nificantly.

"I have a good mind to ask him to-night," he replied, stooping down to
kiss Phebe's cheek; "he is at Westminster, and Alice is there too. Bid
me good speed, Phebe."

"God bless you, my Felix," she whispered.

He turned abruptly away, though he lingered for a minute or two longer,
gazing at his father's portrait. How like him, and yet how unlike him,
he was in Phebe's eyes! Then, with a gentle pressure of her hand, he
went away in silence; while she took down the painting, and set it again
with its face to the wall, lest Felicita coming in should catch a sight
of it.

CHAPTER II.

CANON PASCAL.

The massive pile of the old Abbey stood darkly against the sky, with not
a glimmer of light shining through its many windows; whilst behind it
the Houses of Parliament, now in full session, glittered from roof to
basement with innumerable lamps. All about them there was the rush and
rattle of busy life, but the Abbey seemed inclosed in a magic circle of
solitude and stillness. Overhead a countless host of little silvery
clouds covered the sky, with fine threads and interspaces of dark blue
lying between them. The moon, pale and bright, seemed to be drifting
slowly among them, sometimes behind them, and faintly veiled by their
light vapor; but more often the little clouds made way for her, and
clustered round, in a circle of vaguely outlined cherub-heads, golden
brown in the halo she shed about her. These child-like angel-heads,
floating over the greater part of the sky, seemed pressing forward, one
behind the other, and hastening into the narrow ring of light, with a
gentle eagerness; and fading softly away as the moon passed by.

Felix stood still for a minute or two looking up from the dark and
silent front of the Abbey to the silent and silvery clouds above it.
Almost every stone of the venerable old walls was familiar and dear to
him. For Phebe, when she came from the broad, grand solitude of her
native moors, had fixed at once upon the Abbey as the one spot in London
where she could find something of the repose she had been accustomed to
meet with in the sight of the far-stretching horizon, and the unbroken
vault of heaven overarching it. Felicita, too, had attended the
cathedral service every Sunday morning, since she had been wealthy
enough to set up a carriage, which was the first luxury she had allowed
herself. The music, the chants, the dim light of the colored windows,
the long aisle of lo