a
mist, looking so like his father when she had known him first, that she
shrank from him, with a terror and aversion too deep to be concealed.

"Roland!" she cried.

He did not speak or move, being too bewildered and wonderstruck at his
mother's agitation. Felicita hid her face in her white hands, and sat
still recovering herself. The pang had been sudden, and poignant; it had
smitten her so unawares that she had betrayed its anguish. But, she felt
in an instant, her boy had no thought of wounding her; and for her own
sake, as well as his, she must conquer this painful excitement. There
must be no scene to awaken observation or suspicion.

"Mother, forgive me," he exclaimed, "I did not mean to distress you."

"No," she breathed with difficulty, "I am sure of it. Go on Felix."

"I came to tell you," he said gravely, "that as long as I can
remember--at least as long as we have been in London and known the
Pascals--I have loved Alice. Oh, mother, I've thought sometimes you
seemed as fond of her as you are of Hilda. You will be glad to have her
as your daughter?"

Felicita closed her eyes with a feeling of helpless misery. She could
hardly give a thought to Felix and the words he uttered; yet it was
those words which brought a flood of hidden memories and fears sweeping
over her shrinking soul. It was so long since she had thought much of
Roland! She had persuaded herself that as so many years had passed by
bringing to her no hint or token of his existence, he must be dead; and
as one dead passes presently out of the active thoughts, busy only with
the present, so had her husband passed away from her mind into some dim,
hidden cell of memory, with which she had long ceased to trouble
herself.

Her husband seemed to stand before her as she had seen him last, a
haggard, way-worn, ruined man, beggared and stripped of all that makes
life desirable. And this was only six months after he had lost all. What
would he be after thirteen years if he was living still?

But if it had appeared to her out of the question to face and bear the
ignominy and disgrace he had brought upon her thirteen years ago, how
utterly impossible it was now. She could never retrace her steps. To
confess the deception she had herself consented to, and taken part in,
would be to pull down with her own hands the fair edifice of her life.
The very name she had made for herself, and the broader light in which
her fame had placed her, made any repenta