For the last nine months no hand had cleared away the weeds from around
it, or the moss from gathering upon it. The little pathway trodden by
Jean Merle's feet was overgrown, though still perceptible, and the
priest walked along it, with Felicita following him. Little threads of
grass were filling up the deep clear-cut lettering on the cross; and the
gray and yellow lichens were creeping over the granite. Since the snow
had melted and the sun had shone hotly into the high-lying valley there
had been a rapid growth of vegetation here, as everywhere else, and the
weeds and grass had flourished luxuriantly; but amongst them Alice's
slip of ivy had thrown out new buds and tendrils. The priest paused
before the grave, with Felicita standing beside him silent and
spell-bound. She did not weep or cry, or fling herself upon the ground
beside it, as he had expected. When he looked askance at her marble face
there was no trace of emotion upon it, excepting that her lips moved
very slightly, as if they formed the words inscribed upon the cross.

"It is not in good order just at present," he said, breaking the
oppressive silence; "the peasant who took charge of it, Jean Merle,
disappeared from Engelberg last summer, and has never since been seen or
heard of. They say he was paid to take care of this grave; and truly
when he was here there was no weed, no soil, no little speck of moss
upon it. There was no other grave kept like this. Was Roland Sefton a
relation of Madame?"

"Yes," she whispered, or he thought she whispered it from the motion of
her lips.

"Madame is not a Catholic?" he asked.

Felicita shook her head.

"What a pity! what a pity!" he continued, in a tone of mild regret, "or
I could console her. Yet I will pray for her this night to the good God,
and the Mother of Sorrows, to give her comfort. If she only knew the
solace of opening her heart; even to a fellow-mortal!"

"Does no one know where Jean Merle is?" she asked, in a low but clear
penetrating voice, which startled him, he said afterwards, almost as
much as if the image of the blessed Virgin had spoken to him. With the
effort to speak, a slight color flushed across the pale wan face, and
her eyes fastened eagerly upon him.

"No one, Madame," he replied; "the poor man was a misanthrope, and lived
quite alone, in misery. He came neither to confession nor to mass; but
whether he was a heretic or an atheist no man knew. Where he came from
or where he wen