Cobwebs and Cables. Stretton Hesba

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 see or hear Phebe until she was standing beside her, looking down also on the excited crowd.

      "Phebe!" she exclaimed, "you here again? Then you can tell me, are the good people of Riversborough gone mad? or is it possible there is an election going on, of which I have heard nothing? Nothing less than an election could rouse them to such a pitch of excitement."

      "Have you heard nothing of what they say?" asked Phebe.

      "There is such a Babel," she answered; "of course I hear my husband's name. It would be just like him if he got himself elected member for Riversborough without telling me anything about it till it was over. He loves surprises; and I—why I hate to be surprised."

      "But he is gone!" said Phebe.

      "Yes, he told me he was going to London," she went on; "but if it is no election scene, what is it, Phebe? Why are all the people gathered here in such excitement?"

      "Shall I tell you plainly?" asked Phebe, looking steadily into Felicita's dark, inscrutable eyes.

      "Tell me the simple truth," she replied, somewhat haughtily; "if any human being can tell it."

      "Then the bank has stopped payment," answered Phebe. "Poor Mr. Acton has been found dead in bed this morning; and Mr. Sefton is gone away, nobody knows where. It is the May fair to-day, and all the people are coming in from the country. There's been a run on the bank till they are forced to stop payment. That is what brings the crowd here."

      Felicita dropped the curtain which she had been holding back with her hand, and stepped back a pace or two from the window. But her face scarcely changed; she listened calmly and collectedly, as if Phebe was speaking of some persons she hardly knew.

      "My husband will come back immediately," she said. "Is not Mr. Clifford there?"

      "Yes," said Phebe.

      "Are you telling me all?" asked Felicita.

      "No," she answered; "Mr. Clifford says he has been robbed. Securities worth nearly ten thousand pounds are missing. He must have found it out already."

      "Who does he suspect?" she asked again imperiously; "he does not dare suspect my husband?"

      Phebe replied only by a mute gesture. She had never had any secret to conceal before, and she did not see that she had betrayed herself by the words she had uttered. The deep gloom on her bright young face struck Felicita for the first time.

      "Do you think it was Roland?" she asked.

      Again the same dumb, hopeless gesture answered the question. Phebe could not bring her lips to shape a word of accusation against him. It was agony to her to feel her idol disgraced and cast down from his high pedestal; yet she had not learned any way of concealing or misrepresenting the truth.

      "You know he did it?" said Felicita.

      "Yes, I know it," she whispered.

      For a minute or two Felicita stood, with her white hands resting on Phebe's shoulders, gazing into her mournful face with keen, questioning eyes. Then, with a rapid flush of crimson, betraying a strong and painful heart-throb, which suffused her face for an instant and left it paler than before, she pressed her lips on the girl's sunburnt forehead.

      "Tell nobody else," she murmured; "keep the secret for his sake and mine."

      Before Phebe could reply she turned away, and, with a steady, unfaltering step, went back to her study and locked herself in.

CHAPTER VII.

       Table of Contents

AN INTERRUPTED DAY-DREAM.

       Table of Contents

      Felicita's study was so quiet a room, quite remote from the street, that it was almost a wonder the noise of the crowd had reached her. But this morning there had been a pleasant tumult of excitement in her own brain, which had prevented her from falling into an absorbed reverie, such as she usually indulged in, and rendered her peculiarly susceptible to outward influences. All her senses had been awake to-day.

      On her desk lay the two volumes of a new book, handsomely got up, with pages yet uncut as it had come from the publishers. A dozen times she had looked at the title-page, as if unable to convince herself of the reality, and read her own name—Felicita Riversdale Sefton. It was the first time her name as an author had been published, though for the last three years she had from time to time written anonymously for magazines. This was her own book; thought out, written, revised, and completed in her chosen solitude and secrecy. No one knew of it; possibly Roland suspected something, but he had not ventured to make any inquiries, and she had no reason to believe that he even suspected its existence. It was simply altogether her own; no other mind had any part or share in it.

      There was something like rapture in her delight. The book was a good book, she was sure of it. She had not succeeded in making it as perfect as her ideal, but she had not signally failed. It did in a fair degree represent her inmost thoughts and fancies. Yet she could not feel quite sure that the two volumes were real, and the letter from the publisher, a friendly and pleasant letter enough, seemed necessary to vouch for them. She read and re-read it. The little room seemed too small and close for her. She opened the window to let in the white daylight, undisguised by the faint green tint of the glass, and she leaned out to breathe the fresh sweet air of the spring morning. Life was very pleasurable to her to-day.

      There were golden gleams too upon the future. She would no longer be the unknown wife of a country banker, moving in a narrow sphere, which was altogether painful to her in its provincial philistinism. It was a sphere to which she had descended in girlish ignorance. Her uncle, Lord Riversdale, had been willing to let his portionless niece marry this prosperous young banker, who was madly in love with her, and a little gentle pressure had been brought to bear on the girl of eighteen, who had been placed by her father's death in a position of dependence. Since then a smouldering fire of ambition and of dissatisfaction with her lot had been lurking unsuspected under her cold and self-absorbed manner.

      But her thoughts turned with more tenderness than usual toward her husband. She had aroused in him also a restless spirit of ambition, though in him it was for her sake, not his own. He wished to restore her if possible to the position she had sacrificed for him; and Felicita knew it. Her heart beating faster with her success was softened toward him; and tears suffused her dark eyes for an instant as she thought of his astonishment and exultation.

      The children were at play in the garden below her, and their merry voices greeted her ear pleasantly. The one human being who really dwelt in her inmost heart was her boy Felix, her first-born child. Hilda was an unnecessary supplement to the page of her maternal love. But for Felix she dreamed day-dreams of extravagant aspiration; no lot on earth seemed too high or too good for him. He was a handsome boy, the very image of her father, the late Lord Riversdale, and now as she gazed down on him, her eyes slightly dewed with tears, he looked up to her window. She kissed her hand to him, and the boy waved his little cap toward her