Hannah/Chapter 1

"A strange, sad kind of letter," said Miss Thelluson to herself, as she refolded and replaced it in its envelope. She had a habit of always putting things back into their right places. "I suppose I ought to answer it at once. And yet—"

She stopped; leaned her elbow on the table, her head upon her hand, and pressed down her eyelids. They were wet eyelids—though she was not exactly weeping—and tired eyes; for it was late at night, and she had had a hard day's work, of teaching first, and private study, in order to teach, afterward; since, not being a brilliantly clever woman, it cost her some pains to keep up to the level of accomplishments required of a first-class governess in a "high" family.

"High" though it was, an earl's, indeed—and though the little Ladies Mary, Georgina, and Blanche, now safely asleep in their beds, were good, pleasant children, and very fond of their governess—still, as she sat in that homely furnished, dimly-lighted sitting-room, Hannah Thelluson looked a lonely kind of woman—not one of those likely to make many friends, or keep up a large correspondence. This letter, which seemed to affect her a good deal, was the only one which she had received for days past, and the servants had forgotten to bring it up until they brought her supper. It did not matter, being only for the govern​ess. Miss Thelluson was scarcely sorry. It was best read when she was alone. For it was from her brother-in-law, the husband of her lately dead sister.

"Poor Rosa!" she sighed, as her eyes fell on the big, upright, rather peculiar handwriting which she had scarcely seen since the time when she used to bring in Rosa's daily love-letters—"and poor Mr. Rivers too!"

She had never learned to call him any thing but Mr. Rivers; for the marriage, which had all come about when Rosa was on a visit, had been a sudden, frantic love-match between a rich young man and a lovely penniless girl; and during their brief, bright year of wedded happiness the elder sister had seen almost nothing of them beyond a formal three-days' visit. But even that had been enough to make Hannah not regret that her duties had stood in the way of her pleasures, and caused her to feel by instinct that a grave governess-sister was not likely to advance young Mrs. Rivers's dignity in the eyes of Lady Rivers and the people at the Moat House, who had looked very coldly on the marriage. And when fate suddenly broke the tie, leaving Mr. Rivers a sorrowing widower, with a little month-old daughter instead of the longed-for son and heir, Hannah bitterly felt that whosover might grieve after poor Rosa, it would not be her husband's family.

They merely communicated to her the fact of the death, which, like the birth, had taken place abroad; and except a brief answer from the grandmother to a letter she wrote, inquiring after the baby, she had heard no more. She could not leave her duties; she had to sit still and suffer—silently, as working-women must, and patiently, as women learn to suffer who have been, to use that most pathetic of phrases, "acquainted with grief." She had put forward no claim either for sympathy or consideration to her brother-in-law or his relatives, and believed that henceforth the slight intercourse she ever had with them was probably ended. Therefore she was a good deal surprised to receive this letter, which entreated of her the very last thing she would have expected—that she would assume a sister's place to​ward Mr. Rivers, and come and take charge of his household, and especially of her little motherless niece.

"How strange!" she kept thinking. "How can he want me when he has sisters of his own?" But then she remembered that the Misses Rivers were young and lively women, very much out in society, and probably not inclined to burden themselves with the care of a widower's dreary house and a widower's forlorn infant, even for the sake of their own flesh-and-blood brother. So he came for help to his wife's sister—who, though almost a stranger to himself, could not but feel, he said, the strong tie of blood which bound her to his child. He pleaded, for his child's sake, that she would come.

Hannah could not help feeling pleased and touched. It was a sort of compliment which, coming to her, a lonely woman, and from a person of whom she knew so little, was rather pleasant than not. She tried to recall all she had ever noticed of her brother-in-law—not very much, except that, though he was young, handsome, and rather excitable, there seemed a simplicity and affectionateness about him which she had rather liked. Still, in their slight intercourse, the only thing the sister had ever cared to find out was that he loved Rosa and Rosa loved him. Satisfied of these two facts, she had left the young people to their happiness, and gone back to her own quiet life, which would have been a dreary life, had she herself been a less self-dependent and unexacting woman.

And now the happiness which she might have envied, had she seen more of it, was over and done. Bright, beautiful Rosa had lain six months in her grave; and here was Rosa's husband asking the solitary sister to fulfill toward him and his child all the duties of a near and dear relative. For he addressed her as "my dear sister;" and in his letter, which was impulsive, fragmentary, and evidently in earnest, he seemed to fling himself upon her pity and help, as if he had no one else to appeal to.

