicita looked young again, with something of the sweet shy grace of the girl whom he had first seen in this distant mountain village so many years ago. He sank down on his knees, and shut out the sight of her from his despairing eyes. The silent minutes crept slowly away unheeded; he did not stir, or sob, or lift up his bowed face. This kneeling figure at her feet was as rigid and as death-like as the lifeless form lying on the bed; and Phebe grew frightened, yet dared not break in upon his grief. At last a footstep came somewhat noisily up the staircase, and she laid her hand softly on the gray head beneath her.

"Jean Merle," she said, "it is time for us to go."

The sound of this name in Phebe's familiar voice aroused him. She had never called him by it before; and its utterance was marked as a thing irrevocably settled that his life henceforth was to be altogether divorced from that of Roland Sefton. He had come to the last point which connected him with it. When he turned away from this rigid form, in all the awful loveliness of death, he would have cut himself off forever from the past. He laid his hand upon the chilly forehead; but he dared not stoop down to touch the sweet sad face with his lips. With no word of farewell to Phebe, he rushed out into the dense darkness of the night and made his way down the valley, and through the steep forest roads he had traversed only a few hours ago with something like hope dawning in his heart. For in the morning he had known that he should see Felicita again, and there was expectation and a gleam of gladness in that; but to-night his eyes had looked upon her for the last time.



CHAPTER XXVI.

IN LUCERNE.

Phebe found herself alone, with the burden of Jean Merle's secret resting on her unshared. It depended upon her sagacity and tact whether he should escape being connected in a mysterious manner with the sad event that had just transpired in Engelberg. The footstep she had heard on the stairs was that of the landlady, who had gone into the salon and had thus missed seeing Jean Merle as he left the house. Phebe met her in the doorway.

"I have sent a message by the guide who brought me here," she said in slowly pronounced French; "he is gone to Lucerne, and he will telegraph to England for me."

"Is he gone—Jean Merle?" asked the landlady.

"Certainly, yes," answered Phebe; "he is gone to Lucerne."

"Will he return, then?" inquired the landlady.

"No, I suppose not," she replied; "he has done all he had to do for me. He will telegraph to England, and our friends will come to us immediately. Good-night, Madame."

"Good-night, Mademoiselle," was the response. "May you sleep well!"

But sleep was far away from Phebe's agitated brain that night. She felt herself alone in a strange land, with a great grief and a terrible secret oppressing her. As the night wore on a feverish dread took possession of her that she should be unable to prevent Felicita's burial beside Roland Sefton's grave. Even Felix would decide that it ought to be so. As soon as the dawn came she rose and went out into the icy freshness of the morning air, blowing down from the snow-fields and the glaciers around her.

The village was beginning to arouse itself. The Abbey bells were ringing, and at the sound of them, calling the laborers to a new day's toil, here and there a shutter was thrown back or a door was opened, and light volumes of gray wood-smoke stole upwards into the still air. There was a breath of serenity and peace in this early hour which soothed Phebe's fevered brain, as she slowly sauntered on with the purpose of finding the cemetery, where the granite cross stood over the grave that had occupied so much of her thoughts since she had heard of Roland Sefton's death. She reached it at last and stood motionless before it, looking back through all the years in which she had mourned with Roland's mother his untimely death. He whom she had mourned for was not lying here; but did not his life hold deeper cause for grief than his death ever had? Standing there, so far from home, in the quiet morning, with this grave at her feet, she answered to herself a question which had been troubling her for many months. Yes, it was a right thing to do, on the whole, to keep this secret—Felicita's secret as well as Roland's—forever locked in her own heart. There was concealment in it closely verging, as it must always do, on deception. Phebe's whole nature revolted against concealment. She loved to live her life out in the eye of day. But the story of Roland Sefton's crime, and the penance done for it, in its completeness could never be given to the world; it must always result in some measure in misleading the judgment of those most interested in it. There was little to be gained and much to be sacrificed by its disclosure. Felicita's death seemed to give a new weight to every reason for keeping the secret; and it was safe in her keeping and Mr. Clifford's: when a few years were gone it would be hers alone. The cross most heavy for her to bear she must carry, hidden from every eye; but she could bear it faithfully, even unto death.

As her lips whispered the last three words, giving to her resolution a definite form and utterance, a shadow beside her own fell upon the cross. She turned quickly and met the kindly inquisitive gaze of the mountain cure who had led Felicita to this spot yesterday. He had been among the first who followed Jean Merle as he carried her lifeless form through the village street; and he had run to the monastery to seek what medical aid could be had there. The incident was one of great interest to him. Phebe's frank yet sorrowful face, turned to him with its expression of ready sympathy with any fellow-creature, won from the young priest the cordial friendliness that everywhere greeted her. He stood bareheaded before her, as he had done before Felicita, but he spoke to her in a tone of more familiar intercourse.

"Madame, pardon," he said, "but you are in grief, and I would offer you my condolence. Behold! to me the lady who died yesterday spoke her last words—here, on this spot. She said not a word afterwards to any human creature. I come to communicate them to you. There is but little to tell."

It was so little that Phebe felt greatly disappointed; though her eyes grew blind with tears as she thought of Felicita standing here before this deceptive cross and calling herself of all women the most miserable. The cross itself had had no message of peace to her troubled heart. "Most miserable," repeated Phebe to herself, looking back upon yesterday with a vain yearning that she had been there to tell Felicita that she shared her misery, and could help her to bear it.

"And now," continued the cure, "can I be of any service to Madame? You are alone; and there are a few formalities to observe. It will be some days before your friends can arrive. Command me, then, if I can be of any service."

"Can you help me to get away," she asked, in a tone of eager anxiety, "down to Lucerne as quickly as possible? I have telegraphed to Madame's son, and he will come immediately. Of course, I know in England when a sudden death occurs there are inquiries made; and it is right and necessary. But you see Madame died of a heart disease."

