re was a deep inner consciousness, the forgotten but not obliterated
faith of his boyhood and youth, before the world with its pomps and
ambitions had laid its iron hand upon him, that Christ was with him,
leading him day by day, if he would but follow nearer to God. Was it
impossible to follow His guidance now? Could he not, even yet, take up
his cross, and be willing to fill any place which he could yet fill
worthily and humbly; expiating his sins against his fellow-men by truer
devotion to their service, as Jean Merle, the working-man; not as Roland
Sefton, the prosperous and fraudulent banker?

This return to his father's house, and all its associations, solemn and
sacred with a peculiar sacredness and solemnity, seemed to him a pledge
that he could once more be admitted into the great brotherhood and home
of Christ's disciples. Every object on which his eye rested smote him,
but it was with the stroke of a friend. A clear and sweet light from the
past shed its penetrating rays into the darkest corners of his soul.
Forgiven! God had forgiven him; and man had forgiven him. Before him lay
an obscure and humble path; but the heaviest part of his burden was
gone. He must go heavy-laden to the end of his days, treading in rough
paths; but despair had fled, and with it the sense of being separated
from God and man.

He heard the feeble yet deep old voice of Mr. Clifford outside his door
inquiring from Mrs. Nixey if Mr. Merle was gone down-stairs yet. He made
haste to go down, treading the old staircase with something of the
alacrity of former days. Phebe was in the dining-room, and the servants
came in to prayer as they had been used to do forty years ago when he
was a child. An old-world tranquillity and peacefulness was in the
familiar scene which breathed a deep calm over his tempest-tossed
spirit.

"Phebe has been telling me all," said Mr. Clifford, when breakfast was
over; "tell me what can be done to save Felicita and the children."

"I am Jean Merle," he answered with a melancholy smile, "Jean Merle, and
no one else. I come back with no claims, and they must never know me.
Why should I cross their path and blight it? I cannot atone for the
past in any way, except by keeping away forever from them. I shall
injure no one by continuing to be Jean Merle."

"No," said Phebe, "it is too late now, and it would kill Felicita."

"This morning a thought struck me," he continued, "a project for my
future life, which you