"I have been reading over again the letters you used to send weekly to my poor Rosa," he wrote. "It is these ​which have induced me to make this request; for they convince me that you must be a good woman—a woman fitted to give help and consolation to such a forlorn creature as I am. How forlorn, you little know! A man who has had a wife and lost her is the wretchedest creature on earth—infinitely more wretched than those who have never known that blessing. Every day, every hour, I miss my darling. Continually I hear, in a sort of ghostly way, her step about the house, her voice outside in the garden; till sometimes, in the excessive loneliness, I am actually frightened—not of her, but of myself—lest I should be going mad. Men do go mad with grief sometimes, especially husbands who have lost their wives. I have read several such cases in the newspapers lately: my eye seems to light upon them, and my mind to retain them, with a horrible pertinacity. But why trouble you with these personalities? No more."

And then he began to describe his baby; saying she was a dear little thing, but that he did not understand her. She seemed to be always crying, and nobody could manage her, though he saw a different woman almost every time he came into the nursery.

When she first read this passage Hannah had started up, her always pale face hot and warm. The weak point in her nature—rather a pathetic weakness in one whom some people called, and she herself firmly believed to be, a born old maid—was her love of children. Her heart had yearned oftentimes over Rosa's motherless babe, but she felt that she could not interfere with the grandmother and father. Now the picture of it—transferred from nurse to nurse, neglected or ignored—smote her with a sort of self-reproach, as if her pride or her shyness, or both, had led her weakly to desert her own flesh and blood—her sister's child.

"I ought to have gone and seen it—seen what they were doing with it. I have as much right to it as any one of them all. Poor little baby! Rosa's very own baby!"

The tears, which came so rarely and painfully to her ​eyes, came now; and they did her good. It seemed to open and warm her heart even to think of that little baby.

Gradually her thoughts took shape and purpose. Though she seldom meditated much upon herself, still Miss Thelluson had not lived thirty years in this troublesome world without knowing her own character pretty well. She was quite aware of one great want in her nature-the need to be a mother to somebody or something. It came out even toward the large white cat that lived in the school-room, and loved the governess better than any creature in the house. It had helped her to manage many a difficult pupil, and stood her in good stead with her little Ladies Dacre, who, before she came, had been rather disagreeable and unmanageable children. Now they were very good, and loved her with all their aristocratic little hearts-as warm as other hearts, though perhaps more suppressed. She loved them also; but it was rather a sad kind of affection, as she knew it could be only temporary. They would drift away from her, and marry earls and dukes; and she would be no more to them than "our old governess." It was nearly the same with other little folks of her own rank—the children of her friends or school-fellows—who generally called her Aunt Hannah, and were very fond of her while she was with them; but, of course, soon forgot her when she was away. All natural—quite natural; yet it sometimes seemed rather sad.

Now here was a child to whom she had an actual right of blood. Whether or not the Rivers family had liked Rosa, or herself, they could not abolish the fact that she was the child's aunt; and, if the father desired it, its natural guardian. The first impulse of strangeness and shrinking passed away, and as she read over again Mr. Rivers's letter, and began clearly to comprehend what he wished, there grew up a longing indescribable after that duty which was set before her in such a sudden and unexpected way; yet which, the more she thought about it, seemed the more distinct and plain.

She dried her eyes, and, late as it was, prepared to an​swer the letter, knowing she would not have leisure to do it next morning before post-time. Besides, she wished to "sleep upon it," as people say; and then read it over again in the calm light of day: Hannah Thelluson being one of those people who dislike doing things in a hurry, but who, having once put their hands to the plow, never look back.

She was fully aware that if she acceded to her brotherin-law's request she must not look back; however difficult the position might be, it would be still more difficult to quit it and return to her old calling as a governess. And that provision for her old age, which she was year by year slowly accumulating—with the pathetic prudence of a woman who knows well that only her own labor stands between her and the work-house—that too must be given up. For Mr. Rivers would, of course, offer her no salary; and, if he did, how could she possibly accept it? Was she not coming to his house as a sister, with all the honors and some few of the bondages of that relationship? Her common-sense told her that, pleasant as in some measure her duties might be, they entailed considerable sacrifices as well. But women like her, though they dislike taking a leap in the dark, will often take a most difficult and dangerous one with their eyes open, fully counting the cost.

