Hannah/Chapter 12

As we walk along, staggering under some heavy burden, or bleeding with some unseen wound, how often do the small perplexities of life catch at us unawares, like briers, and vex us sore. Hannah, as she felt herself borne fast away from Easterham, conscious of a sense half of relief and half of bitter loss, was conscious, too, of a ridiculously small thing which had not occurred to her till now, and which she would never have cared for on her own account, but she did on Bernard's. This was, How would Lady Dunsmore manage to receive back in her household, as an equal and familiar friend, her ci-devant governess? Not that Miss Thelluson had ever been treated in the way governesses are said to be treated, though it is usually their own fault; but she had, of course, taken her position, both with guests and servants, simply as the governess, and never sought to alter it. But this position Rosie's aunt and Mr. Rivers's sister-in-law could no longer suitably hold. As the cab drove up to the old family mansion in Mayfair which she knew so well, Hannah felt a sense of uncomfortableness for which she was almost angry with herself.

But it was needless. Lady Dunsmore had that true nobility which, discovering the same in others, recognizes it ​at once, and acts accordingly. The slight difficulty which an inferior woman might have bungled over, she, with her gracious, graceful frankness, solved at once.

"You will establish Miss Thelluson and her niece in the blue rooms," said she to the housekeeper, who, seeing who the arrival was, came forward with a pleased but patronizing air. "And see that every thing is made comfortable for the child and nurse, and that my friend here shall feel as much at home as if she were in her own house."

"Certainly, my lady." And the wise old woman slipped quietly behind her back the hand she was extending to Miss Thelluson, till Miss Thelluson took and shook it cordially, then, courtesying, Mrs. Rhodes followed her respectfully to the blue rooms, which, as every body knew, being in communication with the countess's, were never assigned but to her favorite guests.

Thus domestically, the critical point was settled at once. Socially, too, with equal decision.

"My friend, Miss Thelluson," said Lady Dunsmore, introducing her at once to two ladies, aunts of Lord Dunsmore, who were in the drawing-room, and whom Hannah knew well enough, as they her, by sight. "We are so glad to have her back among us, with her little niece. She will be such a welcome visitor, and my little girls will perfectly spoil the child, if only for her sake: they were so fond of Miss Thelluson."

And when, to prove this, Lady Blanche and Lady Mary came in leading little Rosie between them, and clung lovingly round their old governess's neck, Hannah felt perfectly happy—ay, even though Bernard was far away; and the remembrance of him striding forlornly to his deserted home, came across her like a painful, reproachful vision. And yet it was not unnatural. The transition from perplexity to peace, from suspicion to tender respect, from indifference or coldness to warm, welcoming love, was very sweet. Not until the strain was taken off her did Hannah feel how terrible it had been.

When Lady Dunsmore, as if to prove decisively the fu​ture relation in which they were to stand, came into her room before dinner, and sitting down in her white dressing-gown before the hearth—where aunt and niece were arranging together a beautiful Noah's ark—put her hand on Miss Thelluson's shoulder, saying, "My dear, I hope you will make yourself quite happy with us," Hannah very nearly broke down.

The countess stooped and began caressing the child, making solemn inquiries of her as to Noah and Mrs. Noah, their sons and sons' wives, and arranging them in a dignified procession across the rug.

"What a happy-looking little woman she is—this Rosie! And I hope her auntie is happy too? As happy as she expected to be?"

Hannah's self-control was sorely tested. This year past she had lived in an atmosphere of mingled bliss and torment, of passionate love and equally passionate coldness; been exposed to alternations of calm civility and rudeness almost approaching unkindness; but it was long since any one—any woman—had spoken to her in that frank, affectionate tone. She felt that Lady Dunsmore understood her; and when two good women once do this they have a key to one another's hearts, such as no man, be he ever so dear, can quite get hold of.

As Hannah laid her cheek against the pretty soft hand—none the less soft that its grasp was firm, and none the less pretty that it sparkled with diamonds—the tears came stealing down, and with them was near stealing out that secret which all the taunts in the world would never have forced from her.

But it must not be. It would compromise not herself alone. She knew well—she had long made up her mind to the fact—that unless Bernard and she could be legally married, the relations between them must be kept strictly between their two selves. The world might guess as it chose, accuse as it chose, but not one confirmatory word must it get out of either of them. Out of her, certainly, it never should.

​Therefore she looked steadily up into her friend's face. "Yes; my little girl makes me very happy. You were right in once saying that a woman is only half a woman till she has a child. Of her own, you meant; but it is true even if not her own. I have found it to be so. I have almost forgotten I am not Rosie's mother."

And then, aware of a keen inquisitiveness in Lady Dunsmore's look, Hannah blushed violently.

The countess dropped down again beside Noah's ark, and occupied herself, to Rosie's intense delight, in making a bridge over which all the animals could pass out, till the child and her new playfellow became the best of friends.

