ton, ran no risk of recognition, more
especially as Roland Sefton had been reckoned among the dead and buried
for many a long year. The lineaments of the dead die with them, however
cunningly the artist may have used his skill to preserve them. The face
is gone, and the memory of it. Some hearts may long to keep it engraven
sharp and clear in their remembrance; but oh, when the "inward eye"
comes to look for it how dull and blurred it lies there, like a
forgotten photograph which has grown faded and stained in some
seldom-visited cabinet!

Jean Merle travelled, as a man of his class would travel, in a
third-class wagon and a slow train; but he kept on, stopping nowhere for
rest, and advancing as rapidly as he could, until on the third day, in
the gray of the evening, he saw the chalk-line of the English coast
rising against the faint yellow light of the sunset; and as night fell
his feet once more trod upon his native soil.

So far he had been simply yielding to his blind and irresistible longing
to get back to England, and nearer to his unknown children. He had heard
so little of them from Alice Pascal, that he could no longer rest
without knowing more. How to carry out his intention he did not know,
and he had hardly given it a thought. But now, as he strolled slowly
along the flat and sandy shore for an hour or two, with the darkness
hiding both sea and land from him, except the spot on which he stood, he
began to consider what steps he must take to learn what he wanted to
know, and to see their happiness afar off without in any way endangering
it. He had purchased it at too heavy a price to be willing to place it
in any peril now.

That Felicita had left Riversborough he had heard from her own lips, but
there was no other place where he was sure of discovering her present
abode, for London was too wide a city, even if she had carried out her
intention of living there, for him to ascertain where she dwelt. Phebe
Marlowe would certainly know where he could find them, for the English
girl at Roland Sefton's grave had spoken of Phebe as familiarly as of
Felix and Hilda--spoken of her, in fact, as if she was quite one of the
family. There would be no danger in seeking out Phebe Marlowe. If his
own mother could not have recognized her son in the rugged peasant he
had become, there was no chance of a young girl such as Phebe had been
ever thinking of Roland Sefton in connection with him; and he could
learn all he wished