and could have risen from the dead, he would have
clasped him in his arms, and wept upon his neck, as the father welcomed
his prodigal son.

Felicita did not speak when she entered the room, but looked at him with
a steadfastness in her dark sad eyes which again dimmed his with tears.
Almost fondly he pressed her hands in his, and led her to a chair, and
placed another near enough for him to speak to her in a low and quiet
voice, altogether unlike the awful tones he used in the bank, which made
the clerks quail before him. His hand trembled as he took the little
photographs out of their envelope, so worn and stained, and laid them
before her. She looked at them with tearless eyes, and let them fall
upon her lap as things of little interest.

"Phebe has told you?" he said pitifully.

"Yes," she whispered.

"You did not know before?" he said.

She shook her head mutely. A long, intricate path of falsehood stretched
before her, from which she could not turn aside, a maze in which she was
already entangled and lost; but her lips were reluctant to utter the
first words of untruth.

"These were found on him," he continued, pointing to the children's
portraits. "I am afraid we cannot doubt the facts. The description is
like him, and his papers and passport place the identity beyond a
question. But I have dispatched a trusty messenger to Switzerland to
make further inquiries, and ascertain every particular."

"Will he see him?" asked Felicita with a start of terror.

"No, my poor girl," said the old banker; "it happened ten days ago, and
he was buried, so they say, almost immediately. But I wish to have a
memorial stone put over his grave, that if any of us, I or you, or the
children, should wish to visit it at some future time, it should not be
past finding."

He spoke tenderly and sorrowfully, as if he imagined himself standing
beside the grave of his old friend's son, recalling the past and
grieving over it. His own boy was buried in some unknown common _fosse_
in Paris. Felicita looked up at him with her strange, steady, searching
gaze.

"You have forgiven him?" she said.

"Yes," he answered; "men always forgive the dead."

"Oh, Roland! Roland!" she cried, wringing her hands for an instant.
Then, resuming her composure, she gazed quietly into his pitiful face
again.

"It is kind of you to think of his grave," she said; "but I shall never
go there, nor shall the children go, if I can help it."

"Hush!" he