"Yes, I will venture it," she said, after a long pause of thought. "The risk can not be much, and it is only my own, after all.”

So she sat down to write her letter.

While she does so, let us look at her, the solitary governess whom few ever looked at now.

Miss Thelluson could not have been handsome, even in her first youth, which was past now. Her face was long and thin; her eyes deep-set, though they were sweet eyes in themselves, grave and tender, and of a soft gray. Her hair was of no particular color—in fact, she had no special attraction of any kind, except a well-proportioned figure, which in motion had a willowy grace, that some tall women—not all—possess. And her smile was very winning, ​though slightly sad, as if fate had meant her to be a bright-natured woman, but had changed its mind, and left her so long without happiness that she had at last learned to do without it. In this, as in most other things—external as well as internal—she was utterly unlike her sister Rosa. A certain family tone in their voices was the only resemblance that was likely in any way to give the widower pain.

It was strange to write to him—"My dear brother," she who never had a brother—but she thought she ought to do it, and so she did it; trying hard to feel as an affectionate sister should toward a sorely-afflicted brother, unto whom she was bound to show every possible tenderness. Yet it was difficult, for she was a reserved woman, who took a long time to know any body.

"And I really know almost nothing of him," she thought. "No blood relationship—no tie of old association; and yet one is expected to treat a strange man as one's brother, just because one's sister has gone through the marriage ceremony with him. If I had seen more of Mr. Rivers—if I had lived actually in the house with him— But, no; that would not have done it; nothing would have produced what did not really exist. I can only hope the right sisterly feeling will come in time, and I must get on as well as I can till it does come."

So she pondered, and wrote a letter; short, indeed, but as affectionate as she could conscientiously make it; suggesting plainly that one of his own sisters would be a much better housekeeper for him than herself; but that, if he really wished for her, she would come. And she signed herself, after a considerable struggle—for the word, which she had thought she should never say or write more, cost her a gush of tears, "Your faithful sister, Hannah Thelluson."

It was fully one in the morning before the letter was done, and she had to be up at six, as usual. But she slept between whiles soundly, not perplexing herself about the future. Hers was an essentially peaceful nature; when ​she had done a thing, and done it for the best, she usually let it alone, and did not "worry" about it any more. That weak, restless disposition, which, the moment a thing is done, begins to wish it undone, was happily not hers. It had been Rosa's, even in the midst of her bright, pleasant, loved, and loving life; which, perhaps, accounted for the elder sister's habits being markedly the contrary.

Yet, when her mind was made up, and she put her letter into the post-bag, it was not without a certain doubt, almost a fear, whether she had done rightly—no, rightly she had little doubt of—but wisely, as regarded herself. Then came her usual consolatory thought—"It can only harm myself." Still she felt it was a serious change, and many times during the day her thoughts wandered painfully from her duties in the school-room to her brother-in-law and his child.

Nobody noticed her preoccupation, for it was one of the essential and familiar facts of the governess's life that she might be sick or sorry, troubled or glad, without any body's observing it. Not that she ever met with the least unkindness, indeed her position in this family was a very happy one; she had every thing her own way, and was treated by the countess with that stately consideration which so perfectly well-bred a woman could not fail to show to the meanest member of her household. But, necessarily, Miss Thelluson's life was one of complete isolation; so that but for her pupils, their naughtinesses and goodnesses, she would have ceased to recognize herself as one of the great human brotherhood, and felt like a solitary nomad, of no use and no pleasure to any body. A sensation which, morbid and foolish as it may be, is not rare to women who are neither old nor young—who, on the verge of middle age, find themselves without kith or kin, husband or child, and are forced continually to remember that the kindest of friends love them only with a tender benevolence, as adjuncts, but not essentials, of happiness. They are useful to many—necessary to none; and the sooner they recognize this, the better.

​As Miss Thelluson kissed the little Ladies Dacre in their beds—where, somewhat in defiance of the grand nurse, she insisted upon going to them every night—the thought of that helpless baby, her own baby—for was not Rosa's child her very flesh and blood?—came across her in a flash of sunshiny delight, that warmed her heart through and through. She began to plan and to dream, until at the end of that solitary evening walk through the park, which she seldom missed—it was sad and soothing after the cares of the day—she began to fancy she had not half appreciated Mr. Rivers's proposal, or responded to it half warmly enough; and to fear, with an almost ridiculous apprehension, that he might change his mind, or that something might happen to prevent the scheme from being carried out. And she waited with a nervous anxiety, for which she laughed at herself, the return post by which she had requested him to write his final decision.