"Without doubt," he interrupted; "she was ill here, and I followed her down the village, and saw her enter Jean Merle's hut. I was about to enter, for she had been there a long time, when you appeared with your guide and went in. In a minute there was a cry, and I saw Jean Merle bearing the poor lady out into the daylight and you following them. Without doubt she died from natural causes."

"There are formalities to observe," said Phebe earnestly, "and they take much time. But I must leave Engelberg to-morrow, or the next day at the latest, taking her with me. Can you help me to do this?"

"But you will bury Madame here?" answered the cure, who felt deeply what interest would attach to another English grave in the village burial-ground; "she told me yesterday Roland Sefton was her relative, and there will be many difficulties and great expenditure in taking her away from this place."

"Yes," answered Phebe, "but Madame belongs to a great family in England; she was the daughter of Baron Riversborough, and she must be buried among her own people. You shall telegraph to the consul at Geneva, and he will say she must be buried among her own people, not here. It does not signify about the expenditure."

"Ah! that makes it more easy," replied the cure, "and if Madame is of an illustrious family—I was about to return to my parish this morning; but I will stay and arrange matters for you. This is my native place, and I know all the people. If I cannot do everything, the abbot and the brethren will. Be tranquil; you shall leave Engelberg as early as possible."

It was impossible for Phebe to telegraph to England her intention of returning immediately to Lucerne; for Felix must have set off already, and would be on his way to the far-off valley among the Swiss mountains, where he believed his father's grave lay, and where his mother had met her death. Phebe's heart was wrung for him, as she thought of the overwhelming and instantaneous shock it would be to him and Hilda, who did not even know that their mother had left home; but her dread lest he should judge it right to lay his mother beside this grave, which had possessed so large a share in his thoughts hitherto, compelled her to hasten her departure before he could arrive, even at the risk of missing him on the way. The few formalities to be observed seemed complicated and tedious; but at last they were ended. The friendly priest accompanied her on her sorrowful return down the rough mountain-roads, preceded by the litter bearing Felicita's coffin; and at every hamlet they passed through he left minute instructions that a young English gentleman travelling up to Engelberg was to be informed of the little funeral cavalcade that was gone down to Lucerne.

Down the green valley, and through the solemn forests, Phebe followed the rustic litter on foot with the priest beside her, now and then reciting a prayer in a low tone. When they reached Grafenort carriages were in waiting to convey them as far as the Lake. It was only a week since she and Felicita had started on their secret and disastrous journey, and now her face was set homewards, with no companion save this coffin, which she followed with so heavy a spirit. She had come up the valley as Jean Merle had done, with vague, dim hopes, stretching vainly forward to some impossible good that might come to him when he and Felicita stood face to face once again. But now all was over.

A boat was ready at Stans, and here the friendly cure bade her farewell, leaving her to go on her way alone. And now it seemed to Phebe, more than ever before, that she had been living and acting for a long while in a painful dream. Her usually clear and tranquil soul was troubled and bewildered as she sat in the boat at the head of Felicita's coffin, with her dear face so near to her, yet hidden from her eyes. All around her lay the Lake, with a fine rapid ripple on the silvery blue of its waters, as the rowers, with measured and rhythmical strokes of their oars, carried the boat's sad freight on towards Lucerne. The evening sun was shining aslant down the wooded slopes of the lower hills, and dark blue shadows gathered where its rays no longer penetrated. That half-consciousness, common to all of us, that she had gone through this passage in her life before, and that this sorrow had already had its counterpart in some other state of existence, took possession of her; and with it came a feeling of resigning herself to fate. She was worn out with anxiety and grief. What would come might come. She could exert herself no longer.

As they drew near to Lucerne, the clangor of military music and the merry pealing of bells rang across the water, jarring upon her faint and sorrowful heart. Some fete was going on, and all the populace was active. Banners floated from all the windows, and a gay procession was parading along the quay, marching under the echoing roof of the long wooden bridge which crossed the green torrent of the river. Numberless little boats were darting to and fro on the smooth surface of the Lake, and through them all her own, bearing Felicita's coffin, sped swiftly on its way to the landing-stage, on which, as if standing there amid the hubbub to receive it, her sad eyes saw Canon Pascal and Felix.

They had but just reached Lucerne, and were waiting for the next steamer starting to Stans, when Felix had caught sight of the boat afar off, with its long, narrow burden, covered by a black pall; and as it drew nearer he had distinguished Phebe sitting beside it alone. Until this moment it had seemed absolutely incredible that his mother could be dead, though the telegram to Canon Pascal had said so distinctly. There must be some mistake, he had constantly reiterated as they hurried through France to Lucerne; Phebe had been frightened, and in her terror had misled herself and them. No wonder his mother should be ill—dangerously so, after the fatigue and agitation of a journey to Engelberg; but she could not be dead. Phebe had had no opportunity of telegraphing again; for they had set off at once, and from Basle they had brought on with them an eminent physician. So confident was Felix in his asseverations that Canon Pascal himself had begun to hope that he was right, and but that the steamer was about to start in a few minutes, they would have hired a boat to carry them on to Stans, in order to lose no time in taking medical aid to Felicita.

But as Felix stood there, only dimly conscious of the scene about them, the sight of the boat bringing Phebe to the shore with the covered coffin beside her, extinguished in his heart the last glimmering of the hope which had been little more than a natural recoil from despair. He was not taken by surprise, or hurried into any vehemence of grief. A cold stupor, which made him almost insensible to his loss, crept over him. Sorrow would assert itself by and by; but now he felt dull and torpid. When the coffin was lifted out of the boat, by bearers who were waiting at the landing-stage for the purpose, he took up his post immediately behind it, as if it were already the funeral procession carrying his mother to the grave; and with all the din and tumult of the streets sounding in his ears, he followed unquestioningly wherever it might go. Why it was there, or why his mother's coffin was there, he did not ask; he only knew that she was there.

