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It was as if one of his own long-lost days was come back again to earth, when he had sat where Felix was now sitting, with Felicita instead of Hilda dipping her little white hand into the water. He had scarcely eyes for Phebe; but he was conscious that she was there, for Hilda was speaking to her in a low voice which just reached him. "See," she said, "that man has one of my mother's books!
The rest of his life was steeped in shadow; the earlier years before he knew Felicita were pale and dim; the time since he lost her was unreal and empty, like a confused dream. After a while a dull despondency succeeded to the acute misery of his first winter and summer. His second fraud had been terribly successful; in a certain measure he was duped by it himself.
Felicita even felt something of their happiness when she was here last, and she will not withhold her full approbation much longer." "And you," answered Phebe, with an eager flush on her face, "you do not repent of giving Alice to the son of a man who might have been a convict?"
His ambition as well as his love had centred in her, the penniless daughter of the late Lord Riversford, an orphan, and dependent upon her father's brother and successor. But to Roland his wife Felicita was immeasurably dearer than the girl Felicita Riversford had been. All the happy days since he had won her, all the satisfied desires, all his successes were centred in her and represented by her.
The Pascals had children the same age as Felix and Hilda; and when they engaged a tutor for their own boys and girls they proposed to Felicita that her children should join them. In Mr. Pascal's quiet country parsonage were to be met some of the clearest and deepest thinkers of the day, who escaped from the conventionalities of London society to the simple and pleasant freedom they found there.
The journey, though not more than fourteen miles from Stans to Engelberg, occupied several hours, so broken up the narrow road was by the winter's rains and the melting snow. The steep ascent between Grafenort and Engelberg was dangerous, the more so as a heavy thunderstorm broke over it; but Felicita remained insensible to any peril.
But Felicita pondered over the possibility of Roland having paid the penalty of his crime, and going back again to take up his life, walking more humbly in it evermore, with no claim to preeminence save that of most diligently serving his fellow-men.
Many an Indian no doubt looked upon me with superstitious awe, walking without caring whither I went, like one demented. A second letter came stating that the death of Felicita was caused by a terrible cold she had contracted and the nervous shock suffered on the night of the abduction. Like his first, Don Julian's letter was brief.
Nixey's heart that Phebe would ever have Simon now she was going to London; but it might possibly come about in the long run if he met with no girl to accept him with as much fortune. Before leaving Upfold Farm Phebe received the following letter from Felicita: "DEAR PHEBE: I shall be very glad to have you under my roof.
It could never be that she would own the wrong she had committed openly in the face of the world. What was to happen now? Phebe was hardly less feverishly agitated than Felicita herself. It was evening when they arrived at Lucerne, and Felicita was forced to rest until the morning.
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