"You'll know when Mr. Sefton returns, Madame," he answered, with a sudden return to his usually calm tone and manner, which was as startling as his former vehemence had been; "he'll explain all when he comes home. We must open the bank now; it is striking ten."

He locked the desk and pa.s.sed out of the comfortably-furnished parlor into the office beyond, leaving them nothing to do but to return into the house with their curiosity unsatisfied, and the mother's vague trouble unsoothed.

"Phebe, Phebe!" cried Felix, as they slowly re-entered the pleasant home, "my mother says we may go up the river to the osier island; and, oh, Phebe, she will go with us her own self!"

He had run down the broad staircase to meet them, almost breathless with delight, and with eyes shining with almost serious rapture. He clasped Phebe's arm, and, leaning toward her, whispered into her ear,

"She took me in her arms, and said, 'I love you, Felix,' and then she kissed me as if she meant it, Phebe. It was better than all my birthday presents put together. My father said to me one day he adored her; and I adore her. She is my mother, you know--the mother of me, Felix; and I lie down on the floor and kiss her feet every day, only she does not know it. When she looks at me her eyes seem to go through me; but, oh, she does not look at me often."

"She is so different; not like most people," answered Phebe, with her arms round the boy.

Madame had gone on sadly enough up-stairs to see if she could find out anything about her son; and Phebe and Felix had turned into the terraced garden where the boat-house was built close under the bank of the river.

"I should be sorry for my mother to be like other people," said Felix proudly. "She is like the evening star, my father says, and I always look out at night to see if it is shining. You know, Phebe, when we row her up the river, my father and me, we keep quite quiet, only nodding at one another which way to pull, and she sits silent with eyes that shine like stars. We would not speak for anything, not one little word, lest we should disturb her. My father says she is a great genius; not at all like other people, and worth thousands and thousands of common women.

But I don't think you are a common woman, Phebe," he added, lifting up his eager face to hers, as if afraid of hurting her feelings, "and my father does not think so, I know."

"Your father has known me all my life, and has always been my best friend," said Phebe, with a pleasant smile. "But I am a working-woman, Felix, and your mother is a lady and a great genius. It is G.o.d who has ordered it so."

She would have laughed if she had been less simple-hearted than she was, at the anxious care with which the boy arranged the boat for his mother.

No cushions were soft enough and no shawls warm enough for the precious guest. When at length all was ready, and he fetched her himself from the house, it was not until she was comfortably seated in the low seat, with a well-padded sloping back, against which she could recline at ease, and with a soft, warm shawl wrapped round her--not till then did the slight cloud of care pa.s.s away from his face, and the little pucker of anxiety which knitted his brows grow smooth. The little girl of five, Hilda, nestled down by her mother, and Felix took his post at the helm.

In unbroken silence they pushed off into the middle of the stream, the boat rowed easily by Phebe's strong young arms. So silent were they all that they could hear the rustling of the young leaves on the trees, under whose shadows they pa.s.sed, and the joyous singing of the larks in the meadows on each side of the sunny reaches of water, down which they floated. It was not until they landed the children on the osier island, and bade them run about to play, and not then until they were some distance away, that their merry young voices were heard.

"Phebe," said Felicita, in her low-toned, softly-modulated voice, always languid and deliberate, "talk to me. Tell me how you spend your life."

Phebe was sitting face to face with her, balancing the boat with the oars against the swift flowing of the river, with smiles coming and going on her face as rapidly as the shadows and the sunshine chasing each other over the fields this May morning.

"You know," she answered simply, "we live a mile away from the nearest house, and that is only a cottage where an old farm laborer lives with his wife. It's very lonesome up there on the hills. Days and days go by, and I never hear a voice speaking, and I feel as if I could not bear the sound of my own voice when I call the cattle home, or the fowls to come for their corn. If it wasn't for the living things around me, that know me as well as they know one another, and love me more, I should feel sometimes as if I was dead. And I long so to hear somebody speak--to be near more of my fellow-creatures. Why, when I touch the hand of any one I love--yours, or Mr. Sefton's, or Madame's--it's almost a pain to me; it seems to bring me so close to you. I always feel as if I became a part of father when I touch him. Oh, you do not know what it is to be alone!"