"My poor Phebe," said Canon Pascal, as they followed closely behind him, "why did you start homewards? Would it not have been best to bury her at Engelberg, beside her husband? Did not Felicita forgive him, even in her death?"

"No, no, it was not that," answered Phebe; "she forgave him, but I could not bear to leave her there. I was with her just as she died; but she had gone up to Engelberg alone, and I followed her, only too late. She never spoke to me or looked at me. I could not leave Felicita in Engelberg," she added excitedly; "it has been a fatal place to her."

"Is there anything we must not know?" he inquired.

"Yes," she said, turning to him her pale and quivering face, "I have a secret to keep all my life long. But the evil of it is spent now. It seems to me as if it is a sin no longer; all the selfishness is gone out of it, and Felix and Hilda were as clear of it as Alice herself; if I could tell you all, you would say so too."

"You need tell me no more, dear Phebe," he replied; "God bless you in the keeping of their secret!"



CHAPTER XXVII.

HIS OWN CHILDREN.

The tidings of Felicita's death spread rapidly in England, and the circumstances attending it, its suddenness, and the fact that it had occurred at the same place that her husband had perished by accident many years before, gave it more than ordinary interest and excited more than ordinary publicity. It was a good deal talked of in literary circles, and in the fashionable clique to which she belonged through her relationship with the Riversford family. There were the usual kindly notices of her life and works in the daily papers; and her publisher seized the occasion to advertise her books more largely. But it was in Riversborough that the deepest impression was made, and the keenest curiosity aroused by the story of her death, obscure in some of its details, but full of romantic interest to her old towns-people, who were thus recalled to the circumstances attending Roland Sefton's disappearance and subsequent death. The funeral also was to be in the immediate neighborhood, in the church where all the Riversfords had been buried time out of mind, long before a title had been conferred on the head of the house. It appeared quite right that Felicita should be buried beside her own people; and every one who could get away from business went down to the little country churchyard to be present at the funeral.

But Phebe was not there: when she reached London she was so worn out with fatigue and agitation that she was compelled to remain at home, brooding over what she had come through. And Jean Merle had not trusted himself to look into the open grave, about to close over all that remained of the woman he had so passionately loved. The tolling of the minute-bell, which began early in the day and struck its deep knell through the tardy hours till late in the evening, smote upon his ear and heart every time the solemn tone sounded through the quiet hours. He was left alone in his old home, for Mr. Clifford was gone as one of the mourners to follow Felicita to the grave; and all the servants had asked to be present at the funeral. There was nothing to demand his attention or to distract his thoughts. The house was as silent as if it had been the house of death and he himself but a phantom in it.

Though he had been six months in the house, he had never yet been in Felicita's study—that quiet room shut out from the noise both of the street and the household, which he had set apart and prepared for her when she was coming, stepping down a little from her own level to be his wife. It was dismantled, he knew; her books were gone, and all the costly decorative fittings he had chosen with so much joyous anxiety. But the panelled doors which he had worked at with his own hands were there, and the window, with its delicately tinted lattice-frames, through which the sun had shone in daintily upon her at her desk. He went slowly up the long staircase, pausing now and then lost in thought; and standing, at last before the door, which he had never opened without asking permission to enter in, he hesitated for many minutes before he went in.

An empty room, swept clean of everything which made it a living habitation. The sunshine fell in pencils of colored light upon the bare walls and uncarpeted floor. It bore no trace of any occupant; yet to him it seemed but yesterday that he had been in here, listening to the low tones of Felicita's sweet voice, and gazing with silent pride on her beautiful face. There had been unmeasured passion and ambition in his love for her, which had fatally changed his whole life. But he knew now that he had failed in winning her love and in making her happy; and the secret dissatisfaction she had felt in her ill-considered marriage had been fatal both to her and to him. The restless eagerness it had developed in him to gain a position that could content her, had been a seed of worldliness, which had borne deadly fruit. He opened the casement, and looked out on the familiar landscape, on which her eyes had so often rested—eyes that were closed forever. The past, so keenly present to him this moment, was in reality altogether dead and buried. She had ceased to be his wife years ago, when she had accepted the sacrifice he proposed to her of his very existence. That old life was blotted out; and he had no right to mourn openly for the dead, who was being laid in the grave of her fathers at this hour. His children were counting themselves orphans, and it was not in his power to comfort them. He knelt down at the open window, and rested his bowed head on the window-sill. The empty room behind him was but a symbol of his own empty lot, swept clean of all its affections and aspirations. Two thirds of his term of years were already spent; and he found himself bereft and dispossessed of all that makes life worth having—all except the power of service. Even at this late hour a voice within him called to him, "Go work to-day in my vineyard." It was not too late to serve God who had forgiven him and mankind whom he had wronged. There was time to make some atonement; to work out some redemption for his fellow-men. To Roland Sefton had arisen a vision of a public and honorable career, cheered on by applause of men and crowned with popularity and renown for all he might achieve. But Jean Merle must toil in silence and difficulty, amid rebuffs and discouragements, and do humble service which would remain unrecognized and unthanked. Yet there was work to do, if it were no more than cheering the last days of an old man, or teaching a class of the most ignorant of his townsfolk in a night school. He rose from his knees after a while, and left the room, closing the door as softly as he had been used to do when afraid of any noise grating on his wife's sensitive brain. It seemed to him like the closing up of the vault where she was buried. She was gone from him forever, and there was nothing left but to forget the past if that were possible.

