e bank is broken; what does
that mean, Phebe? And poor Acton! They say he is dead--he did kill
himself by poison. Is it not true, Phebe? Tell me it is not true!"

But Phebe could say nothing to comfort her; she knew better than any one
else the whole truth of the calamity. But she held the weeping little
woman in her strong young arms, and there was something consoling in her
loving clasp.

"And where are the children?" she asked, after a while.

"I sent them to play in the garden," answered Madame; "their own little
plots are far away, out of sight of the dreadful street. What good is it
that they should know all this trouble?"

"No good at all," replied Phebe. "And where is Mrs. Sefton?"

"Alas, my Phebe!" she exclaimed, "who dare tell her? Not me; no, no!
She is shut up in her little chamber, and she forgets all the world--her
children even, and Roland himself. It is as if she went away into
another life, far away from ours; and when she comes home again she is
like one in a dream. Will you dare to tell her?"

"Yes, I will go," she said.

Yet with very slow and reluctant steps Phebe climbed the staircase,
pausing long at the window midway, which overlooked the wide and sunny
landscape in the distance, and the garden just below. She watched the
children busy at their little plots of ground, utterly unconscious of
the utter ruin that had befallen them. How lovely and how happy they
looked! She could have cried out aloud, a bitter and lamentable cry. But
as yet she must not yield to the flood of her own grief; she must keep
it back until she was at home again, in her solitary home, where nobody
could hear her sobs and cries. Just now she must think for, and comfort,
if comfort were possible, these others, who stood even nearer than she
did to the sin and the sinner. Gathering up all her courage, she
quickened her footsteps and ran hurriedly up the remaining steps.

But at the drawing-room door, which was partly open, her feet were
arrested. Within, standing behind the rose-colored curtains, stood the
tall, slender figure of Felicita, with her clear and colorless face
catching a delicate flush from the tint of the hangings that concealed
her from the street. She was looking down on the crowd below, with the
perplexity of a foreigner gazing on some unfamiliar scene in a strange
land. There was a half-smile playing about her lips; but her whole
attention was so absorbed by the spectacle beneath her that she did not