voice could have reached her in words of entreaty
and of passionate repentance and humble self-renunciation. They could
have spoken face to face, and he might have had a brief interval for
pouring out his heart to her. But there had been no word uttered between
them. There had been only that one moment in which her soul looked back
upon him with a glance of tenderness, before she was gone from him
beyond recall. He came to himself, out of the confused agony of his
grief, as the sun was setting. He found himself in a wild and barren
wilderness of savage rocks, with a small black tarn lying at his feet,
which just caught the glimmer of the setting sun on its lurid surface.
The silence about him was intense. Gray clouds stretched across the
mountains, out of which a few sad peaks of rock rose against the gray
sky. The snowy dome of the Titlis towering above the rest looked down on
him out of the shadow of the clouded heavens with a ghostly paleness.
All the world about him was cold and wan, and solemn as the face of the
dead. There was death up here and in the valley yonder; but down in the
valley it bore too dear and too sorrowful a form.

As the twilight deepened, the recollection of Phebe's loneliness and her
distress at his absence at last roused him. He could no longer leave
her, bewildered by this new trouble, and with slow and reluctant steps
he retraced his path through the deep gloom of the forests to the
village. There was much to be turned over in his mind and to be decided
upon before he reached the bustling hotel and the gaping throng of
spectators, marvelling at Jean Merle's reappearance under circumstances
so unaccountable. He had met with Phebe as she returned from starting
Felicita in the first boat, and they had waited for the next. At
Grafenort they had dismissed their carriage, thinking they could enter
the valleys with less observation on foot; and perhaps meet with
Felicita in such a manner as to avoid making his return known in
Engelberg. He had turned aside to take shelter in his old hut, whilst
Phebe went on to find Felicita, when his bitter cry of pain had called
her back to him. The villagers would probably take him for a courier in
attendance upon these ladies, if he acted as one when he reached the
hotel. But how was he to act?

Two courses were open to him. There was no longer any reason to dread a
public trial and conviction for the crime he had committed so many years
ago. It was quite prac