As he went lingeringly down the staircase, which would henceforth be trodden seldom if ever by him, he heard the ringing of the house-bell, which announced the return of Mr. Clifford and of Felix and Hilda, who were coming to stay the night in their old home, before returning to London on the morrow. He hastened down to open the door and help them to alight from their carriage. It was the first time he had been thus brought into close contact with them; but this must happen often in the future, and he must learn to meet them as strangers, and to be looked upon by them as little more than a hired servant.

But the sight of Hilda's sad young face, so pale and tear-stained, and the expression of deep grief that Felix wore, tried him sorely. What would he not have given to be able to take this girl into his arms and soothe her, and to comfort his son with comfort none but a father can give? He stood outside the sphere of their sorrows, looking on them with the eyes of a stranger; and the pain of seeing them so near yet so far away from him was unutterable. The time might come when Jean Merle could see them, and talk with them calmly as a friend, ready to serve them to the utmost of his power; when there might be something of pleasure in gaining their friendship and confidence. But so long as they were mourning bitterly for their mother and could not conceal the sharpness of their grief, the sight of them was a torture to him. It was a relief to him and to Mr. Clifford when they left Riversborough the next morning.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

AN EMIGRATION SCHEME.

Several months passed away, bringing no visitor to Riversborough, except Phebe, who came down two or three times to see Mr. Clifford, whose favorite she was. But Phebe never spoke of the past to Jean Merle. Since they had determined what to do, it seemed wiser to her not to look back so as to embitter the present. Jean Merle was gradually gaining a footing in the town as Mr. Clifford's representative, and was in many ways filling a post very few could fill. Now and then, some of the elder townsmen, who had been contemporary with Roland Sefton, remarked upon the resemblance between Jean Merle and their old comrade; but this was satisfactorily accounted for by his relationship to Madame Sefton: for Roland, they said, had always had a good deal of the foreigner about him, much more than this quiet, melancholy, self-effacing man, who never pushed himself forward, or courted attention, yet was always ready with a good sound shrewd opinion if he was asked for it. It had been a lucky thing for old Clifford that such a man had been found to take care of him and his affairs in his extreme old age.

Felix had gone back to his curacy, under Canon Pascal, in the parish where he had spent his boyhood and where he was safe against any attack upon his father's memory. But in spite of being able to see Alice every day, and of enjoying Canon Pascal's constant companionship, he was ill at ease, and Phebe was dissatisfied. This was exactly the life Felicita had dreaded for him, an easy, half-occupied life in a small parish, where there was little active employment for either mind or body. The thought of it troubled and haunted Phebe. The magnificent physical strength and active energy of Felix, and the strong bent to heroic effort and Christian devotion given to him in his earliest years, were thrown away in this tranquil English village, where there was clearly no scope for heroism. How was it that Canon Pascal could not see it? His curacy was a post to be occupied by some feebler man than Felix; a man whose powers were only equal to the quiet work of carrying on the labors begun by his rector. Besides, Felix would have recovered from the shock of his mother's sudden death if his time and faculties had been more fully occupied. She must give words to her discontent, and urge Canon Pascal to banish him from a spot where he was leading too dull a life.

Canon Pascal had been in residence at Westminster for some weeks, and was about to return to his rectory, when Phebe went down to the Abbey one day, bent upon putting her decision into action. The bitterness of the early spring had come again; and strong easterly gales were blowing steadily day after day, bringing disease and death to those who were feeble and ailing, yet not more surely than the fogs of the city had done. It had been a long and gloomy winter, and in this second month of the year the death rates were high. As Phebe passed through the Abbey on her way to his home in the cloisters, she saw Canon Pascal standing still, with his head thrown back and his eyes uplifted to the noble arches supporting the roof. He did not notice her till her clear, pleasant voice addressed him.

"Ah, Phebe!" he exclaimed, a swift smile transforming his grave, marked face, "my dear, I was just asking myself how I could bear to say farewell to all this."

He glanced round him with an expression of unutterable love and pride and of keen regret. The Abbey had grown dearer to him than any spot on earth; and as he paced down the long aisle he lingered as if every step he took was full of pain.

"Bid farewell to it!" repeated Phebe; "but why?"

"For a series of whys," he answered; "first and foremost, because the doctors tell me, and I believe it, that my dear wife's days are numbered if she stays another year in this climate. All our days are numbered by God, I know; but man can number them also, if he pleases, and make them longer or shorter by his obedience or disobedience. Secondly, Phebe, our sons have gone on before us as pioneers, and they send us piteous accounts of the spiritual needs of the colonists and the native populations out yonder. I preach often on the evils of over-population and its danger to our country, and I prescribe emigration to most of the young people I come across. Why should not I, even I, take up the standard and cry 'Follow me'? We should leave England with sad hearts, it is true, but for her good and for the good of unborn generations, who shall create a second England under other skies. And last, but not altogether least, the colonial bishopric is vacant, and has been offered to me. If I accept it I shall save the life most precious to me, and find another home in the midst of my children and grand-children."

"And Felix?" cried Phebe.

"What could be better for Felix than to come with us?" he asked; "there he will meet with the work he was born for, the work he is fretting his soul for. He will be at last a gallant soldier of the Cross, unhampered by any dread of his father's sin rising up against him. And we could never part with Alice—her mother and I. You would be the last to say No to that, Phebe?"

"Oh, yes!" she answered, with tears standing in her eyes, "Felix must go with you."

"And Hilda, too," he went on; "for what would become of Hilda alone here, with her only brother settled at the antipodes? And here we shall want Phebe Marlowe's influence with old Mr. Clifford, who might prevent his ward from quitting England. I am counting also on Phebe herself, as my pearl of deaconesses, with no vow to bind her, if the happiness and fuller life of marriage opened before her. Still, to secure all these benefits I must give up all this."

He paused for a minute or two, looking back up the narrow side aisle, and then, as if he could not tear himself away, he retraced his steps slowly and lingeringly; and Phebe caught the glistening of tears in his eyes.

