ergyman,
looking after his glebe lands and riding lazily about his parish,
talking with old women and consulting farmers about his crops and
cattle. She felt disappointed in him; and this disappointment removed
him far away from her. The enchanted circle of her own isolation was
complete.

The subtle influence of Felicita's dissatisfaction was vaguely felt by
Felix. He had done well at Oxford, and had satisfied his friend and
tutor, Mr. Pascal; but he knew that his mother wished him to make a
great name there, and he had failed to do it. Every day, when he spent a
few minutes in Felicita's library, lined with books which were her only
companions, their conversation grew more and more vapid, unless his
mother gave utterance to some of her sarcastic sayings, which he only
half understood and altogether disliked.

But in Phebe's studio all was different; he was at home there. Though it
was separate from the house, it had from the first been the favorite
haunt of all the other members of the family. Madame had been wont to
bring her knitting and sit beside Phebe's easel, talking of old times,
and of the dear son she had lost so sorrowfully. Felix had read his
school-boy stories aloud to her whilst she was painting; and Hilda
flitted in and out restlessly, carrying every bit of news she picked up
from her girl friends to Phebe. Even Felicita was used to steal in
silently in the dusk, when no one else was there, and talk in her low
sad voice as she talked to no one else.

As soon as Felix was old enough, within a few months of Madame's death,
he took orders, and accepted a curacy in a poor and densely populated
London district. It was not much more than two miles from home, but it
was considered advisable that he should take lodgings near his vicar's
church, and dwell in the midst of the people with whom he had to do. The
separation was not so complete as if he had gone into a country parish,
but it brought another blank into the home, which had not yet ceased to
miss the tranquil and quiet presence of the old grandmother.

"I shall not have to fight with wolves like Felix Merle, my
great-grandfather," said Felix, the evening before he left home, as he
and Phebe were sitting over her studio fire. "I think sometimes I ought
to go out as a missionary to some wild country. Yet there are dangers to
meet here in London, and risks to run; ay! and battles to fight. I shall
have a good fist for drunken men beating helpless women