"No," said Felicita, sighing; "never have I been alone, and I would give worlds to be as free as you are. You cannot imagine what it is," she went on, speaking rapidly and with intense eagerness, "never to belong to yourself, or to be alone; for it is not being alone to have only four thin walls separating you from a husband and children and a large busy household. 'What are you thinking, my darling?' Roland is always asking me; and the children break in upon me. Body, soul, and spirit, I am held down a captive; I have been in bondage all my life. I have never even thought as I should think if I could be free."

"But I cannot understand that," cried Phebe. "I could never be too near those I love. I should like to live in a large house, with many people all smiling and talking around me. And everybody worships you."

She uttered the last words shyly, partly afraid of bringing a frown on the lovely face opposite to her, which was quickly losing its vivid expression and sinking back into statuesque coldness.

"It is simply weariness to me and vexation of spirit," she answered. "If I could be quite alone, as you are, with only a father like yours, I think I could get free; but I have never been left alone from my babyhood; just as Felix and Hilda are never left alone. Oh, Phebe, you do not know how happy you are."

"No," she said cheerfully, "sometimes when I stand at our garden-gate, and look round me for miles and miles away, and the sweet air blows past me, and the bees are humming, and the birds calling to one another, and everything is so peaceful, with father happy over his work not far off, I think I don't know how happy I am. I try to catch hold of the feeling and keep it, but it slips away somehow. Only I thank G.o.d I am happy."

"I was never happy enough to thank G.o.d," Felicita murmured, lying back in her seat and shutting her eyes. Presently the children returned, and, after another silent row, slower and more toilsome, as it was up the river, they drew near home again, and saw Madame's anxious face watching for them over the low garden wall. Her heart had been too heavy for her to join them in their pleasure-taking, and it was no lighter now.

CHAPTER IV.

UPFOLD FARM.

Phebe rode slowly homeward in the dusk of the evening, her brain too busy with the varied events of the day for her to be in any haste to reach the end. For the last four miles her road lay in long by-lanes, shady with high hedgerows and trees which grew less frequent and more stunted as she rose gradually higher up the long spurs of the hills, whose rounded outlines showed dark against the clear orange tint of the western sky. She could hear the brown cattle chewing the cud, and the bleating of some solitary sheep on the open moor, calling to the flock from which it had strayed during the daytime, with the angry yelping of a dog in answer to its cry from some distant farm-yard. The air was fresh and chilly with dew, and the low wind, which only lifted the branches of the trees a little in the lower land she had left, was growing keener, and would blow sharply enough across the unsheltered table-land she was reaching. But still she loitered, letting her rough pony s.n.a.t.c.h tufts of fresh gra.s.s from the banks, and shamble leisurely along as he strayed from one side of the road to another.

Phebe was not so much thinking as pondering in a confused and unconnected manner over all the circ.u.mstances of the day, when suddenly the tall figure of a man rose from under the black hedgerow, and laid his arm across the pony's neck, with his face turned up to her. Her heart throbbed quickly, but not altogether with terror.

"Mr. Roland!" she cried.

"You know me in the dark then," he answered. "I have been watching for you all day, Phebe. You come from home?"

She knew he meant his home, not hers.

"Yes, it was Felix's birthday, and we have been down the river," she said.

"Is anything known yet?" he asked.

Though it was so solitary a spot that Phebe had pa.s.sed no one for the last three miles, and he had been haunting the hills all day without seeing a soul, yet he spoke in a whisper, as if fearful of betraying himself.

"Only that you are away," she replied; "and they think you are in London."

"Is not Mr. Clifford come?" he asked.

