But ever in the centre of the circling thoughts lay the conviction that he had lost his wife and children forever.

Whether he dragged out a wretched life in concealment, or was discovered, or gave himself up to justice, Felicita was lost to him.
There were some women--Phebe Marlowe was one--who could have lived through the shame of his conviction and the dreary term of his imprisonment, praying to God for her husband, and pitying him with a kind of heavenly grace, and at the end of the time met him at the prison door, and gone out with him, tenderly and faithfully, to begin a new life in another country.

But Felicita was not one of these women.

He could never think of her as pardoning a transgression like his, though committed for her sake.

Even now she would not stoop so low as to seek a meeting with one who deserved a penal punishment.
Night had set in, and he was trudging along the road, still heavy with recent rains, though the sky above was hung with glittering stars, and the crystal snow on Titlis shone against the deep blue depths, casting a wan light over the valley.