The winter months passed away cheerlessly, though she worked with more persistent energy than ever before, partly to drive away the thoughts that troubled her. She heard from Mr. Clifford, but not more frequently than usual, and Jean Merle did not venture upon sending her a line of his hand-writing. Mr. Clifford spoke in guarded terms of the comfort he found in the companionship of his attendant, in spite of his being a sad and moody man. Now and then he told Phebe that this attendant of his had gone for a day or two to her solitary little house on the uplands, of which Mr. Clifford kept the key, and that he stayed there a day or two, finishing the half-carved blocks of oak her father had left incomplete. It would have been a happier existence, she knew, for himself, if Jean Merle had gone to dwell there altogether; but it was along this path of self-sacrifice and devotion alone lay the road back to a Christian life.
One point troubled Phebe's conscience more than any other. Ought she not at least to tell Canon Pascal what she knew? She could not help feeling that this second fraud would seem worse in his estimation than the first one. And Felicita, the very soul of truth and honor, had connived at it! It seemed immeasurably more terrible in Phebe's own eyes. To her money had so small a value, it lay on so low a level in the scale of life, that a crime in connection with it had far less guilt than one against the affections. And how unutterable a sin against all who loved him had Roland and Felicita fallen into! She recalled his mother's mourning for him through many long years, and her belief in death that she was going soon to rejoin the beloved son whom she had lost. Her own grief she put aside, but there was the deep, boyish sorrow of Felix, and even little Hilda's fatherlessness, as the children had grown up through the various stages of childhood. It might have been bad for them to bear the stigma of their father's shame, but still Phebe believed it would have been better for every one of them to have gone bravely forward to bear the just consequences of sin.
She went down into Essex to spend a day or two at Christmas, carrying with her the fitful spirit so foreign to her. The perfect health that had been hers hitherto was broken; and Mrs. Pascal, a confirmed invalid, to whom Phebe's physical vigor and evenness of temper had been a constant source of delight and invigoration, felt the change in her keenly.
"She has something on her mind," she said to her husband; "you must try and find it out, or she will be ill."
"I know she has a secret," he answered, "but it is not her own. Phebe Marlowe is as open as the day; she will never have a secret of her own."
But he made no effort to find out her secret. His searching, kindly eyes met hers with the trustfulness of a frank and open nature that recognized a nature akin to its own, and Phebe never shrank from his gaze, though her lips remained closed. If it was right for her to tell him anything of the stranger who had been about to make him his confessor, she would do it. Canon Pascal would not ask any questions.
"Felix and Alice are growing more and more deeply in love with each other," he said to her; "there is something beautiful and pleasant in being a spectator of these palmy days of theirs. Felicita even felt something of their happiness when she was here last, and she will not withhold her full approbation much longer."
"And you," answered Phebe, with an eager flush on her face, "you do not repent of giving Alice to the son of a man who might have been a convict?"
"I believe Alice would marry Felix if his father had been a murderer," replied Canon Pascal; "it is too late to alter it now. Besides, I know Felix through and through, he is himself; he is no longer the son of any person, but a true man, one of the sons of God."
The strong and emphatic tone of Canon Pascal's words brought great consolation to Phebe's troubled mind. She might keep silence with a good conscience, for the duty of disclosing all to Canon Pascal arose simply from the possibility that his conduct would be altered by this further knowledge of Roland and Felicita.