It came in six lines:

"I shall expect you as soon as you can make it practicable. You will be like her lost mother to my poor little girl; and, as for me, my wife's sister shall be to me exactly as my own."

Hannah wondered a little how much his own sisters were to him; whether it was the close affectionate bond—so free yet so strong—which had always been her unknown ideal of fraternal love, or the careless tie, less of sympathy than of habit and familiarity, such as she often saw it in the world—for she had seen a good deal of the world, more or less, since she had been a governess. Also, just a little, she wondered whether, with the best intentions, it was possible to create an artificial bond where the real one did not exist, and how soon she should learn to feel at ease with Mr. Rivers, as much as if he had been her born brother.

But these speculations were idle; time would decide all things. Her only present thought need be that the die was cast; there was no drawing back now. She had, as speedily as possible, to arrange her own affairs, and first to give "warning"—as servants say—to Lady Dunsmore.

​This was not exactly a pleasant task, for the countess and her governess had always got on together remarkably well; the one lady recognizing calmly, and without either false pride or false shame, that though a lady, she was also a governess—a paid servant, discharging her duties like the rest; the other lady receiving and appreciating those services as a lady should. Therefore nothing was lost, and much gained on both sides. Miss Thelluson had been two years in the family, and it seemed tacitly understood that she was to remain until the young ladies' education was finished. Thus suddenly to desert her post looked almost like ingratitude—a vice abhorrent in all shapes to Hannah Thelluson.

It was with a hesitating step, and a heart beating much faster than its wont—this poor heart, strangely stilled down now from its youthful impulsiveness—that she knocked at the door of the morning-room where her pupils' mother, young and beautiful, happy and beloved, spent the forenoon in the elegant employments that she called duties, and which befitted her lot in life—a lot as different from that of her governess as it is possible to conceive. The two women were wide apart as the poles—in character, circumstances, destiny: yet, both being good women, they had a respect, and even liking, for one another. Hannah admired the countess excessively, and Lady Dunsmore always had for her governess a smile as pleasant as that she bestowed on the best "society."

"Good-morning, Miss Thelluson! Pray sit down. I hope nothing is amiss in the school-room? Mary seems working more diligently of late. Georgy and Blanche are not more troublesome to you than usual?"

"Indeed, I have no fault to find with either Lady Blanche or Lady Georgina, and Lady Mary is as good a girl as she can be," returned Hannah, warmly, half amused at herself for noticing what a week ago she would have accepted as too natural a fact to be observed at all—that it never occurred to her pupils' mamma to suppose she could have any other interest beyond Lady Mary, Lady Georgina, ​and Lady Blanche. That their governess should have a separate existence of her own, or any personal affairs to communicate, seemed quite impossible. "Have you ten minutes to throw away, Lady Dunsmore?" continued she. "May I have a word with you about myself and my own concerns?"

"Certainly; nothing could give me greater pleasure;"

and then with that sweet, courteous grace she had—it might be only outside good-breeding, and yet, as it never failed her, and all outside things do fail sometimes, I think it must rather have been from her kindly heart—the countess settled herself to listen. But first she cast a slight sidelong glance of observation and inquiry. Was it possible that Miss Thelluson was going to be married?

But no love-story was indicated by the grave, quiet, dignified manner of the governess.

"You are aware, I think," she said, "that my only sister died six months ago."

"Ah, I was so sorry to hear it! Was she married?"

"Yes."

"Of course! I remember now. She died at her confinement, and the dear little baby also?"

"No," returned Hannah, shortly, and then was vexed at herself for being so foolishly sensitive. What possible impression could Rosa's sad story have made, beyond the passing moment, on this beautiful and. brilliant woman, whose interests were so wide, who had such myriads of acquaintances and friends? To expect from her more than mere kindliness, the polite kindliness which her manner showed, as, evidently annoyed at her own mistake, she cudgeled her memory to recall the circumstances, was exacting from Lady Dunsmore too much, more than human nature was capable of. Hannah recognized this, and saved herself and the countess by plunging at once in medias res. "No; the baby happily did not die. It is alive still, and my brother-in-law wishes me to come and take charge of it, and of his household."

