But the one thought that haunted him, never leaving him for an instant in these terrible solitudes, was the thought of Felicita. His mother he could forget sometimes, or remember her with a dewy tenderness at his heart, as if he could feel her pitiful love clinging to him still; and his children he dreamed of at times in a day-dream, as playing merrily without him, in the blissful ignorance of childhood. But Felicita, who did not love him as his mother did, and could not remain in ignorance of his crime! Was she not something like these pure, distant snowy pinnacles, inapproachable and repellent, with icy-cold breath which petrified all lips that drew too near to them? And he had set a stain upon that purity as white as the driven snow. The name he had given to her was tarnished, and would be publicly dishonored if he failed in evading the penalty he merited. His death alone could save her from notorious and intolerable disgrace. But though he was reckless of his life, he could not bring himself to be guilty of suicide. Death was wooing him in many forms, day by day, to seek refuge with him. When his feet slipped among the yawning crevasses of the glaciers, the smallest wilful negligence would have buried him in their blue depths. The common impulse to cast himself down the precipices along whose margin he crept had only to be yielded to, and all his earthly woe would be over. Even to give way to the weary drowsiness that overtook him at times as the sun went down, and the night fell upon him far away from shelter, might have soothed him into the slumber from which there is no awaking. But he dared not. He was willing enough to die, if dying had been all. But he believed in the punishment of sin here, or hereafter; in the dealing out of a righteous judgment to every man, whether he be good or evil. As the autumn passed by, and the mountain chalets were shut up, the cattle and the herdsmen descending to the lower pastures, Roland Sefton was compelled to descend too. There was little chance of encountering any one who knew him at this late season; yet there were still stragglers lingering among the Alps. But when he saw himself again in a looking-glass, his face burned and blistered with the sun, and now almost past recognition, and his ragged hair and beard serving him better than any disguise, he was no longer afraid of being detected. He began to wonder in mingled hope and dread whether Felicita would come out to seek him. The message he had sent to her by Phebe could be interpreted by her alone. Would she avail herself of it to find him out? Or would she shrink from the toil and pain and danger of quitting England? A few weeks more would answer the question.