and buried in the same quiet cemetery where the
granite cross marked the grave of Roland Sefton. That was a thing to be
hoped for. If Jean Merle was living still, and living there, what should
she say to him? Wild hopes and desires would be awakened within him if
he found her seeking after him? Nay, it might possibly be that he would
insist upon making their mutual sin known to the world, by claiming to
return to her and her children. It seemed a desperate thing to have
done; and for the first time since she left London she repented of
having done it. Was she not sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind? There
was still time for her to retrace her steps and go back home, the home
she owed altogether to herself; yet one which this man, whom she had not
seen for so long a time, had a right to enter as the master of it. What
fatal impulse had driven her to leave it on so wild and fruitless an
errand?

Yet she felt she could no longer live without knowing the fate of Jean
Merle. Her heart had been gnawing itself ever since they parted with
vague remorses and self-accusations, slumbering often, but now aroused
into an activity that could not be laid to rest. This morning, for the
first time, beneath all her perplexity and fear and hope to find him
dead, there came to her a strange, undefined, scarcely conscious
tenderness towards the miserable man, whom she had last seen standing in
her presence, an uncouth, ragged, weather-beaten peasant. The man had
been her husband, the father of her children, and a deep, keen pain was
stirring in her soul, partly of the old love, for she had once loved
him, and partly of the pity she felt for him, as she began to realize
the difference there had existed between her lot and his.

She scarcely felt how worn out she was, how dangerously fatigued with
this rapid travelling and the resistless current of agitation which had
possessed her. As she journeyed onwards she was altogether unconscious
of the roads she traversed, only arousing herself when any change of
conveyance made it necessary. Her brain was busy over the opinion, more
than once expressed by Phebe, that every man could live down the evil
consequences of his sin, if he had courage and faith enough. "If God
forgives us, man will forgive us," said Phebe. But Felicita pondered
over the possibility of Roland having paid the penalty of his crime, and
going back again to take up his life, walking more humbly in it
evermore, with no claim