"You don't say No to me?" he faltered.
"How can I say No or Yes?" asked Canon Pascal, almost with an accent of surprise. "I will talk it over with your mother and Alice's mother; but the Yes or No must come from Alice herself. What am I that I should stand between you two and God, if it is His will to bestow His sweet boon upon you both? Only do not disturb the child, Felix. Leave her fancy-free a little longer."
"And you are willing to take me as your son? You do not count me unworthy?" he exclaimed.
"I've boys of my own," he answered, "whose up-growing I've watched from the day of their birth, and who are precious to me as my own soul; and you, Felix, come next to them. You've been like another son to me. But I must see your mother. Who knows what thoughts she may not have for her only son?"
"None, none that can come between Alice and me," cried Felix rapturously. "Father! yes, I shall know again what it is to have a father."
A sob rose to his throat as he uttered the word. He seemed to see his own father again, as he remembered him in his childhood, and as Phebe's portrait had recalled him vividly to his mind. If he had only lived till now to witness, and to share in this new happiness! It seemed as if his early death gathered an additional sadness about it, since he had left the world while so much joy and gladness had been enfolded in the future. Even in this first moment of ineffable happiness he promised himself that he would go and visit his father's foreign grave.
CHAPTER III.
FELICITA'S REFUSAL.
Now there was no longer a doubt weighing upon his spirit, Felix longed to tell his mother all. The slight cloud that had arisen of late years between them was so gossamer-like yet, that the faintest breath could drive it away. Though her boy was not the brilliant genius she had secretly and fondly hoped he would prove, he was still dearer to Felicita than ought else on earth or, indeed, in heaven; and her love for him was deeper than she supposed. On his part he had never lost that chivalrous tenderness, blended with deferential awe, with which he had regarded her from his early boyhood. His love for Alice was so utterly different from his devotion to her, that he had never compared them, and they had not come into any kind of collision yet.