ness, as if it had never stirred since she had seen it
first. But whilst she was gazing, with quivering mouth and tear-dimmed
eyes, a policeman came up and spoke to Jean Merle, giving him an
authoritative shake, which seemed to arouse him. He moved gently away,
closely followed by the policeman till he passed out of her sight.

There was no sleep for Phebe; she did not want to sleep. All night long
her brain was awake and busy; but it found no way out of the coil. Who
can make a crooked thing straight? or undo that which has been done?

CHAPTER XIX.

IN HIS FATHER'S HOUSE.

When Phebe entered Westminster Abbey the next day the morning service
was already begun. Upon the bench nearest the door sat a working-man,
in worn-out clothes, whose gray hair was long and ragged, and whose
whole appearance was one of poverty and suffering. She was passing by,
when a gleam of recognition in the dark and sunken eyes of this poor man
arrested her. Could he possibly be Roland Sefton? The night before she
had seen him only in a friendly obscurity, which concealed the ravages
time, and sorrow, and labor had effected; but now the daylight, in
revealing them, cast a chill shadow of doubt into her heart. It was his
voice she had known and acknowledged the night before; but now he was
silent, and, revealed by the daylight, she felt troubled and
distrustful. Such a man she might have met a thousand times without once
recalling to her memory the handsome, manly presence and prosperous
bearing of Roland Sefton.

Yet she sat down beside him in answer to that appealing gleam in his
eyes, and as his well-known voice joined hers in the responses to the
prayers, she acknowledged him again in her heart of hearts. And now all
thought of the sacred place, and of the worship she was engaged in, fled
from her mind. She was a girl at home again, dwelling in the silent
society of her dumb father, with this voice of Roland Sefton's coming to
break the stillness from time to time, and to fill it with that sweetest
music, the sound of human speech. If he had lost every vestige of
resemblance to his former self, his voice only, calling "Phebe" as he
had done the evening before, must have betrayed him to her. Not an
accent of it had been forgotten.

To Jean Merle Phebe Marlowe was little altered, save that she had grown
from a simple rustic maiden into a cultivated and refined woman. The
sweet and gentle face beside him, with the deep peaceful blu