She stretched out both hands to him, with a gesture of tenderness peculiar to herself, and shown only to him. It was as if one hand could not link them closely enough; could not bring them so nearly heart to heart. Felix took them both into his own, and knelt down before her; his young face flushed with eagerness, and his eyes, so like her own, fastened upon hers. "Your face speaks for you," she said, pressing one of her rare kisses upon it. "What is it my boy has to tell me?" "Oh, mother," he cried, "you will never think I love you less than I have always done? See, I kiss your feet still as I used to do when I was a boy." He bent his head to caress the little feet, and then laid it on his mother's lap, while she let her white fingers play with his hair. "Why should you love me less than you have always done?" she asked, in a sweet languid voice. "Have I ever changed toward you, Felix?" "No, mother, no," he answered, "but to-night I feel how different I am from what I was but a year or two ago. I am a man now; I was a boy then." "You will always be a boy to me," she said, with a tender smile. "Yet I am as old as my father was when you were married," he replied. Felicita's face grew white, and she leaned back in her chair with a sudden feeling of faintness. It was years since the boy had spoken of his father; why should he utter his name now? He had raised his head when he felt her move, and her dim and failing eyes saw his face in a mist, looking so like his father when she had known him first, that she shrank from him, with a terror and aversion too deep to be concealed. "Roland!" she cried. He did not speak or move, being too bewildered and wonderstruck at his mother's agitation. Felicita hid her face in her white hands, and sat still recovering herself. The pang had been sudden, and poignant; it had smitten her so unawares that she had betrayed its anguish. But, she felt in an instant, her boy had no thought of wounding her; and for her own sake, as well as his, she must conquer this painful excitement. There must be no scene to awaken observation or suspicion. "Mother, forgive me," he exclaimed, "I did not mean to distress you." "No," she breathed with difficulty, "I am sure of it. Go on Felix." "I came to tell you," he said gravely, "that as long as I can remember--at least as long as we have been in London and known the Pascals--I have loved Alice. Oh, mother, I've thought sometimes you seemed as fond of her as you are of Hilda. You will be glad to have her as your daughter?"