"Never to see it again," he murmured, "or if I see it, not to belong to it! To have no more right here than any other stranger! It feels like a home to me, dear Phebe. I have had solemn glimpses of God here, as if it were indeed the gate of heaven. To the last hour of my life, wherever I go, my soul will cleave to these walls. But I shall give it up."

"Yes," she said, sighing, "but there is no bitterness of repentance to you in giving it up."

"How sadly you spoke that," he went on, "as if a woman like you could know the bitterness of repentance! You have only looked at it through other men's eyes. Yes, we shall go. Felix and Hilda and you are free to leave Mr. Clifford, now he is so admirably cared for by this Jean Merle. I like all that I hear of him, though I never saw him; surely it was a blessing from God that Madame Sefton's poor kinsman was brought to the old man. Could we not leave him safely in Merle's charge?"

"Quite safely," she answered.

"I have a scheme for a new settlement in my head," he continued, "a settlement of our own, and we will invite emigrants to it. I can reckon on a few who will joyfully follow our lead, and it will not seem a strange land if we carry those whom we love with us. This hour even I have made up my mind to accept this bishopric. Go on, dear Phebe, and tell my wife. I must stay here alone a little longer."

But Phebe did not hasten with these tidings through the cloisters. She walked to and fro, pondering them and finding in them a solution of many difficulties. For Felix it would be well, and it was not to be expected that Alice would leave her invalid mother to remain behind in England as a curate's wife. Hilda, too, what could be better or happier for her than to go with those who looked upon her as a daughter, who would take Alice's place as soon as she was gone into a home of her own? There was little to keep them in England. She could not refuse to let them go.

But herself? The strong strain of faithfulness in Phebe's nature knitted her as closely with the past as with the present; and with some touch of pathetic clinging to the past which the present cannot possess. She could not separate herself from it. The little home where she was born, and the sterile fields surrounding it, with the wide moors encircling them, were as dear to her as the Abbey was to Canon Pascal. In no other place did she feel herself so truly at home. If she cut herself adrift from it and all the subtly woven web of memories belonging to it, she fancied she might pine away of home-sickness in a foreign land. There was Mr. Clifford too, who depended so utterly upon her promise to be near him when he was dying, and to hold his hand in hers as he went down into the deep chill waters of death. And Jean Merle, whose terrible secret she shared, and would be the only one to share it when Mr. Clifford was gone. How was it possible for her to separate herself from these two? She loved Felix and Hilda with all the might of her unselfish heart; but Felix had Alice, and by and by Hilda would give herself to some one who would claim most of her affection. She was not necessary to either of them. But if she went away she must leave a blank, too dreary to be thought of, in the clouded lives of Mr. Clifford and poor Merle. For their sakes she must refuse to leave England.



CHAPTER XXIX.

FAREWELL.

But it was more difficult than Phebe anticipated to resist the urgent entreaties of Felix and Hilda not to sever the bond that had existed between them so long. Her devotion to them in the past had made them feel secure of its continuance, and to quit England, leaving her behind, seemed impossible. But Mr. Clifford's reiterated supplications that she would not forsake him in his old age drew her as powerfully the other way. Scarcely a day passed without a few lines, written by his own feeble and shaking hand, reaching her, beseeching and demanding of her a solemn promise to stay in England as long as he lived. Jean Merle said nothing, even when she went down to visit them, urged by Canon Pascal to set before Mr. Clifford the strong reasons there were for her to accompany the party of emigrants; but Phebe knew that Jean Merle's life, with its unshared memories and secrets, would be still more dreary if she went away. After she had seen these two she wavered no more.

It was a larger party of emigrants than any one had foreseen; for it was no sooner known that Canon Pascal was leaving England as a colonial Bishop, than many men and women came forward anxious to go out and found new homes under his auspices. He was a well-known advocate of emigration, and it was rightly deemed a singular advantage to have him as a leader as well as their spiritual chief. Canon Pascal threw himself into the movement with ardor, and the five months elapsing before he set sail were filled with incessant claims upon his time and thought, while all about him were drawn into the strong current of his work. Phebe was occupied from early morning till late at night, and a few hours of deep sleep, which gave her no time for thinking of her own future, was all the rest she could command. Even Felix, who had scarcely shaken off the depression caused by his mother's sudden death, found a fresh fountain-head of energy and gladness in sharing Canon Pascal's new career, and in the immediate prospect of marrying Alice.

For in addition to all the other constant calls upon her, Phebe was plunged into the preparations needed for this marriage, which was to take place before they left England. There was no longer any reason to defer it for lack of means, as Felix had inherited his share of his mother's settlement. But Phebe drew largely on her own resources to send out for them the complete furnishing of a home as full of comfort, and as far as possible, as full of real beauty, as their Essex rectory had been. She almost stripped her studio of the sketches and the finished pictures which Felix and Hilda had admired, sighing sometimes, and smiling sometimes, as they vanished from her sight into the packing cases, for the times that were gone by, and for the pleasant surprise that would greet them, in that far-off land, when their eyes fell upon the old favorites from home.

Felix and Hilda spent a few days at Riversborough with Mr. Clifford, but Phebe would not go with them, in spite of their earnest desire; and Jean Merle, their kinsman, was absent, only coming home the night before they bade their last farewell to their birth-place. He appeared to them a very silent and melancholy man, keeping himself quite in the background, and unwilling to talk much about his own country and his relationship with their grandmother's family. But they had not time to pay much attention to him; the engrossing interest of spending the few last hours amid these familiar places, so often and so fondly to be remembered in the coming years, made them less regardful of this stranger, who was watching them with undivided and despairing interest. No word or look escaped him, as he accompanied them from room to room, and about the garden walks, unable to keep himself away from this unspeakable torture. Mr. Clifford wept, as old men weep, when they bade him good-by; but Felix was astonished by the fixed and mournful expression of inward anguish in Jean Merle's eyes, as he held his hand in a grasp that would not let him go.

