They walked slowly back to the cottage, side by side, reading the letter together; for Felix could have nothing to say to Phebe which his father might not see. There was nothing of importance in it; only a brief journal dispatched by a homeward-bound vessel which had crossed the path of their steamer, but every word was read with deep and silent interest, neither of them speaking till they had read the last line.
"And now you will have tea with me," said Phebe joyfully.
He entered the little kitchen, so dark and cool to him after his sultry walk up the steep, long lanes, and sat watching her absently, yet with a pleasant consciousness of her presence, as she kindled her fire of dry furze and wood, and hung a little kettle to it by a chain hooked to a staple in the chimney, and arranged her curious old china, picked up long years ago by her father at village sales, upon the quaintly carved table set in the coolest spot of the dusky room. There was an air of simple busy gladness in her face and in every quick yet graceful movement that was inexpressibly charming to him. Maybe both of them glanced back at the dark past when Roland Sefton had been watching her with despairing eyes, yet neither of them spoke of it. That life was dead and buried. The present was altogether different.
Yet the meal was a silent one, and as soon as it was finished they went out again on to the hazy moorland.
"Are you quite rested yet, Phebe?" asked Jean Merle.
"Quite," she answered, with unconscious emphasis.
"And you have settled upon some plan for the future?" he said.
"No," she replied; "I am altogether at a loss. There is no one in all the world who has a claim upon me, or whom I have a claim upon; no one to say to me 'Go' or 'Come.' When the world is all before you and it is an empty world, it is difficult to choose which way you will take in it."
She had paused as she spoke; but now they walked on again in silence, Jean Merle looking down on her sweet yet somewhat sad face with attentive eyes. How little changed she was from the simple, faithful-hearted girl he had known long ago! There was the same candid and thoughtful expression on her face, and the same serene light in her blue eyes, as when she stood beside him, a little girl, patiently yet earnestly mastering the first difficulties of reading. There was no one in the wide world whom he knew as perfectly as he knew her; no one in the wide world who knew him as perfectly as she did.
"Tell me, Phebe," he said gravely, "is it possible that you have lived so long and that no man has found out what a priceless treasure you might be to him?"