ned and
unsuspected. It can only be by a complete separation now that I can
effect my purpose. But I can hardly bear to go away, Phebe."

The profound pitifulness of Phebe's heart was stirred to its inmost
depths by the sound of his voice and the expression of his hopeless
face. She left her seat and drew near to him.

"Come and see her once more," she whispered.

Silently he made a gesture of assent, and she led the way to the
adjoining room. He knew it better than she did; for it was here that he
had watched all the night long the death of the stranger who was buried
in Roland Sefton's grave. There was little change in it to his eyes. The
bare walls and the scanty homely furniture were the same now as then.
There was the glimmer of a little lamp falling on the tranquil figure on
the bed. The occupant of this chamber only was different, but oh! the
difference to him!

"Do not leave me, Phebe!" he cried, stretching out his hand towards her,
as if blind and groping to be led. She stepped noiselessly across the
uncarpeted floor and looked down on the face lying on the pillow. The
smile that had been upon it in the last moment yet lingered about the
mouth, and added an inexpressible gentleness and tenderness to its
beauty. The long dark eyelashes shadowed the cheeks, which were suffused
with a faint flush. Felicita looked young again, with something of the
sweet shy grace of the girl whom he had first seen in this distant
mountain village so many years ago. He sank down on his knees, and shut
out the sight of her from his despairing eyes. The silent minutes crept
slowly away unheeded; he did not stir, or sob, or lift up his bowed
face. This kneeling figure at her feet was as rigid and as death-like as
the lifeless form lying on the bed; and Phebe grew frightened, yet dared
not break in upon his grief. At last a footstep came somewhat noisily up
the staircase, and she laid her hand softly on the gray head beneath
her.

"Jean Merle," she said, "it is time for us to go."

The sound of this name in Phebe's familiar voice aroused him. She had
never called him by it before; and its utterance was marked as a thing
irrevocably settled that his life henceforth was to be altogether
divorced from that of Roland Sefton. He had come to the last point which
connected him with it. When he turned away from this rigid form, in all
the awful loveliness of death, he would have cut himself off forever
from the past. He laid his hand up