ollection had flashed across him of how the
thread of Lord Riversdale's life had snapped under the strain of unusual
anxiety and fatigue. Felicita's own delicate health had been failing for
some months past. As swiftly as he could follow he had pursued them; but
her impatient and feverish haste had prevented him from overtaking them
in time. What might have been the result if he had reached her sooner
he could not tell. That there could ever have been any knitting together
again of the tie that had ever united them seemed impossible. Death
alone, either hers or his, could have touched her heart to the
tenderness of her farewell smile and gesture.

In after life Jean Merle never spoke of that hour of agony. But there
was nothing in the past which dwelt so deeply or lived again so often in
his memory. He had suffered before; but it seemed as nothing to the
intensity of the anguish that had befallen him now. The image of
Felicita's white and dying face lying against the darkened walls of the
hovel where she had gone to seek him, was indelibly printed on his
brain. He would see it till the hour of his own death.

He lifted her up, holding her once more in his arms, and clasping her to
his heart, as he carried her through the village street to the hotel.
Phebe walked beside him, as yet only thinking that Felicita had fainted.
His old neighbors crowded out of their houses, scarcely recognizing Jean
Merle in this Monsieur in his good English dress, but with redoubled
curiosity when they saw who it was thus bearing the strange English lady
in his arms. When he had carried her to the hotel, and up-stairs to the
room where he had watched beside the stranger who had borne his name, he
broke through the gathering crowd of onlookers, and fled to his familiar
solitudes among the mountains.

He had always told himself that Felicita was dead to him. There had not
been in his heart the faintest hope that she could ever again be
anything more to him than a memory and a dream. When he was in England,
though he had not been content until he had seen his children and his
old home, he had never sought to get a glimpse of her, so far beyond him
and above him. But now that she was indeed dead, those beloved eyes
closed forever more from the light of the sun, and the familiar earth
never again to be trodden by her feet, the awful chasm set between them
made him feel as if he was for the first time separated from her. Only
an hour ago and his