if she had
been pursued by a deadly enemy. Madame and the children were not at
Scarborough, but at a quiet little fishing village on the eastern coast;
for Felicita had found Scarborough too gay in the month of August, and
her cousins, the Riversfords, having appeared there, she retreated to
the quietest spot that could be found. To this village she returned,
after being absent little more than a week.

Madame knew nothing of her journey; but the mere fact that Felicita was
going away alone had aroused in her the hope that it was connected in
some way with Roland. In some vague manner this idea had been
communicated to Felix, and both were expecting to see the long-lost
father and son come back with her. Roland's prolonged and mysterious
absence had been a sore trial to his mother, though her placid and
trustful nature had borne it patiently. Surely, she thought, the trial
was coming to an end.

Felicita reached their lodgings utterly exhausted and worn out. She was
a delicate woman, in no way inured to fatigue, and though she had been
insensible to the overstrain of the unbroken journey as she was whirled
along railways and passed from station to station, a sense of complete
prostration seized upon her as soon as she found herself at home. Day
after day she lay in bed, in a darkened room, unwilling to lift her
voice above a whisper, waiting in a kind of torpid dread for the
intelligence that she knew must soon come.

She had been at home several days, and still there was no news. Was it
possible, she asked herself, that this unknown traveller, and his
calamitous fate, should pass on into perfect oblivion and leave matters
as they were before? For a cloud would hang over her and her children
as long as Roland was the object of pursuit. While he was a fugitive
criminal, of interest to the police officers of all countries, there was
no security for their future. The lie to which she had given a guilty
consent was horrible to her, but her morbid dread of shame was more
horrible. She had done evil that good might come; but if the good
failed, the evil would still remain as a dark stain upon her soul,
visible to herself, if to none else.

"I will get up to-day," she said at last, to Madame's great delight. She
never ventured to exert any authority over her beautiful and clever
daughter-in-law--not even the authority of a mildly expressed wish. She
was willing to be to Felicita anything that Felicita pleased--her
servant