The clear colorlessness of her face had taken on a transparency and delicacy which did not lessen its beauty, but added to it an unearthly grace.

She no longer spent hours alone in her desecrated room; it had grown intolerable to her; but she sat speechless, and almost motionless, in the oriel window overlooking the garden and the river; and Felix, a child of dreamy and sensitive temperament, would sit hour after hour at her feet, pressing his cheek against her knee, or with his uplifted eyes gazing into her face.
"Mother," he said one day, when Roland had been gone more than a month, "how long will my father be away on his journey?
Doesn't he ever write to you, and send messages to me?
Grandmamma says she does not know how soon he will be back.

Do you know, mother ?" Felicita looked down on him with her beautiful dark eyes, which seemed larger and sadder than of old, sending a strange thrill through the boy's heart, and for a minute or two she seemed uncertain what to say.
"I cannot tell you, Felix," she answered; "there are many things in life which children cannot understand.

If I told you what was true about your father, your little brain would turn it into an untruth.

You could not understand it if I told you." "But I shall understand it some day," he said, lifting his head up proudly; "will you tell me when I am old enough, mother ?" How could she promise him to do that?
This proud young head, tossed back with the expectant triumph of some day knowing all that his father and mother knew, must be bowed down with grief and shame then, as hers was now.