t on with them an eminent physician. So confident was Felix
in his asseverations that Canon Pascal himself had begun to hope that he
was right, and but that the steamer was about to start in a few minutes,
they would have hired a boat to carry them on to Stans, in order to lose
no time in taking medical aid to Felicita.

But as Felix stood there, only dimly conscious of the scene about them,
the sight of the boat bringing Phebe to the shore with the covered
coffin beside her, extinguished in his heart the last glimmering of the
hope which had been little more than a natural recoil from despair. He
was not taken by surprise, or hurried into any vehemence of grief. A
cold stupor, which made him almost insensible to his loss, crept over
him. Sorrow would assert itself by and by; but now he felt dull and
torpid. When the coffin was lifted out of the boat, by bearers who were
waiting at the landing-stage for the purpose, he took up his post
immediately behind it, as if it were already the funeral procession
carrying his mother to the grave; and with all the din and tumult of the
streets sounding in his ears, he followed unquestioningly wherever it
might go. Why it was there, or why his mother's coffin was there, he did
not ask; he only knew that she was there.

"My poor Phebe," said Canon Pascal, as they followed closely behind him,
"why did you start homewards? Would it not have been best to bury her at
Engelberg, beside her husband? Did not Felicita forgive him, even in her
death?"

"No, no, it was not that," answered Phebe; "she forgave him, but I could
not bear to leave her there. I was with her just as she died; but she
had gone up to Engelberg alone, and I followed her, only too late. She
never spoke to me or looked at me. I could not leave Felicita in
Engelberg," she added excitedly; "it has been a fatal place to her."

"Is there anything we must not know?" he inquired.

"Yes," she said, turning to him her pale and quivering face, "I have a
secret to keep all my life long. But the evil of it is spent now. It
seems to me as if it is a sin no longer; all the selfishness is gone
out of it, and Felix and Hilda were as clear of it as Alice herself; if
I could tell you all, you would say so too."

"You need tell me no more, dear Phebe," he replied; "God bless you in
the keeping of their secret!"

CHAPTER XXVII.

HIS OWN CHILDREN.

The tidings of Felicita's death spread rapidly in England, and the
circumst