erself,
the thought flashed across her mind that it was like a shout of applause
and admiration, such as might greet Felix some day when he had proved
himself a leader of men. But it aroused her dormant curiosity, and she
had condescended to be drawn by it to the window of the drawing-room
overlooking Whitefriars Road, in order to ascertain its cause. The crowd
filling the street was deeply in earnest, and the aim of those who were
fighting their way through it was plainly the bank offices in the floor
below her. The sole idea that occurred to her, for she was utterly
ignorant of her husband's business, was that some unexpected crisis in
the borough had arisen, and its people were coming to Roland Sefton as
their leading townsman. When Phebe found her she was quietly studying
the crowd and its various features, that she might describe a throng
from memory, whenever a need should arise for it.

Felicita regained her luxurious little study, and sat down before her
desk, on which the new volumes lay, with more outward calm than her
face and movements had manifested before she left it. The transient glow
of triumph had died away from her face, and the happy tears from her
eyes. She closed the casement to shut out the bright, clear sunlight,
and the merry voices of her children, before she sat down to think.

For a little while she had been burning incense to herself; but the
treacherous fire was gone out, and the sweet, bewildering, intoxicating
vapors were scattered to the winds. The recollection of her short-lived
folly made her shiver as if a cold breath had passed over her.

Not for a moment did she doubt Roland's guilt. There was such a
certainty of it lying behind Phebe's sorrowful eyes as she whispered "I
know it," that Felicita had not cared to ask how she knew it. She did
not trouble herself with details. The one fact was there: her husband
had absconded. A dreamy panorama of their past life flitted across her
brain--his passionate love for her, which had never cooled, though it
had failed to meet with a response from her; his insatiable desire to
make her life more full of pomp and luxury and display than that of her
cousins at Riversdale; his constant thraldom to her, which had
ministered only to her pride and coldness. His queen he had called her.
It was all over now. His extraordinary absence was against any hope that
he could clear himself. Her husband had brought fatal and indelible
disgrace upon his name,