"It is true," she answered. But the long, tense strain had been too much for her strength, and she sank fainting on the ground. CHAPTER XIX. AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER. It was all in vain that Mr. Clifford tried to turn Felicita from her resolution. Phebe cordially upheld her, and gave her courage to persist against all arguments. Both of them cared little for poverty--Phebe because she knew it, Felicita because she did not know it. Felicita had never known a time when money had to be considered; it had come to her pretty much in the same way as the air she breathed and the food she ate, without any care or prevision of her own. Phebe, on the other hand, knew that she could earn her own living at any time by the work of her strong young arms, and her wants were so few that they could easily be supplied. It was decided before Phebe went home again, and decided in the face of Mr. Clifford's opposition, that a small house should be taken in London, and partly furnished from the old house at Riversborough, where Felicita would be in closer and easier communication with the publishers. Mr. Clifford laughed to himself at the idea that she could gain a maintenance by literature, as all the literary people he had ever met or heard of bewailed their poverty. But there was Madame's little income of two hundred a year: that formed a basis, not altogether an insecure or despicable one. It would pay more than the rent, with the rates and taxes. The yearly income from Felicita's marriage settlement, which no representations could persuade her to touch, was to go to the gradual repayment of Roland's debts, the poorest men being paid first, and Mr. Clifford, who reluctantly consented to the scheme, to receive his the last. Though Madame had never believed in her son's guilt, her just and simple soul was satisfied and set at rest by this arrangement. She had not been able to blame him, but it had been a heavy burden to her to think of others suffering loss through him. It was then almost with cheerfulness that she set herself to keep house for her daughter-in-law and her grand-children under such widely different circumstances.