ances attending it, its suddenness, and the fact that it had
occurred at the same place that her husband had perished by accident
many years before, gave it more than ordinary interest and excited more
than ordinary publicity. It was a good deal talked of in literary
circles, and in the fashionable clique to which she belonged through her
relationship with the Riversford family. There were the usual kindly
notices of her life and works in the daily papers; and her publisher
seized the occasion to advertise her books more largely. But it was in
Riversborough that the deepest impression was made, and the keenest
curiosity aroused by the story of her death, obscure in some of its
details, but full of romantic interest to her old towns-people, who were
thus recalled to the circumstances attending Roland Sefton's
disappearance and subsequent death. The funeral also was to be in the
immediate neighborhood, in the church where all the Riversfords had been
buried time out of mind, long before a title had been conferred on the
head of the house. It appeared quite right that Felicita should be
buried beside her own people; and every one who could get away from
business went down to the little country churchyard to be present at the
funeral.

But Phebe was not there: when she reached London she was so worn out
with fatigue and agitation that she was compelled to remain at home,
brooding over what she had come through. And Jean Merle had not trusted
himself to look into the open grave, about to close over all that
remained of the woman he had so passionately loved. The tolling of the
minute-bell, which began early in the day and struck its deep knell
through the tardy hours till late in the evening, smote upon his ear and
heart every time the solemn tone sounded through the quiet hours. He was
left alone in his old home, for Mr. Clifford was gone as one of the
mourners to follow Felicita to the grave; and all the servants had asked
to be present at the funeral. There was nothing to demand his attention
or to distract his thoughts. The house was as silent as if it had been
the house of death and he himself but a phantom in it.

Though he had been six months in the house, he had never yet been in
Felicita's study--that quiet room shut out from the noise both of the
street and the household, which he had set apart and prepared for her
when she was coming, stepping down a little from her own level to be his
wife. It was dismantled, he