your happy heart
with my sorrow."

"It was not you," she said, "you did not even come to tell me; God
brought you. I can bear it. But oh! to see you shut out, and inside,
yonder, Hilda is playing, and Felix, perhaps, is there. They will be
singing by-and-by, and never know who is standing outside, in the foggy
night, listening to them."

Her voice broke into sobs, but Jean Merle did not notice them.

"And Felicita?" he said.

Phebe could not answer him for weeping. Just yet she could hardly bring
herself to think distinctly of Felicita; though in fact her thoughts
were full of her. She ran back to her private door, and this time opened
it readily. There was a low light in the studio from a shaded lamp
standing on the chimney-piece, which made the hearth bright, but left
all the rest of the room in shadow. Phebe threw off her bonnet and cloak
with a very heavy and troubled sigh.

"What can make you sigh, Phebe?" asked a low-toned and plaintive voice.
In the chair by the fire-place, pushed out of the circle of the light,
she saw Felicita leaning back, and looking up at her. The beauty of her
face had never struck harshly upon Phebe until now; at this moment it
was absolutely painful to her. The rich folds of her velvet dress, and
the soft and costly lace of her head-dress, distinct from though
resembling a widow's cap, set off both her face and figure to the utmost
advantage. Phebe's eyes seemed to behold her more distinctly and vividly
than they had done for some years past; for she was looking through them
with a dark background for what she saw in her own brain. She was a
strikingly beautiful woman; but the thought of what anguish and dread
had been concealed under her reserved and stately air, so cold yet so
gentle, filled Phebe's soul with a sudden terror. What an awful life of
self-approved, stoical falsehood she had been living! She could see the
man, from whom she had just parted, standing without, homeless and
friendless, on the verge of pennilessness; a dead man in a living world,
cut off from all the ties and duties of the home and the society he
loved. But to Phebe he did not appear so wretched as Felicita was.

She sank down on a seat near Felicita, with such a feeling of
heart-sickness and heart-faintness as she had never experienced before.
The dreariness and perplexity of the present stretched before her into
the coming years. For almost the first time in her life she felt
worn-out; physically wear