"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. Felix sought his mother in her library. Felicita was alone, reading in the light of a lamp which shed a strong illumination over her. In his eyes she was incomparably the loveliest woman he had ever seen, not even excepting Alice; and the stately magnificence of her velvet dress, and rich lace, and costly jewels, was utterly different from that of any other woman he knew. For Mrs. Pascal dressed simply, as became the wife of a country rector; and Phebe, in her studio, always wore a blouse or apron of brown holland, which suited her well, making her homely and domestic in appearance as she was in nature. Felicita looked like a queen in his eyes. When she heard his voice speaking to her, having not caught the sound of his step on the soft carpet, Felicita looked up with a smile in her dark eyes. In a day or two her son was about to leave her roof, and her heart felt very soft toward him. She had scarcely realized that he was a man, until she knew that he had decided to have a place and a dwelling of his own.