"Rosie is not much like her father, I think; and yet she has a look of him—his bright, merry look, such as he had before his trouble came. Is he getting over it at all? It is now a good while since your poor sister died."

"Rosie's age tells it—nearly three years."

"That is a long time for a man to mourn nowadays. But"—checking herself—"I always thought Mr. Rivers very faithful-hearted, constant in his friendships, and, therefore, in his loves; and knowing how forlorn a man is who has once been married, I, for one, should never blame him if he made a second choice."

Hannah was silent; then seeing Lady Dunsmore paused for some acquiescence, she gave it in one or two meaningless words.

"And meantime, I conclude, you remain at Easterham. Your brother-in-law evidently appreciates your society, and the blessing you are to his little girl. He said as much to me. He told me he did not know what Rosie would have done without you, and that you and she are never to be parted. Is it so?"

"He has promised me that I shall have her always."

"Even in case of his second marriage? But I beg your pardon; I really have no right to be curious about Mr. Rivers's domestic arrangements—I know him too slightly; but yet I can not help taking an interest in him, for his own sake as well as for yours."

​She pressed the hand she held, but asked no further questions—made no attempt whatever to find out what Hannah did not choose to tell. That noble confidence which exists among women oftener than they are given credit for—when each knows quite well the other's secret, but never betrays either to her friend or a stranger the silent, mutual trust—was henceforward established between the two. The moment Lady Dunsmore had closed the door, after talking a good while of Dunsmore topics, of her daughters, her husband, and a journey she wanted to take, only was hindered by Lord Dunsmore's determination to wait and vote for a bill that he greatly desired to see pass the House of Lords—"the Bill concerning deceased wives' sisters, in which you know he was always so interested"—Hannah felt certain that this sharp-witted little lady guessed her whole position as well as if she had told it. Also that she would keep the discovery herself, and aid in defending it from the outside world, as sacredly as if she had been pledged to inviolable secrecy and bound by the honor of all the Dacres and Dunsmores.

With a sense of self-respect and self-contentedness greater than she had known for some time, Hannah dressed for dinner. Carefully, too; for Bernard's sake; since, if the countess guessed any thing, she would have liked her to feel that it was not so unnatural, Bernard's loving her. On his account she was glad to be held an honored guest—glad to be met cordially, and talked to with courteous attention at dinner-time by a man like the Earl of Dunsmore, who, though rumor said his wife had made him all that he was—had roused him from the dolce far niente life of an idle young nobleman into a hard-working man—was a person who in any rank of life would have been useful and esteemed. And he spoke of Bernard, whom he said he had met several times when in London, with warm regard.

This was sweet to her; and equally sweet was the unconscious contrast of coming back to her old haunts under new conditions and circumstances. Often, during some ​pause of silence, she secretly counted up her blessings—how rich she was, who had once been so poor. And when, at dessert, there stole in, hand-in-hand with little Lady Isabel, who had grown from a baby into a big girl since Miss Thelluson left, a certain white fairy in blue ribbons, who, looking round the dazzling room with a pretty bewilderedness, caught sight of one known face, and ran and hid her own lovingly in Tannie's lap, Tannie's heart leaped with joy. The child—her own child!—nothing and nobody could take that treasure from her. She and Bernard might never be married; weary of long waiting, he might give up loving her, and marry some one else; but he was a man of honor—he would always leave her the child.

"Rosie does you the greatest credit," said Lord Dunsmore, smiling at the little woman, and trying to win her—but vainly—from Tannie's arms. "She is a charming child."

Hannah laughed. "Then you will indorse the proverb about old maids' children?" said she.

Was it because he looked at her, or because of her own conscious heart, that one of those horrible sudden blushes came, and with it the sense of hypocrisy—of always bearing about with her a secret, which, sinless as she felt it was, every body might not consider so? For even this night, though the dinner-circle was small, Lord Dunsmore's known advocacy of the Bill caused it to be discussed on all sides, argued pro and con by friends and enemies, in a way that neither host nor hostess could repress without attracting attention. At length, perhaps out of wise kindness, they ceased trying to repress it; and Hannah heard the whole question of whether a man might or might not marry his deceased wife's sister argued out logically and theologically as she had never heard it before, together with all the legal chances for and against the Bill. She could not shut her ears—she dared not: for what to all these others was a mere question of social or political opinion, was to her a matter of life and death. So she sat quiet, keeping, by a strong effort, her countenance as still ​as a stone, and her voice, when she had to speak, just like that of any other dinner-table guest, who joined placidly, or carelessly, or combatively in the conversation that was going on. It was best so; best to buckle on at once the armor that, in all probability, she would have to wear through life.

Lord Dunsmore seemed hopeful of his cause. He had entered into it, unlike many others, from purely impersonal motives—from a simple sense of right and justice; and he had a strong faith, he said, that the right would conquer at last.

