ry. Felicita was alone, reading in
the light of a lamp which shed a strong illumination over her. In his
eyes she was incomparably the loveliest woman he had ever seen, not even
excepting Alice; and the stately magnificence of her velvet dress, and
rich lace, and costly jewels, was utterly different from that of any
other woman he knew. For Mrs. Pascal dressed simply, as became the wife
of a country rector; and Phebe, in her studio, always wore a blouse or
apron of brown holland, which suited her well, making her homely and
domestic in appearance as she was in nature. Felicita looked like a
queen in his eyes.

When she heard his voice speaking to her, having not caught the sound of
his step on the soft carpet, Felicita looked up with a smile in her dark
eyes. In a day or two her son was about to leave her roof, and her heart
felt very soft toward him. She had scarcely realized that he was a man,
until she knew that he had decided to have a place and a dwelling of his
own.

She stretched out both hands to him, with a gesture of tenderness
peculiar to herself, and shown only to him. It was as if one hand could
not link them closely enough; could not bring them so nearly heart to
heart. Felix took them both into his own, and knelt down before her; his
young face flushed with eagerness, and his eyes, so like her own,
fastened upon hers.

"Your face speaks for you," she said, pressing one of her rare kisses
upon it. "What is it my boy has to tell me?"

"Oh, mother," he cried, "you will never think I love you less than I
have always done? See, I kiss your feet still as I used to do when I was
a boy."

He bent his head to caress the little feet, and then laid it on his
mother's lap, while she let her white fingers play with his hair.

"Why should you love me less than you have always done?" she asked, in a
sweet languid voice. "Have I ever changed toward you, Felix?"

"No, mother, no," he answered, "but to-night I feel how different I am
from what I was but a year or two ago. I am a man now; I was a boy
then."

"You will always be a boy to me," she said, with a tender smile.

"Yet I am as old as my father was when you were married," he replied.

Felicita's face grew white, and she leaned back in her chair with a
sudden feeling of faintness. It was years since the boy had spoken of
his father; why should he utter his name now? He had raised his head
when he felt her move, and her dim and failing eyes saw his face in