Phebe found herself alone, with the burden of Jean Merle's secret resting on her unshared. It depended upon her sagacity and tact whether he should escape being connected in a mysterious manner with the sad event that had just transpired in Engelberg. The footstep she had heard on the stairs was that of the landlady, who had gone into the salon and had thus missed seeing Jean Merle as he left the house. Phebe met her in the doorway.
"I have sent a message by the guide who brought me here," she said in slowly pronounced French; "he is gone to Lucerne, and he will telegraph to England for me."
"Is he gone—Jean Merle?" asked the landlady.
"Certainly, yes," answered Phebe; "he is gone to Lucerne."
"Will he return, then?" inquired the landlady.
"No, I suppose not," she replied; "he has done all he had to do for me. He will telegraph to England, and our friends will come to us immediately. Good-night, Madame."
"Good-night, Mademoiselle," was the response. "May you sleep well!"
But sleep was far away from Phebe's agitated brain that night. She felt herself alone in a strange land, with a great grief and a terrible secret oppressing her. As the night wore on a feverish dread took possession of her that she should be unable to prevent Felicita's burial beside Roland Sefton's grave. Even Felix would decide that it ought to be so. As soon as the dawn came she rose and went out into the icy freshness of the morning air, blowing down from the snow-fields and the glaciers around her.
The village was beginning to arouse itself. The Abbey bells were ringing, and at the sound of them, calling the laborers to a new day's toil, here and there a shutter was thrown back or a door was opened, and light volumes of gray wood-smoke stole upwards into the still air. There was a breath of serenity and peace in this early hour which soothed Phebe's fevered brain, as she slowly sauntered on with the purpose of finding the cemetery, where the granite cross stood over the grave that had occupied so much of her thoughts since she had heard of Roland Sefton's death. She reached it at last and stood motionless before it, looking back through all the years in which she had mourned with Roland's mother his untimely death. He whom she had mourned for was not lying here; but did not his life hold deeper cause for grief than his death ever had? Standing there, so far from home, in the quiet morning, with this grave at her feet, she answered to herself a question which had been troubling her for many months. Yes, it was a right thing to do, on the whole, to keep this secret—Felicita's secret as well as Roland's—forever locked in her own heart. There was concealment in it closely verging, as it must always do, on deception. Phebe's whole nature revolted against concealment. She loved to live her life out in the eye of day. But the story of Roland Sefton's crime, and the penance done for it, in its completeness could never be given to the world; it must always result in some measure in misleading the judgment of those most interested in it. There was little to be gained and much to be sacrificed by its disclosure. Felicita's death seemed to give a new weight to every reason for keeping the secret; and it was safe in her keeping and Mr. Clifford's: when a few years were gone it would be hers alone. The cross most heavy for her to bear she must carry, hidden from every eye; but she could bear it faithfully, even unto death.
As her lips whispered the last three words, giving to her resolution a definite form and utterance, a shadow beside her own fell upon the cross. She turned quickly and met the kindly inquisitive gaze of the mountain curé who had led Felicita to this spot yesterday. He had been among the first who followed Jean Merle as he carried her lifeless form through the village street; and he had run to the monastery to seek what medical aid could be had there. The incident was one of great interest to him. Phebe's frank yet sorrowful face, turned to him with its expression of ready sympathy with any fellow-creature, won from the young priest the cordial friendliness that everywhere greeted her. He stood bareheaded before her, as he had done before Felicita, but he spoke to her in a tone of more familiar intercourse.