It was past noon when Felicita was driven up to the hotel in the village, where, when she had last been at Engelberg, she had gone to look upon the dead face of the stranger, who was to carry away the sin of Roland Sefton, with the shame it would bring upon her, and bury it forever in his grave. It seemed but a few days ago, and she felt reluctant to enter the house again. In two or three hours when the horses were rested, she said to the driver, she would be ready to return to Stans. Then she wandered out into the village street, thinking she might come across some peasant at work alone, or some woman standing idly at her door, with whom she could fall into a casual conversation, and learn what she had come to ascertain. But she met with no solitary villager; and she strayed onward, almost unwittingly in the direction of the cemetery. In passing by the church, she pushed open one of the heavy, swinging doors, and cast a glance around; there was no one in sight, but the gabble of boys' voices in some vestry close by reached her ear, and a laugh rang after it, which echoed noisily in the quiet aisles. The high altar was lit up by a light from a side-window and her eye was arrested by it. Still, whether she saw and heard, or was deaf and blind, she scarcely knew. Her feet were drawn by some irresistible attraction towards the grave where her husband was not buried. She did not know in what corner of the graveyard it was to be found; and when she entered the small enclosure, with its wooden cross at the head of every narrow mound, she stood still for a minute or two, hesitatingly, and looking before her with a bewildered and reluctant air, as if engaged in an enterprise she recoiled from. A young priest, the cure of the nearest mountain parish, who visiting the grave of one of his parishioners lately buried at Engelberg, was passing to and fro among the grassy mounds with his breviary in his hands, and his lips moving as if in prayer; but at the unexpected sight of a traveller thus early in the season, his curiosity was aroused, and he bent his steps towards her. When he was sufficiently near to catch her wandering eye, he spoke in a quiet and courteous manner-- "Is madame seeking for any special spot?" he inquired. "Yes," answered Felicita, fastening upon him her large; sad eyes, which had dark rings below them, intensifying the mournfulness of their expression, "I am looking for a grave. The grave of a stranger; Roland Sefton. I have come from England to find it." Her voice was constrained and low; and the words came in brief, panting syllables, which sounded almost like sobs. The black-robed priest looked closely and scrutinizingly into the pallid face turned towards him, which was as rigid as marble, except for the gleam of the dark eyes. "Madame is suffering; she is ill!" he said. "No, not ill," answered Felicita, in an absent manner, as if she was speaking in a dream, "but of all women the most miserable."