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Updated: May 16, 2025
As she travelled down to Riversborough, with Jean Merle in a third-class carriage of the same train, her mind was very busy with troubled thoughts. There was an unquiet joy stirring in the secret depths of her heart, but she was too full of anxiety and bewilderment to be altogether aware of it.
"She has won her rank as an author," replied the bookseller. "I knew her husband well, and he always foretold that she would make her mark; and she has. He died fourteen years ago; and, strange to say, there was something about your step as you came in which reminded me of him. Do you belong to Riversborough?"
It was a little after sunrise when he reached Riversborough, where with some difficulty he roused up a hostler and obtained a horse at one of the inns. Before six he was riding up the long, steep lanes, fresh and cool with dew, and overhung with tall hedgerows, which led up to the moor.
There was thus a good deal of conjecture and of contradictory opinion abroad in Riversborough concerning Roland Sefton, which continued to be the town's-talk for some weeks. Even Madame began to believe in a half-bewildered manner that her son had gone on a journey of business connected with the bank, though she could not account for his total silence.
Phebe and Hilda were gone to their usual summer haunt, Phebe's quaint little cottage on the solitary mountain-moor; where he was going to join them for a day or two, before they went to Mr. Clifford, in the old house at Riversborough.
Sefton?" he asked in a deep, hoarse voice; "is he at home, Madame?" Ever since the elder Mr. Sefton had brought his young foreign wife home, now more than thirty years ago, the people of Riversborough had called her Madame, giving to her no other title or surname.
She hated to see the two blazoned together on the title-page. Sick at heart, she sat for hours brooding over what would happen if Roland was arrested. The assizes held twice a year at Riversborough had been to her, as to many people of her position, an occasion of pleasurable excitement.
He had not been long enough in Riversborough to gain any influence in the town as a poor foreigner, but there had been a hope dawning within that he might again do some good in his native place, the dearer to him because of his long and dreary banishment. In time he might perform some work worthy of his forefathers, though under another name.
It seemed to Phebe that Felicita was creating the obstacle, which existed chiefly in her fancy; and with her usual frankness and directness she went to Canon Pascal's abode in the Cloisters at Westminster, to tell him simply what she thought. "I want to ask you," she said, with her clear, honest gaze fastened on his face, "if you know why Mrs. Sefton left Riversborough thirteen years ago?"
But Phebe could not be brought to say yes, though Nixey used every argument and persuasion he could think. He went away at last, in dudgeon, leaving her alone, but not so sad as before. The new volume of her life had already been opened. The next day Phebe locked up her house and rode down to Riversborough.
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