Just now she must think for, and comfort, if comfort were possible, these others, who stood even nearer than she did to the sin and the sinner.

Gathering up all her courage, she quickened her footsteps and ran hurriedly up the remaining steps.
But at the drawing-room door, which was partly open, her feet were arrested.

Within, standing behind the rose-colored curtains, stood the tall, slender figure of Felicita, with her clear and colorless face catching a delicate flush from the tint of the hangings that concealed her from the street.

She was looking down on the crowd below, with the perplexity of a foreigner gazing on some unfamiliar scene in a strange land.

There was a half-smile playing about her lips; but her whole attention was so absorbed by the spectacle beneath her that she did not see or hear Phebe until she was standing beside her, looking down also on the excited crowd.
"Phebe!" she exclaimed, "you here again?
Then you can tell me, are the good people of Riversborough gone mad?
or is it possible there is an election going on, of which I have heard nothing?
Nothing less than an election could rouse them to such a pitch of excitement." "Have you heard nothing of what they say ?" asked Phebe.
"There is such a Babel," she answered; "of course I hear my husband's name.