"And if it was possible--think it possible," she went on, "that he could come back again, that the grave in Engelberg could give up its dead, he would be welcome to you?" "If my old friend Sefton's son, could come back again," he said, "he would be more welcome to me than you are, Phebe. How often do I fancy him sitting yonder in Sefton's chair, watching me with his dear eyes!" "But suppose he had deceived us all," she continued, "if he had escaped from your anger by another fraud; a worse fraud! If he had managed so as to bury some one else in his name, and go on living under a false one! Could you forgive that?" "If Roland could come back a repentant man, I would forgive him every sin," answered Mr. Clifford, "and rejoice that I had not driven him to seek death. But what do you mean, Phebe? why do you ask?" "Because," she answered, speaking almost in a whisper, with her face close to his, "Roland did not die. That man, who was here in August, and called himself Jean Merle, is Roland himself. He saw you, and all of us, and did not dare to make himself known. I can tell you all about it. But, oh! he has bitterly repented; and there is no place of repentance for him in this world. He cannot come back amongst us, and be Roland Sefton again." "Where is he?" asked the old man, trembling. "He is here; he came with me. I will go and fetch him," she answered. Mr. Clifford leaned back in his arm-chair, and gazed towards the half-open door. His memory had gone back twenty years, to the last time he had seen Roland Sefton, in the prime of his youth, handsome, erect, and happy, who had made his heart ache as he thought of his own abandoned son, lying buried in a common grave in Paris. The man whom he saw entering slowly and reluctantly into the room behind Phebe, was gray-headed, bent, and abject. This man paused just within the doorway, looking not at him but round the room, with a glance full of grief and remembrance. The eager, questioning eyes of old Mr. Clifford did not arrest his attention, or divert it from the aspect of the old familiar place. "No, no, Phebe!" exclaimed Mr. Clifford, "he's an impostor, my dear. That's not my old friend's son Roland." "Would to God I were not!" cried Jean Merle bitterly, "would to God I stood in this room as a stranger! Phebe Marlowe, this is very hard; my punishment is greater than I can bear. All my life comes back to me here. This place, of all other places in the world, brings my sin and folly to remembrance."