But her thoughts turned with more tenderness than usual toward her husband. She had aroused in him also a restless spirit of ambition, though in him it was for her sake, not his own. He wished to restore her if possible to the position she had sacrificed for him; and Felicita knew it. Her heart beating faster with her success was softened toward him; and tears suffused her dark eyes for an instant as she thought of his astonishment and exultation. The children were at play in the garden below her, and their merry voices greeted her ear pleasantly. The one human being who really dwelt in her inmost heart was her boy Felix, her first-born child. Hilda was an unnecessary supplement to the page of her maternal love. But for Felix she dreamed day-dreams of extravagant aspiration; no lot on earth seemed too high or too good for him. He was a handsome boy, the very image of her father, the late Lord Riversdale, and now as she gazed down on him, her eyes slightly dewed with tears, he looked up to her window. She kissed her hand to him, and the boy waved his little cap toward her with almost passionate gesticulations of delight. Felix would be a great man some day; this book of hers was a stone in the foundation of his fame as well as of her own. It was upon this mood of exultation, a rare mood for Felicita, that the cry and roar from the street had broken. With a half-smile at herself, the thought flashed across her mind that it was like a shout of applause and admiration, such as might greet Felix some day when he had proved himself a leader of men. But it aroused her dormant curiosity, and she had condescended to be drawn by it to the window of the drawing-room overlooking Whitefriars Road, in order to ascertain its cause. The crowd filling the street was deeply in earnest, and the aim of those who were fighting their way through it was plainly the bank offices in the floor below her. The sole idea that occurred to her, for she was utterly ignorant of her husband's business, was that some unexpected crisis in the borough had arisen, and its people were coming to Roland Sefton as their leading townsman. When Phebe found her she was quietly studying the crowd and its various features, that she might describe a throng from memory, whenever a need should arise for it. Felicita regained her luxurious little study, and sat down before her desk, on which the new volumes lay, with more outward calm than her face and movements had manifested before she left it. The transient glow of triumph had died away from her face, and the happy tears from her eyes. She closed the casement to shut out the bright, clear sunlight, and the merry voices of her children, before she sat down to think. For a little while she had been burning incense to herself; but the treacherous fire was gone out, and the sweet, bewildering, intoxicating vapors were scattered to the winds. The recollection of her short-lived folly made her shiver as if a cold breath had passed over her.