le."

"Patience! Phebe," he answered, "there is a probability in the future,
a bare probability, and dimly distant, which may change all that. He may
have as much to do as Felix Merle by and by."

Phebe returned to her work in London with a somewhat lighter heart. Yet
the work was painful to her; work which a few months before would have
been a delight. For Felicita, yielding to the urgent entreaties of Felix
and Hilda, had consented to sit for her portrait. She was engaged in no
writing, and had ample leisure. Until now she had resisted all
importunity, and no likeness of her existed. She disliked photographs,
and had only had one taken for Roland alone when they were married, and
she could never bring herself to sit for an artist comparatively a
stranger to her. It was opposed to her reserved and somewhat haughty
temperament that any eye should scan too freely and too curiously the
lineaments of her beautiful face, with its singularly expressive
individuality. But now that Phebe's skill had been so highly cultivated,
and commanded an increasing reputation, she could no longer oppose her
children's reiterated entreaties.

Felicita was groping blindly for the reason of the change in Phebe's
feeling towards her, for she was conscious of some vague, mysterious
barrier that had arisen between her and the tender, simple soul which
had been always full of lowly sympathy for her. But Phebe silently
shrank from her in a terror mingled with profound, unutterable pity. For
here was a secret misery of a solitary human spirit, ice-bound in a
self-chosen isolation, which was an utter mystery to her. All the old
love and reverence, amounting almost to adoration, which she had,
offered up as incense to some being far above her had died away; gone
also was the child-like simplicity with which she could always talk to
Felicita. She could read the pride and sadness of the lovely face before
her with a clear understanding now, but the lines which reproduced it on
her canvas were harder and sterner than they would have been if she had
known less of Felicita's heart. The painting grew into a likeness, but
it was a painful one, full of hidden sadness, bitterness, and
infelicity. Felix and Hilda gazed at it in silence, almost as solemn and
mournful as if they were looking on the face of their dead mother. She
herself turned from it with a feeling of dread.

"How much do you know of me?" she cried; "how deep can you look into my
heart, Ph