Phebe found her, as she had done the day before, sitting in the oriel window; but the usually placid-looking little woman was in a state of nervous agitation. As soon as she caught sight of Phebe's pitiful face she ran to her, and clasping her in her arms, burst into a passion of tears and sobs.
"My son!" she cried; "what can have become of him, Phebe? Where can he be gone? If he would only come home, all these people would be satisfied, and go away. They don't know Mr. Clifford, but they know Roland; he is so popular. The servants say the bank is broken; what does that mean, Phebe? And poor Acton! They say he is dead—he did kill himself by poison. Is it not true, Phebe? Tell me it is not true!"
But Phebe could say nothing to comfort her; she knew better than any one else the whole truth of the calamity. But she held the weeping little woman in her strong young arms, and there was something consoling in her loving clasp.
"And where are the children?" she asked, after a while.
"I sent them to play in the garden," answered Madame; "their own little plots are far away, out of sight of the dreadful street. What good is it that they should know all this trouble?"
"No good at all," replied Phebe. "And where is Mrs. Sefton?"
"Alas, my Phebe!" she exclaimed, "who dare tell her? Not me; no, no! She is shut up in her little chamber, and she forgets all the world—her children even, and Roland himself. It is as if she went away into another life, far away from ours; and when she comes home again she is like one in a dream. Will you dare to tell her?"
"Yes, I will go," she said.
Yet with very slow and reluctant steps Phebe climbed the staircase, pausing long at the window midway, which overlooked the wide and sunny landscape in the distance, and the garden just below. She watched the children busy at their little plots of ground, utterly unconscious of the utter ruin that had befallen them. How lovely and how happy they looked! She could have cried out aloud, a bitter and lamentable cry. 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.