"Permanently?"

​"I hope so."

"Then you come to tell me that you wish to relinquish your position here. Oh, Miss Thelluson, I am so sorry! At the commencement of the season, too. How shall I ever find time to get a new governess?"

The countess's regret was unmistakable, though it took the personal tone which perhaps was not unnatural in one for whom the wheels of life had always turned so smoothly, that when there was the least jar she looked quite surprised.

"I am very sorry, too, on many accounts," said Miss Thelluson. "I love my pupils dearly. I should like to have remained until they grew up, to have dressed Lady Mary for her first drawing-room, as she always said I must, and watched how people admired Lady Blanche's beauty and Lady Georgina's magnificent voice. They are three dear little girls," continued the governess, not unmoved, for she loved and was proud of her pupils. "My heart is sore to leave them. But this baby, my poor little niece, is my own flesh and blood."

"Of course! Pray do not imagine I blame you, or think you have used me ill," said the countess, gently. "You are only doing what is natural under the circumstances, and I shall easily replace you—I mean I shall easily find another governess; it will be more difficult to get a second Miss Thelluson."

Miss Thelluson acknowledged, but did not attempt to deny, the delicate compliment. She knew she had done her duty, and that under many difficulties—far more than the countess suspected. For hapless countesses, who are the centre of brilliant societies, have only too few hours to spend in their nurseries and school-rooms; and these three little ladies owed much, more than their mother guessed, to their governess. It had sometimes been a comfort to Miss Thelluson in her dull life to hope that the seed she sowed might spring up again years hence in the hearts of these young aristocrats, who would have so much in their power for good or for evil. She had tried her best ​to make them really "noble" women, and it was pleasant to have her labor appreciated.

"And how soon do you wish to go?" asked Lady Dunsmore, rather lugubriously, for she had had endless changes of governesses before Miss Thelluson's time, and she foresaw the same thing over again—or worse.

"Do not say I 'wish' to go. But my brother-in-law requires me much, he says, and would like to have me as soon as you could spare me. Not a day sooner, though, than you find convenient. I could not bear that. You have been so kind; I have been so happy here."

"As I trust you will be everywhere," replied Lady Dunsmore, cordially. "Your brother's home—I forget exactly where it is."

"Easterham. He is the Reverend Bernard Rivers, the vicar there."

"Son to Sir Austin Rivers, of Easterham Moat House, who married one of the Protheroes?"

"I really don't know Lady Rivers's antecedents—I never can remember pedigrees," replied Hannah, smiling. "But his father is certainly Sir Austin, and they live at the Moat House."

"Then I know all about them. Why did you not tell me before? I must have met your brother-in-law. He is the eldest—no, I am forgetting again—the second son, but takes the place of the eldest, who is of weak intellect, is he not?"

"I believe so, unfortunately. He has epileptic fits."

"And is not likely to marry. All the better for the clergyman. I am sure I have seen him—a tall, bearded, handsome young man."

"Rosa used to think him handsome. As to his youth, I fancy he was about five years her senior. That would make him just my age; but men are quite young still at thirty."

"Women, too, I hope," said the countess, smiling with a pleasant consciousness that if Debrett had not betrayed it, no one would ever have imagined that she was herself ​fully that age. Then, as if struck with a sudden thought, she eyed Miss Thelluson keenly—one of those acute, penetrating looks of hers, a mixture of the shrewd woman of the world with the single-minded, warm-hearted woman that she undoubtedly was, also.

"I am going to take a great liberty with you, Miss Thelluson," she continued, after a pause; "but I am a candid person—may I say a few candid words?"

"Certainly. And I should thank you for saying them."

"Well, then, you are still a young woman."

"Oh no; not young."

The countess put out her pretty hand with imperative gesture, and repeated—

"Yes; a young unmarried woman, and I am a matron and a mother. May I ask, have you well considered in every point of view the step you are about to take?"

"I think I have. That there are many difficulties, I know; and I am prepared for them."

"What sort of difficulties?"

Hannah hesitated; but the frank, kind eyes seemed to compel an answer. She was so unused to sympathy that when it did come she could not resist it—

"First—I know I may speak confidentially, Lady Dunsmore—first, there is the Moat House. The Rivers family did not quite like my poor Rosa; at least, they wished their son to have married higher. They may not like me either, and they may naturally feel offended at his choosing his wife's sister to live with him, instead of one of his own."