"I may never see you again," he said, "but I shall hear of you."

"Yes," answered Felix, "we shall write frequently to Mr. Clifford, and you will answer our letters for him."

"God bless you!" said Jean Merle. "God grant that you may be a truer and a happier man than your father was."

Felix started. This man, then, knew of his father's crime; probably knew more of it than he did. But there was no time to question him now; and what good would it do to hear more than he knew already? Hilda was standing near to him waiting to say good-by, and Jean Merle, turning to her, took her into his arms, and pressed her closely to his heart. A sudden impulse prompted her to put her arm round his neck as she had done round old Mr. Clifford's, and to lift up her face for his kiss. He held her in his embrace for a few moments, and then, without another word spoken to them, he left them and they saw him no more. The marriage was celebrated a few days after this visit, and not long before the time fixed for the Bishop and his large band of emigrants to sail. Under these circumstances the ceremony was a quiet one. The old rectory was in disorder, littered with packing cases, and upset from cellar to garret. Even when the wedding was over both Phebe and Hilda were too busy for sentimental indulgence. The few remaining days were flying swiftly past them all, and keeping them in constant fear that there would not be time enough for all that had to be done.

But the last morning came, when Phebe found herself standing amid those who were so dear to her on the landing-stage, with but a few minutes more before they parted from her for years, if not forever. Bishop Pascal was already gone on board the steamer standing out in the river, where the greater number of emigrants had assembled. But Felix and Alice and Hilda lingered about Phebe till the last moment. Yet they said but little to one another; what could they say which would tell half the love or half the sorrow they felt? Phebe's heart was full. How gladly would she have gone out with these dear children, even if she left behind her her little birth-place on the hills, if it had not been for Mr. Clifford and Jean Merle!

"But they need me most," she said again and again to herself. "I stay, and must stay, for their sakes." As at length they said farewell to one another, Hilda clinging to her as a child clings to the mother it is about to leave, Phebe saw at a little distance Jean Merle himself, looking on. She could not be mistaken, though his sudden appearance there startled her; and he did not approach them, nor even address her when they were gone. For when her eyes, blinded with tears, lost sight of the outward-bound vessel amid the number of other craft passing up and down the river, and she turned to the spot where she had seen his gray head and sorrowful face he was no longer there. Alone and sad at heart, she made her way through the tumult of the landing-stage and drove back to the desolate home she had shared so long with those who were now altogether parted from her.



CHAPTER XXX.

QUITE ALONE.

It was early in June, and the days were at the longest. Never before had Phebe found the daylight too long, but now it shone upon dismantled and disordered rooms, which reminded her too sharply of the separation and departure they indicated. The place was no longer a home: everything was gone which was made beautiful by association; and all that was left was simply the bare framework of a living habitation, articles that could be sold and scattered without regret. Her own studio was a scene of litter and confusion, amid which it would be impossible to work; and it was useless to set it in order, for at midsummer she would leave the house, now far too large and costly for her occupation.

What was she to do with herself? Quite close at hand was the day when she would be absolutely homeless; but in the absorbing interest with which she had thrown herself into the affairs of those who were gone she had formed no plans for her own future. There was her profession, of course: that would give her employment, and bring in a larger income then she needed with her simple wants. But how was she to do without a home—she who most needed to fill a home with all the sweet charities of life?

She had never felt before what it was to be altogether without ties of kinship to any fellow-being. This incompleteness in her lot had been perfectly filled up by her relationship with the whole family of the Seftons. She had found in them all that was required for the full development and exercise of her natural affections. But she had lost them. Death and the chance changes of life had taken them from her, and there was not one human creature in the world on whom she possessed the claim of being of the same blood.

Phebe could not dwell amid the crowds of London with such a thought oppressing her. This heart-sickness and loneliness made the busy streets utterly distasteful to her. To be here, with millions around her, all strangers to her, was intolerable. There was her own little homestead, surrounded by familiar scenes, where she would seek rest and quiet before laying any plans for herself. She put her affairs into the hands of a house-agent, and set out alone upon her yearly visit to her farm, which until now Felix and Hilda had always shared.

She stayed on her way to spend a night at Riversborough—her usual custom, that she might reach the unprepared home on the moors early in the day. But she would not prolong her stay; there was a fatigue and depression about her which she said could only be dispelled by the sweet fresh air of her native moorlands.

"Felix and Hilda have been more to me than any words could tell," she said to Mr. Clifford and Jean Merle, "and now I have lost them I feel as if more than half my life was gone. I must get away by myself into my old home, where I began my life, and readjust it as well as I can. I shall do it best there with no one to distract me. You need not fear my wishing to be too long alone."

"We ought to have let you go," answered Mr. Clifford. "Jean Merle said we ought to have let you go with them. But how could we part with you, Phebe?"

"I should not have been happy," she said, sighing, "as long as you need me most—you two. And I owe all I am to Jean Merle himself."

The little homely cottage with its thatched roof and small lattice windows was more welcome to her than any other dwelling could have been. Now her world had suffered such a change, it was pleasant to come here, where nothing had been altered since her childhood. Both within and without the old home was as unchanged as the beautiful outline of the hills surrounding it and the vast hollow of the sky above. Here she might live over again the past—the whole past. She was a woman, with a woman's sad experience of life; but there was much of the girl, even of the child, left in Phebe Marlowe still; and no spot on earth could have brought back her youth to her as this inheritance of hers. There was an unspoiled simplicity about her which neither time nor change could destroy—the childlikeness of one who had entered into the kingdom of heaven.

