ed and my heart hardened; and I looked at
it in the light of the world. But then I be-thought me of your mother.
Shall not she make good to you the evil your father has wrought? If he
dishonored your name in the eyes of a few, she has brought honor to it,
and made it known far beyond the limits it could have been known through
him. The world will regard you as her son, not as his."

"But I came also to tell you that I wish to leave the country," said
Felix. "There is a difficulty in getting young men for our colonial
work; and I am young and strong, stronger than most young men in the
Church. I could endure hardships, and go in for work that feebler men
must leave untried; you have taken care of that for me. Such a life
would be more like old Felix Merle's than a London curacy. You let your
own sons emigrate, believing that the old country is getting
over-populated; and I thought I would go too."

"Why?" asked Canon Pascal, turning round in his chair, and looking up
searchingly into his face.

In a few words, and in short broken sentences, Felix told him of Nixey's
charge, and the change it had wrought in the London curacy, upon which
he had entered with so much enthusiasm and delight.

"It will be the same wherever I go in England," he said in conclusion;
"and I cannot face them boldly and say it is all a falsehood."

"You must live it down," answered Canon Pascal; "go on, and take no
notice of it."

"But it hinders my work sadly," said Felix, "and I cannot go on in the
Brickfields. There might be a row any evening, and then the story would
come out in the police-courts; and what could I say? At least, I must
give up that."

For a few minutes Canon Pascal was lost in thought. If Felix was right
in his apprehension, and the whole story came out in the police-court,
there were journals pandering to public curiosity that would gladly lay
hold of any gossip or scandal connected with Mrs. Roland Sefton. Her
name would ensure its publicity. And how could Felicita endure that,
especially now that her health was affected? If the dread of disclosing
her secret to him had wrought so powerfully upon her physical and mental
constitution, what would she suffer if it became a nine days' talk for
the world?

"I will get your rector to exchange curates with me till we can see our
way clear," he said. "He is Alice's godfather, you know, and will do it
willingly. I am going up to Westminster in November, and you will be
here i