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It was so little that Phebe felt greatly disappointed; though her eyes grew blind with tears as she thought of Felicita standing here before this deceptive cross and calling herself of all women the most miserable. The cross itself had had no message of peace to her troubled heart.
So careful was he of the monument that it was generally rumored he received a sum of money yearly for keeping it in order. No doubt the friends of the rich Englishman, who had erected so handsome a stone to his memory, made it worth the man's while to attend to it. Besides this grave, which he could not keep himself from haunting, Engelberg attracted him by its double association with Felicita.
A week later Don Julian informed me he was going to Aacna on business. He would be gone several days, but Felicita would stay here. Fatal mistake. "Don Juan! Ah, Don Juan! Something dreadful! Felicita!" cried Chico as he burst into my room breathless near midnight. "What is it?" I demanded, "quick, I say," but he could only gasp "Felicita!"
"Don't you see, Phebe, that the distinction Felicita has won binds us to keep this secret? It cannot be disclosed either to her or to them. I came to tell it to the man who brought me here under a seal of secrecy." "To Canon Pascal?" she exclaimed. "Pascal?" he repeated, "ay? I remember him now. It would have been terrible to have told it to him."
We loved her more a hundred times than Cousin Felicita, for we are afraid of her. It was her husband's death that spoiled her whole life and set her quite apart from everybody else. But Madame she was not made so utterly miserable by it; she knew she would meet her son again in heaven.
But his mother used to talk to us about him; and Phebe Marlowe does so still. She has painted a portrait of him for Felix." "Is Roland Sefton's mother yet alive?" he asked, with a dull, aching foreboding of her reply. "No," she said. "Oh! how we all loved dear old Madame Sefton! She was always more like Felix and Hilda's mother than Cousin Felicita was.
The happiest season of the year to Mr. Clifford was that when Phebe and Roland Sefton's children were in his neighborhood. Felicita remained firm to her resolution that Felix should have nothing to do with his father's business, and the boy himself had decided in his very childhood that he would follow in the footsteps of his ancestor, Felix Merle, the brave pastor of the Jura.
"Canon Pascal said to me," answered Phebe, "that your noble life and the fame you had won atoned for the error of which Felix and Hilda's father had been guilty. He said they were your children, brought up under your training and example, not their father's. Why do you dwell so bitterly upon the past? It is all forgotten now." "Not by me," murmured Felicita, "nor by you, Phebe."
Its extravagant display seemed to strike upon her suddenly as she entered it. Phebe was gone home, and Madame had retired to her own room, having given up the expectation of seeing Felicita that day. Mr. Clifford, the servant told her, was still in the bank, with his lawyer, for whom he had telegraphed to London.
Clifford's keen eyes were fastened upon Felicita with admiration. Here was a woman, young and pallid with grief and dread, who neither tried to move him by prayers and floods of tears, nor shrank from acknowledging a truth, however painful. He had never seen her before, though the costly set of jewels she was wearing had been his own gift to her on her wedding.
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