"No, sir, he comes to-morrow," she answered.

"Thank G.o.d!" he exclaimed, in a louder tone. When he spoke again he did so without looking into her face, which indeed was scarcely visible in the deepening dusk.

"Phebe," he said, "we have known each other for many years."

"All my life, sir," she responded eagerly; "father and me, we are proud of knowing you."

Before speaking again he led her pony up the steep lane to a gate which opened on the moorland. It was not so dark here, from under the hedgerows and trees, and a little pool beside the gate caught the last lingering light in the west, and reflected it like a dim and dusty mirror. They could see one another's faces; his was working with strong excitement, and hers, earnest and friendly, looked frankly down upon him. He clasped her hand with the strong, desperate grip of a sinking man, and her fingers responded with a warm clasp.

"Can I trust you, Phebe?" he cried. "I have no other chance."

"I will help you, even to dying for you and yours," she answered. The girlish fervor of her manner struck him mournfully. Why should he burden her with his crime? What right had he to demand any sacrifice from her?

Yet he felt she spoke the truth. Phebe Marlowe would rejoice in helping, even unto death, not only him, but any other fellow-creature who was sinking under sorrow or sin.

"Come on home," she said, "it is bitterly cold here; and you can tell me what to do."

He placed himself at the pony's head again, and trudged on speechlessly along the rough road, which was now nothing more than the tracks made by cart-wheels across the moor, with deep ruts over which he stumbled like a man who is worn out with fatigue. In a quarter of an hour the low cottage was reached, surrounded by a little belt of fields and a few storm-beaten fir-trees. There was a dull glow of red to be seen through the lattice window, telling Phebe of a smouldering fire, made up for her by her father before going back to his workshop at the end of the field behind the house. She stirred up the wood-ashes and threw upon them some dry, light f.a.gots of gorse, and in a few seconds a dazzling light filled the little room from end to end. It was a familiar place to Roland Sefton, and he took no notice of it. But it was a curious interior.

Every niche of the walls was covered with carved oak; no wainscoted hall in the country could be more richly or more fancifully decorated. The chimney-piece over the open hearth-stone, a wide chimney-piece, was deeply carved with curious devices. The doors and window-frames, the cupboards and the shelves for the crockery, were all of dark oak, fashioned into leaves and ferns, with birds on their nests, and timid rabbits, and still more timid wood-mice peeping out of their coverts, c.o.c.ks crowing with uplifted crest, and chickens nestling under the hen-mother's wings, sheaves of corn, and tall, club-headed bulrushes--all the objects familiar to a country life. The dancing light played upon them, and shone also upon Roland Sefton's sad and weary face. Phebe drew her father's carved arm-chair close to the fire.

"Sit down," she said, "and let me get you something to eat."

"Yes," he answered, sinking down wearily in the chair, "I am nearly dying of hunger. Good Heavens! is it possible I can be hungry?"

He spoke with an indescribable expression of mingled astonishment and dread. Suddenly there broke upon him the possibility of suffering want in many forms in the future, and yet he felt ashamed of foreseeing them in this, the first day of his great calamity. Until this moment he had been too absorbed in dwelling upon the moral and social consequences of his crime, to realize how utterly worn out he was; but all his physical strength appeared to collapse in an instant.

And now for the first time Phebe beheld the change in him, and stood gazing at him in mute surprise and sorrow. He had always been careful of his personal appearance, with a refinement and daintiness which had grown especially fastidious since his marriage. But now his coat, wet through during the night, and dried only by the keen air of the hills, was creased and soiled, and his boots were thickly covered with mud and clay. His face and hands were unwashed, and his hair hung unbrushed over his forehead. Phebe's whole heart was stirred at this pitiful change, and she laid her hand on his shoulder with a timid but affectionate touch.

"Mr. Roland," she said, "go up-stairs and put yourself to rights a little; and give me your clothes and your boots to brush. You'll feel better when you are more like yourself."