"It was best for them all," he answered. "God knows I believed it was best. But it was a second sin, worse than the first, Phebe. I did the man who died no wrong, for he told me as he lay dying that he had no friends to grieve for him, and no property to leave. All he wanted was a decent grave; and he has it, and my name with it. The grave at Engelberg contains a stranger. And I, Jean Merle, have taken charge of it."
"Oh!" cried Phebe, with a pang of dread, "how will Felicita bear it?"
"Felicita has known it; she consented to it," said Jean Merle. "If she had uttered one word against my desperate plan, I should have recoiled from it. To be dead whilst you are yet in the body; to have eyes to see and ears to hear with, and a thinking brain and a hungry heart, whilst there is no sign, or sound, or memory, or love from your former life; you cannot conceive what that is, Phebe. I was dead, yet I was too keenly alive in Jean Merle, the poor wood-carver and miser. They thought I was imbecile; and I was almost a madman. I could not tear myself away from the grave where Roland Sefton was buried; but oh! what I have suffered!"
He ended with a long shuddering sigh, which pierced Phebe to the heart. The joy of seeing him again was vanishing in the sight of his suffering; but the thought uppermost in her mind was of Felicita.
"And she has known all along that you were not dead?" she said, in a tone of awe.
"Yes, Felicita knew," he answered.
"And has she never seen you, never written to you?" she asked.
"She knows nothing of me," he replied. "I was to be dead to her, and to every one else. We parted forever in Engelberg fourteen years ago this very month. Perhaps she believes me to be dead in reality. But I could live no longer without knowing something of you all, of Felix and Hilda; and I came over to England in August. I have seen all of you, except Felicita."
"Oh! it was wicked! it was cruel!" sobbed Phebe, shivering. "Your mother died, believing she was going to rejoin you; and I, oh! how I have mourned for you!"
"Have you, Phebe?" he said sorrowfully; "but Felicita has been saved from shame, and has been successful. She is too famous now for me to retrace my steps, and get back into truthfulness. I can find no place for repentance, let me seek it ever so carefully and with tears."