"He had better have chosen one of his own."

"I think so too, and I told him this; but he makes no answer, and therefore I conclude he has good reasons for not wishing it, and for wishing me instead. Then I shall hold a most responsible position in his household, have much parish work to do, as much as if I were the clergyman's wife."

"He should take a wife as soon as he can."

Hannah winced a moment. "It is only six months since her death; and yet— and yet— Yes! I feel, with ​you, that the sooner he takes a wife the better; his need of help, he tells me, is very great; but in the mean time I must help him all I can."

"I am sure you will; you are made to help people," said the countess, cordially. "But none of these are the difficulties I was foreseeing."

"About my poor little niece, perhaps? You think an old maid can not bring up a baby, or manage a house, with a man at the head of it—men being so peculiar? But Rosa always said her husband was the sweetest temper in the world."

"He looked so. Not gifted with overmuch strength, either mentally or bodily; but of a wonderfully amiable and affectionate nature. At least, so he struck me in the few times I saw him. I only wish I had seen more of him, that I now might judge better."

"On my account?" said Hannah, half amused, half pleased at the unexpected kindliness.

The countess took her hand. "Will you forgive me? Will you believe that I speak purely out of my interest in you, and my conviction that, though you may be a much better woman than I, I am a wiser woman than you—at least, in worldly wisdom. Are you aware, my dear Miss Thelluson, that this is the only country in the world in which a lady of your age and position could take the step you are contemplating?"

"Why not?—what possible reason—"

"I am sorry I have put the idea into your head, since it evidently has never come there. No! I am not sorry. Whatever you do ought to be done with your eyes open. Has it never occurred to you that your brother-in-law is really no brother, no blood relation at all to you; and that in every country, except England, a man may marry his wife's sister?"

Hannah drew back; a faint color rose in her cheek; but it soon died out. The idea of her marrying any body seemed so supremely, ridiculously impossible—of her marrying Rosa's husband painfully so.

​"It certainly did not occur to me," she answered, gently, "and if it had, it would have made no difference in my decision. Such marriages being unlawful here, of course he is simply my brother, and nothing more."

"He is not your brother," persisted Lady Dunsmore. "No force of law can make him so, or make you feel as if he were. And I assure you, I who have gone about the world much more than you have, that I have seen many sad instances in which—"

But the expression of distress, and even repulsion, on the governess's face made the other lady pause.

"Well, well," she said; "you must have thought the matter well over, and it is, after all, purely your own affair."

"It is my own affair," replied Hannah, still gently, but in a way that would have closed the subject, had not the countess, with her infinite tact and good-breeding, dismissed it at once herself, and begun consulting with Miss Thelluson on the best way of replacing her, and the quickest, that she might the sooner be free "to go to that poor little baby."

"And remember," she added, "that on this point you need have no qualms. My old nurse used to say that any sensible woman, with a heart in her bosom, could manage a baby."

Hannah smiled, and her happy feeling returned, so that she was able to listen with interest, and even amusement, to a vivid description which the clever countess gave of baby's grandmother and aunts, whom she had met in London that season.

"All Easterham is terra incognita to me, Lady Dunsmore; but I shall try not to be afraid of any thing or any body, and to do my best, whatever happens—a very commonplace sentiment; but, you see, I was always a commonplace person," added Hannah, smiling.

"In which case you would never have found it out," replied the countess, who had hitherto had few opportunities of any long talk with her governess on other topics than the children. Now, having both an aptitude and a love ​for the study of character, she found herself interested unawares in that grave, still, refined-looking woman, who, though perhaps, as she said, a little commonplace when in repose, was, when she talked, capable of so much and such varied expression, both of feature and gesture—for there is a language of motion quite as plain as the language of form, and of the two perhaps it is the most attractive.

She said to herself, this brilliant little lady, who had seen so much of life—of aristocratic life especially, and of the terrible human passions that seethe and boil under the smooth surface of elegant idleness—she said to herself, "That face has a story in it."

Yes, Miss Thelluson had had her story, early told and quickly ended; but it had colored her whole life, for all that.

