escape conviction."

He buried his face in his hands, and rested them on the altar-rails. Now
his bowed-down head was immediately beneath her eyes, and she looked
down upon it with a mournful gaze; it could not have been more mournful
if she had been contemplating his dead face lying at rest in his coffin.
How was all this shame and misery for him and her to end?

"Felicita," he said, lifting up his head, and meeting the sorrowful
farewell expression in her face, "if I could die it would be best for
the children and you."

"Yes," she answered, in the sweet, too dearly loved voice he had
listened to in happy days.

"I dare not open that door of escape for myself," he went on, "and God
does not send death to me. But I see a way, a possible way. I only see
it this moment; but whether it be for good or evil I cannot tell."

"Will it save us?" she asked eagerly.

"All of us," he replied. "This stranger, whose corpse I have just
left--nobody knows him, and he has no friends to trouble about
him--shall I give to him my name, and bury him as myself? Then I shall
be dead to all the world, Felicita; dead even to you; but you will be
saved. I too shall be safe in the grave, for death covers all sins. Even
old Clifford will be satisfied by my death."

"Could it be done?" she asked breathlessly.

"Yes," he said; "if you consent it shall be done. For my own sake I
would rather go back to England and deliver myself up to the law I have
broken. But you shall decide, my darling. If I return you will be known
as the wife of the convict Sefton. Say: shall I be henceforth dead
forever to you and my mother and the children? Shall it be a living
death for me, and deliverance and safety and honor for you all? You must
choose between my infamy or my death."

"It must be," she answered, slowly yet without hesitation, looking away
from him to the cross above the altar, "your death."

A shudder ran through her slight frame as she spoke, and thrilled
through him as he listened. It seemed to them both as if they stood
beside an open grave, on either side one, and parted thus. He stretched
out his hand to her, and laid it on her dress, as if appealing for
mercy; but she did not turn to him, or look upon him, or open her white
lips to utter another word. Then there came more stir and noise in the
church, footsteps sounded upon the pavement, and an inquisitive face
peeped out of the vestry near the altar where they stood. It was no
longer