It was a year since she had been here last, with Hilda in her first grief for her mother's death; and everywhere she found traces of Jean Merle's handiwork. The half-shaped blocks of wood, left unfinished for years in her father's workshop, were completed. The hawk hovering over its prey, which the dumb old wood-carver had begun as a symbol of the feeling of vengeance he could not give utterance to when brooding over Roland Sefton's crime, had been brought to a marvellous perfection by Jean Merle's practised hand, and it had been placed by him under the crucifix which old Marlowe had fastened in the window-frame, where the last rays of daylight fell upon the bowed head hidden by the crown of thorns. The first night that Phebe sat alone, on the old hearth, her eyes rested upon these until the daylight faded away, and the darkness shut them out from her sight. Had Jean Merle known what he did when he laid this emblem of vengeance beneath this symbol of perfect love and sacrifice?

But after a few days, when she had visited every place of yearly pilgrimage, knitting up the slackened threads of memory, Phebe began to realize the terrible solitude of this isolated home of hers. To live again where no step passed by and no voice spoke to her, where not even the smoke of a household hearth floated up into the sky, was intolerable to her genial nature, which was only satisfied in helpful and pleasant human intercourse. The utter silence became irksome to her, as it had been in her girlhood; but even then she had possessed the companionship of her dumb father: now there was not only silence, but utter loneliness.

The necessity of forming some definite plan for her future life became every day a more pressing obligation, whilst every day the needful exertion grew more painful to her. Until now she had met with no difficulty in deciding what she ought to do: her path of duty had been clearly traced for her. But there was neither call of duty now nor any strong inclination to lead her to choose one thing more than another. All whom she loved had gone from London, and this small solitary home had grown all too narrow in its occupations to satisfy her nature. Mr. Clifford himself did not need her constant companionship as he would have done if Jean Merle had not been living with him. She was perfectly free to do what she pleased and go where she pleased, but to no human being could such freedom be more oppressive than to Phebe Marlowe. She had sauntered out one evening, ankle-deep among the heather, aimless in her wanderings, and a little dejected in spirits. For the long summer day had been hot even up here on the hills, and a dull film had hidden the landscape from her eyes, shutting her in upon herself and her disquieting thoughts. "We are always happy when we can see far enough," says Emerson; but Phebe's horizon was all dim and overcast. She could see no distant and clear sky-line. The sight of Jean Merle's figure coming towards her through the dull haziness brought a quick throb to her pulse, and she ran down the rough wagon track to meet him.

"A letter from Felix," he called out before she reached him. "I came out with it because you could not have it before post-time to-morrow, and I am longing to have news of him and of Hilda."

They walked slowly back to the cottage, side by side, reading the letter together; for Felix could have nothing to say to Phebe which his father might not see. There was nothing of importance in it; only a brief journal dispatched by a homeward-bound vessel which had crossed the path of their steamer, but every word was read with deep and silent interest, neither of them speaking till they had read the last line.

"And now you will have tea with me," said Phebe joyfully.

He entered the little kitchen, so dark and cool to him after his sultry walk up the steep, long lanes, and sat watching her absently, yet with a pleasant consciousness of her presence, as she kindled her fire of dry furze and wood, and hung a little kettle to it by a chain hooked to a staple in the chimney, and arranged her curious old china, picked up long years ago by her father at village sales, upon the quaintly carved table set in the coolest spot of the dusky room. There was an air of simple busy gladness in her face and in every quick yet graceful movement that was inexpressibly charming to him. Maybe both of them glanced back at the dark past when Roland Sefton had been watching her with despairing eyes, yet neither of them spoke of it. That life was dead and buried. The present was altogether different.

Yet the meal was a silent one, and as soon as it was finished they went out again on to the hazy moorland.

"Are you quite rested yet, Phebe?" asked Jean Merle.

"Quite," she answered, with unconscious emphasis.

"And you have settled upon some plan for the future?" he said.

"No," she replied; "I am altogether at a loss. There is no one in all the world who has a claim upon me, or whom I have a claim upon; no one to say to me 'Go' or 'Come.' When the world is all before you and it is an empty world, it is difficult to choose which way you will take in it."

She had paused as she spoke; but now they walked on again in silence, Jean Merle looking down on her sweet yet somewhat sad face with attentive eyes. How little changed she was from the simple, faithful-hearted girl he had known long ago! There was the same candid and thoughtful expression on her face, and the same serene light in her blue eyes, as when she stood beside him, a little girl, patiently yet earnestly mastering the first difficulties of reading. There was no one in the wide world whom he knew as perfectly as he knew her; no one in the wide world who knew him as perfectly as she did.

"Tell me, Phebe," he said gravely, "is it possible that you have lived so long and that no man has found out what a priceless treasure you might be to him?"

"No one," she answered, with a little tremor in her voice; "only Simon Nixey," she added, laughing, as she thought of his perseverance from year to year. Jean Merle stopped and laid his hand on Phebe's arm.

"Will you be my wife?" he asked.

The brief question escaped him before he was aware of it. It was as utterly new to him as it was to her; yet the moment it was uttered he felt how much the happiness of his life depended upon it. Without her all the future would be dreary and lonely for him. With her—Jean Merle did not dare to think of the gladness that might yet be his.

"No, no," cried Phebe, looking up into his face furrowed with deep lines; "it is impossible! You ought not to ask me."

"Why?" he said.

She did not move or take away her eyes from his face. A rush of sad memories and associations was sweeping across her troubled heart. She saw him as he had been long ago, so far above her that it had seemed an honor to her to do him the meanest service. She thought of Felicita in her unapproachable loveliness and stateliness; and of their home, so full to her of exquisite refinement and luxury. In the true humility of her nature she had looked up to them as far above her, dwelling on a height to which she made no claim. And this dethroned king of her early days was a king yet, though he stood before her as Jean Merle, still fast bound in the chains his sins had riveted about him.

