ard of bewailed their poverty. But there was Madame's little income of
two hundred a year: that formed a basis, not altogether an insecure or
despicable one. It would pay more than the rent, with the rates and
taxes.

The yearly income from Felicita's marriage settlement, which no
representations could persuade her to touch, was to go to the gradual
repayment of Roland's debts, the poorest men being paid first, and Mr.
Clifford, who reluctantly consented to the scheme, to receive his the
last. Though Madame had never believed in her son's guilt, her just and
simple soul was satisfied and set at rest by this arrangement. She had
not been able to blame him, but it had been a heavy burden to her to
think of others suffering loss through him. It was then almost with
cheerfulness that she set herself to keep house for her daughter-in-law
and her grand-children under such widely different circumstances.

Before Christmas a house was found for them in Cheyne Walk. The Chelsea
Embankment was not then thought of, and the streets leading to it, like
those now lying behind it, were mean and crowded. It was a narrow house,
with rooms so small that when the massive furniture from their old house
was set up in it there was no space for moving about freely. Madame had
known only two houses--the old straggling, picturesque country manse in
the Jura, with its walnut-trees shading the windows, and tossing up
their branches now and then to give glimpses of snow-mountains on the
horizon, and her husband's pleasant and luxurious house at
Riversborough, with every comfort that could be devised gathered into
it. There was the river certainly flowing past this new habitation, and
bearing on its full and rapid tide a constantly shifting panorama of
boats, of which the children never tired, and from Felicita's window
there was a fair reach of the river in view, while from the dormer
windows of the attic above, where Felix slept, there was a still wider
prospect. But in the close back room, which Madame allotted to herself
and Hilda, there was only a view of back streets and slums, with sights
and sounds which filled her with dismay and disgust.

But Madame made the best of the woeful change. The deep, quiet love she
had given to her son she transferred to Felicita, who, she well knew,
had been his idol. She believed that the sorrows of these last few
months had not sprung out of the ground, but had for some reason come
down from God, the God o