he shrines in the side aisles saw nothing but a
stranger looking at the painting over the altar, and a peasant kneeling
on the lowest step deep in prayer.

"I come from watching a fellow-man die," he said at last; "would to God
it had been myself!"

"Yes!" sighed Felicita, "that would have been best for us all."

"You wish me dead!" he exclaimed, in a tone of anguish.

"For the children's sake," she murmured, still looking away from him;
"yes! and for the sake of our name, your father's name, and mine. I
thought to bring honor to it, and you have brought flagrant dishonor to
it."

"That can never be wiped away," he added.

"Never!" she repeated.

As if exhausted by these passionate words, they fell again into silence.
The murmur of whispered prayers was about them, and the faint scent of
incense floated under the arched roof. A gleam of morning light, growing
stronger, though the sun was still far below the eastern mountains,
glittered through a painted window, and threw a glow of color upon them.
Roland saw her standing in its many-tinted brightness, but her wan and
sorrowful face was not turned to look at him. He had not caught a
glance from her yet. How vividly he remembered the first moment his eyes
had ever beheld her, standing as she did now on these very altar steps,
with uplifted eyes and a sweet seriousness on her young face! It was
only a poor village church, but it was the most sacred spot in the whole
world to him; for there he had met Felicita and received her image into
his inmost heart. 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.
All his crime too.

"I have loved you," he cried, "better than the whole world."

There was no answer by word or look to his passionate words.

"I have loved you," he said, more sadly, "better than God."

"But you have brought me to shame!" she answered; "if I am tracked
here--and who can tell that I am not?--and if you are taken and tried
and convicted, I shall be the wife of the fraudulent banker and
condemned felon, Roland Sefton. And Felix and Hilda will be his
children."

"It is true," he groaned; "I could not