he
boat rowed easily by Phebe's strong young arms. So silent were they all
that they could hear the rustling of the young leaves on the trees,
under whose shadows they passed, and the joyous singing of the larks in
the meadows on each side of the sunny reaches of water, down which they
floated. It was not until they landed the children on the osier island,
and bade them run about to play, and not then until they were some
distance away, that their merry young voices were heard.

"Phebe," said Felicita, in her low-toned, softly-modulated voice, always
languid and deliberate, "talk to me. Tell me how you spend your life."

Phebe was sitting face to face with her, balancing the boat with the
oars against the swift flowing of the river, with smiles coming and
going on her face as rapidly as the shadows and the sunshine chasing
each other over the fields this May morning.

"You know," she answered simply, "we live a mile away from the nearest
house, and that is only a cottage where an old farm laborer lives with
his wife. It's very lonesome up there on the hills. Days and days go by,
and I never hear a voice speaking, and I feel as if I could not bear the
sound of my own voice when I call the cattle home, or the fowls to come
for their corn. If it wasn't for the living things around me, that know
me as well as they know one another, and love me more, I should feel
sometimes as if I was dead. And I long so to hear somebody speak--to be
near more of my fellow-creatures. Why, when I touch the hand of any one
I love--yours, or Mr. Sefton's, or Madame's--it's almost a pain to me;
it seems to bring me so close to you. I always feel as if I became a
part of father when I touch him. Oh, you do not know what it is to be
alone!"

"No," said Felicita, sighing; "never have I been alone, and I would give
worlds to be as free as you are. You cannot imagine what it is," she
went on, speaking rapidly and with intense eagerness, "never to belong
to yourself, or to be alone; for it is not being alone to have only four
thin walls separating you from a husband and children and a large busy
household. 'What are you thinking, my darling?' Roland is always asking
me; and the children break in upon me. Body, soul, and spirit, I am held
down a captive; I have been in bondage all my life. I have never even
thought as I should think if I could be free."

"But I cannot understand that," cried Phebe. "I could never be too near
those I love. I shoul