to Phebe. Weary! weary! was it not so with him? Could any man on
earth be more weary than he was?

He loitered back to Riversborough through the cool of the evening, with
the pale stars shining dimly in the twilight of the summer sky;
pondering, brooding over what he had seen and heard that day. He had
already done much of what he had come to England to do; but what next?
What was the path he ought to take now? He was in a labyrinth, where
there were many false openings leading no-whither; and he had no clue to
guide him. All these years he had lain as one dead in the coil he had
wound about himself, but now he was living again. There was agony in the
life that he had entered into, but it was better than the apathy of his
death in life.

He returned to London, and hired a garret for a small weekly rent, where
he would lodge until he could resolve what to do. But week after week
passed without bringing to his mind the solution of the problem.
Remorse had given place to repentance; but despair had not been
succeeded by hope. There was nothing to hope for. The irrevocable past
stood between him and any reparation for his sin which his soul
earnestly desired to make. An easy thing, and light, it would have been
to put himself into the power of his enemy, Mr. Clifford, and bear the
penalty of the law. He had suffered a hundred fold more than justice
would have exacted. The broken law demanded satisfaction, and it would
have been a blessed relief to him to give it. But that could never be.
He could never bear the penalty of his crime without dragging Felicita
into depths of shame and suffering deeper than they would have been if
he had borne it at first. The fame she had won for herself would lift up
his infamy and hers to the intolerable gaze of a keen and bitter
publicity. He must blacken her fair reputation if he sought to appease
his own conscience.

He made no effort to find out where she and his children were living.
But one after another, in the solitude of his garret, he read every book
Felicita had written. They gave him no pleasure, and awoke in him no
admiration, for he read them through different eyes from her other
readers. There was great bitterness of soul for him in many of the
sentences she had penned; now and then he came upon some to which he
alone held the true key. He felt that he, her husband, was dwelling in
her mind as a type of subtle selfishness and weak ambition. When she
depicted a good or nobl