"I am utterly unworthy of you," he said; "but let me justify myself if I can. I had no thought of asking you such a question when I came up here. But you spoke mournfully of your loneliness; and I, too, am lonely, with no human being on whom I have any claim. It is so by my own sin. But you, at least, have friends; and in a year or two, when my last friend, Mr. Clifford, dies, you will go out to them, to my children, whom I have forfeited and lost forever. There is no tie to bind me closely to my kind. I am older than you—poorer; a dishonor to my father's house! Yet for an instant I fancied you might learn to love me, and no one but you can ever know me for what I am; only your faithful heart possesses my secret. Forgive me, Phebe, and forget it if you can."

"I never can forget it," she answered, with a low sob.

"Then I have done you a wrong," he went on; "for we were friends, were we not? And you will never again be at home with me as you have hitherto been. I was no more worthy of your friendship than of your love, and I have lost both."

"No, no," she cried, in a broken voice. "I never thought—it seems impossible. But, oh! I love you. I have never loved any one like you. Only it seems impossible that you should wish me to be your wife."

"Cannot you see what you will be to me," he said passionately. "It will be like reaching home after a weary exile; like finding a fountain of living waters after crossing a burning wilderness. I ought not to ask it of you, Phebe. But what man could doom himself to endless thirst and exile! If you love me so much that you do not see how unworthy I am of you, I cannot give you up again. You are all the world to me."

"But I am only Phebe Marlowe," she said, still doubtfully.

"And I am only Jean Merle," he replied.

Phebe walked down the old familiar lanes with Jean Merle, and returned to the moorlands alone whilst the sun was still above the horizon. But a soft west wind had risen, and the hazy heat was gone. She could see the sun sinking low behind Riversborough, and its tall spires glistened in the level rays, while the fine cloud of smoke hanging over it this summer evening was tinged with gold. Her future home lay there, under the shadow of those spires, and beneath the soft, floating veil ascending from a thousand hearths. The home Roland Sefton had forfeited and Felicita had forsaken had become hers. There was deep sadness mingled with the strange, unanticipated happiness of the present hour; and Phebe did not seek to put it away from her heart.



CHAPTER XXXI.

LAST WORDS.

Nothing could have delighted Mr. Clifford so much as a marriage between Jean Merle and Phebe Marlowe. The thought of it had more than once crossed his mind, but he had not dared to cherish it as a hope. When Jean Merle told him that night how Phebe had consented to become his wife, the old man's gladness knew no bounds.

"She is as dear to me as my own daughter," he said, in tremulous accents; "and now at last I shall have her under the same roof with me. I shall never be awake in the night again, fearing lest I should miss her on my death-bed. I should like Phebe to hold my hand in hers as long as I am conscious of anything in this world. All the remaining years of my life I shall have you and her with me as my children. God is very good to me."

But to Felix and Hilda it was a vexation and a surprise to hear that their Phebe Marlowe, so exclusively their own, was no longer to belong only to them. They could not tell, as none of us can tell with regard to our friends' marriages, what she could see in that man to make her willing to give herself to him. They never cordially forgave Jean Merle, though in the course of the following years he lavished upon them magnificent gifts. For once more he became a wealthy man, and stood high in the estimation of his fellow-townsmen. Upon his marriage with Phebe, at Mr. Clifford's request, he exchanged his foreign surname for the old English name of Marlowe, and was made the manager of the Old Bank. Some years later, when Mr. Clifford died, all his property, including his interest in the banking business, was left to John Marlowe.

No parents could have been more watchful over the interests of absent children than he and Phebe were in the welfare of Felix and Hilda. But they could never quite reconcile themselves to this marriage. They had quitted England with no intention of dwelling here again, but they felt that Phebe's shortcoming in her attachment to them made their old country less attractive to them. She had severed the last link that bound them to it. Possibly, in the course of years, they might visit their old home; but it would never seem the same to them. Canon Pascal alone rejoiced cordially in the marriage, though feeling that there was some secret and mystery in it, which was to be kept from him as from all the world.

Jean Merle, after his long and bitter exile, was at home again; after crossing a thirsty and burning wilderness, he had found a spring of living water. Yet whilst he thanked God and felt his love for Phebe growing and strengthening daily, there were times when in brief intervals of utter loneliness of spirit the long-buried past arose again and cried to him with sorrowful voice amid the tranquil happiness of the present. The children who called Phebe mother looked up into his face with eyes like those of the little son and daughter whom he had once forsaken, and their voices at play in the garden sounded like the echo of those beloved voices that had first stirred his heart to its depths. The quiet room where Felicita had been wont to shut herself in with her books and her writings remained empty and desolate amid the joyous occupancy of the old house, where little feet pattered everywhere except across that sacred threshold. It was never crossed but by Phebe and himself. Sometimes they entered it together, but oftener he went there alone, when his heart was heavy and his trust in God darkened. For there were times when Jean Merle had to pass through deep waters; when the sense of forgiveness forsook him and the light of God's countenance was withdrawn. He had sinned greatly and suffered greatly. He loved as he might never otherwise have loved the Lord, whose disciple he professed to be; yet still there were seasons of bitter remembrance for him, and of vain regrets over the irrevocable past.

It was no part of Phebe's nature to inquire jealously if her husband loved her as much as she loved him. She knew that in this as in all other things "it is more blessed to give than to receive." She felt for him a perfectly unselfish and faithful tenderness, satisfied that she made him happier than he could have been in any other way. No one else in the world knew him as she knew him; Felicita herself could never have been to him what she was. When she saw his grave face sadder than usual she had but to sit beside him with her hand in his, bringing to him the solace of her silent and tranquil sympathy; and by and by the sadness fled. This true heart of hers, that knew all and loved him in spite of all, was to him a sure token of the love of God.

THE END.