She had no brothers; but she had an orphan cousin, of whom she was very fond. As childish playfellows, the two always said they would marry one another, which every body laughed at as an excellent joke, until it grew into earnest. Then Hannah's father, an eminent physician, interfered. There was consumption in the family, and the young man had already shown ominous symptoms of it. His marrying any body was unwise; his marrying a first cousin absolute insanity. Dr. Thelluson, much as he blamed himself for allowing the young people every chance of falling in love, when it was most imprudent for them to marry, was yet too good a man frantically to shut the stable door after the steed was stolen, and to overstrain parental authority to cruelty. He did not forbid the marriage, but he remonstrated against it, both as a father and a physician, in the strongest manner, and worked so much upon Hannah's feelings, that she consented to be separated entirely from her cousin for three years, until she came of age. Her reason told her that was no unfair test of so youthful an attachment. Her father's secret hope was that the test might fail, the affection wear away, and the union, which, though sanctioned by law and custom, he believed nature totally disapproved of, might never come about.

​It never did. Long before the three years were ended, young Thelluson died at Madeira of the family disease. Hannah restored her betrothal-ring to her finger, saying calmly, "I am married now," and seemed to bear her sorrow quietly enough at first. But the quietness grew into a stupor of despair, ending in that state of mind almost akin to madness, in which one dwells hopelessly and agonizingly upon what might have been; for some people were cruel enough to hint that a wife's care might have lengthened her lover's life, and that his grief for Hannah's loss accelerated his fatal disease. Many a time when her father looked at her he almost wished he had let the hapless cousins marry—running all risks for themselves or their possible children. But all his life the physician had held the doctrine that hereditary taint, physical or moral, constitutes a stronger hindrance to marriage than any social bar. He had acted according to his faith, and he was not shaken from it because he had so keenly suffered for it.

After a time Hannah's sorrow wore itself out, or was blotted out by others following—her father's death, and the dispersion of the family. There was no mother living; but there were three sisters at first, then two, then only one—her quiet, solitary self. For her great grief had left upon her an ineffaceable impression—not exactly of melancholy, but of exceeding quietness and settled loneliness of heart. She said to herself, "I never can suffer more than I have suffered;" and thenceforward all vicissitudes of fate became level to her—at least she thought so then.

Such was her story. It had never been very public, and nobody ever talked of it or knew it now. Lady Dunsmore had not the least idea of it, or she would not have ended their conversation as she did.

"Good-by now, and remember you have my best wishes—ay, even if you marry your brother-in-law. It is not nearly so bad as marrying your cousin. But I beg your pardon; my tongue runs away with me. All I mean to say, seriously, is that, my husband being one of those who uphold the bill for legalizing such marriages, I am well up ​on the subject, and we both earnestly hope they will be legalized in time."

"Whether or not, it can not concern me," said Miss Thelluson, gently.

"The remedying of a wrong concerns every body a little—at least I think so. How society can forbid a man's marrying his wife's sister, who is no blood-relation at all, and yet allow him to marry his cousin—a proceeding generally unwise, and sometimes absolutely wicked—I can not imagine. But forgive me again; I speak earnestly, for I feel earnestly."

"I am sure of it," said Miss Thelluson.

She was a little paler than usual; but that was all; and when she had parted, quite affectionately, from her pupils' mother, she went and sat in her own little room as quiet as ever, except that she once or twice turned round on her third finger its familiar ring, the great red carbuncle, like a drop of blood, which had belonged to her cousin Arthur.

"What a fancy of the countess's to call me 'young,' and suggest my marrying!" thought she, with a faint sad smile. "No, I shall never marry any body; and therefore it is kind of Heaven thus to make a home for me, and above all, to send me a child. A child of my very own almost; for she will never remember any mother but me. How I wish she might call me mother! However, that would not do, perhaps. I must be content with 'auntie.' But I shall have her all to myself, nevertheless, and perhaps Mr. Rivers may marry again, and then I would ask him to give her up wholly to me. Only to think, me with a child!—a little thing trotting after me and laughing in my face—a big girl growing up beside me, a grown-up daughter to comfort my old age—oh, what a happy woman I should be!"

So pondered she—this lonely governess, this "old maid," whose love-dreams were long ago vanished; and began unawares to let the fact slip behind her and look forward to the future; to build and freight with new hopes that tiny ship—she that had never thought to put to sea again; to set her empty heart, with all its capacity of loving, upon what? A baby six months old!