ing, already worn and ragged, not at rest
in the grave, as every one but herself believed him, but dragging out a
miserable and sordid existence year by year, with no hopes for the
future, and no happy memories of the past!

"Mr. Clifford," she said, when the sound of his voice humming in her
ears had ceased, "I shall not take one farthing of any money settled
upon me by my husband. I have no right to it. Let it go to pay the sums
he appropriated. I will maintain myself and my children."

"You cannot do it," he replied; "you do not know what you are talking
about. The money is settled upon your children; all that belongs to you
is the yearly income from it."

"That, at least, I will never touch," she said earnestly; "it shall be
set aside to repay those just claims. When all those are paid I will
take it, but not before. Yours is the largest, and I will take means to
find out the others. With my mother's two hundred a year and what I earn
myself, we shall keep the children. Lord Riversford has no control over
me. I am a woman, and I will act for myself."

"You cannot do it," he repeated; "you have no notion of what you are
undertaking to do. Mrs. Sefton, my dear young lady, I am come, with Lord
Riversford's sanction, to ask you to return to your home again, to
Madame's old home--your children's birth-place. I think, and Lord
Riversford thinks, you should come back, and bring up Felix to take his
grandfather's and father's place."

"His father's place!" interrupted Felicita. "No, my son shall never
enter into business. I would rather see him a common soldier or sailor,
or day-laborer, earning his bread by any honest toil. He shall have no
traffic in money, such as his father had; he shall have no such
temptations. Whatever my son is, he shall never be a banker."

"Good heavens, madam!" exclaimed Mr. Clifford. Felicita's stony quietude
was gone, and in its place was such a passionate energy as he had never
witnessed before in any woman.

"It was money that tempted Roland to defraud you and dishonor himself,"
she said; "it drove poor Acton to commit suicide, and it hardened your
heart against your friend's son. Felix shall be free from it. He shall
earn his bread and his place in the world in some other way, and till he
can do that I will earn it for him. Every shilling I spend from
henceforth shall be clean, the fruit of my own hands, not Roland's--not
his, whether he be alive or dead."

Before Mr. Clifford could