"Not," he added, laughing, "that I want to compel every man to marry his deceased wife's sister, as some people seem to think I do; I am sure I have not the slightest wish ever to marry mine! But I consider all restrictions upon marriage made by neither God nor nature a mistake and a wrong. And any law which creates a false and unnatural position between man and woman is an equal wrong. Let there be no shams. Let a man have his natural mother, sister, wife, but no anomalous relationships, which, pretending to all, are in reality none of the three."

"And," said Lady Dunsmore, mischievously, "such is the nature of man, that when all these pretty pretenses were broken down, and a man must either marry a lady or have nothing to say to her, I believe he would choose the latter course. You are such contradictory creatures, you men, that I suspect as soon as all of you might marry your wives' sisters you would none of you desire to do it! But, come, we ladies have had enough of the Marriages Bill, though every body must put up with it in this house; for when my husband gets a hobby he rides it to death. I ride with him, too, on this one," she added, as, stepping aside to let her matron guests pass into the drawing-room, she quietly, and without any apparent intention, took hold of Miss Thelluson's hand. There was something in the warm, firm clasp so sympathetic that, for very gratitude, Hannah could have wept.

The subject ended with the closing of the dining-room ​door; no one suspected for a moment that one guest present had a vital interest therein. The ladies gathered round the fire, and the countess, who was as popular and agreeable with her own sex as she was with gentlemen, began talking gayly of other things. And so Hannah's ordeal, from which no one could save her, from which it would have been dangerous to attempt to save her, passed by for the time being.

It was a very happy evening; not exactly a family evening—the public life the Dunsmores led precluded that—but with a great deal of familiness about it: more than Hannah had ever imagined could be, in the days when she sat aloof in her attic parlor, and spent her lonely evenings, empty of love, and feeling that love would never revisit her more. Now, when she saw Lord Dunsmore speak caressingly to his wife, and watched one young couple slip away into the inner parlor—Lady Dunsmore had a proverbial faculty of allowing young people to fall in love at her house; not make a marriage, but really fall in love—Hannah remembered, with a strange leap of the heart, that her love-days, too, were to come—not past.

Yes, she had been loved—she was loved—even like these. She had felt once—just once—Bernard's arms close around her, and his kiss upon her mouth; and when, solemnly and tenderly rather than passionately, she thought of this—in the very house and among the very people where she had once been so lonely, yet not unblest or discontented in her loneliness—it seemed as if she could never be lonely any more.

When she quitted the drawing-room—coming out of the glitter and the show, yet not unreal or painful show, for there was heart-warmth beneath it all—and went back into her own room, Hannah was happy too.

For there, from a crib in the corner, came the soft breathing of "auntie's darling," who always slept beside her now. She had taken her during some slight illness of Grace's, and could not again relinquish the fond charge. It gave her such a sense of rest and peace and content—the mere ​consciousness of little Rosie asleep beside her—it seemed to drive away all the evil angels that sometimes haunted her, the regrets and despondencies over a lot that such a little more would have made quite perfect, and yet that little could not be—regrets all the sharper that they were not altogether for herself. For she had Rosie; and she was secretly, almost contritely, aware that Rosie was almost enough to make her happy. Not so with Bernard. As she sat over her pleasant fire she could have blamed herself for that peace of heart in which he could not share.

He had begged her to write to him regularly, and she had agreed; for she saw no reason why both should not take every comfort that fate allowed them. Yet when she sat down she knew not what to say. How was she to write to him—as her brother, her friend, her betrothed? He was all three, and yet neither; and he might never be any thing else.

She dropped her pen, and fell into deep thought. Putting herself entirely aside, was it right to allow Bernard, a young man in the prime of his days, to bind himself by an uncertain bond, which debarred him from the natural joys of life, and exposed him to the continual torment of hope deferred, which to a woman would be hard enough, but to a man was all but unendurable?

Now that she was away from Easterham—escaped from the nightmare-like influence of the life, half bliss, half torture, which she had led there—she tried to feel in this new place like a new person, and to judge her own position calmly, as if it had been that of some one else. She thought over, deliberately, every word she had heard from Lord Dunsmore and others that night, and tried to count what reasonable chances there were of the only thing which would ever make her Bernard's wife—the passing of the Bill they had talked about. Vain speculation, as hundreds in this land know only too well. The result was, that instead of the letter she had meant to write, she sat down and wrote another: such a one as many a woman has written, too, with bleeding heart and streaming eyes, though ​the words may have been calm and cold. She implored him for his own sake to consider whether he could not conquer his ill-fated love for herself, and find among the many charming girls he was always meeting some one whom he could love and marry, and be happy.

"I only want you to be happy," she wrote. "I shall never blame you—never tell any human being you once cared for me. And you will think of me tenderly still—as you do of my sister Rosa. And you will leave me Rosa's child?"

Then she planned, in her clear, common-sense way, how this was to be managed; how he was to pay her a yearly sum—she would refuse nothing—for the maintenance of her niece, whom she would herself-educate, perhaps abroad, which would make an ostensible reason for the separation.

"She will comfort me for all I lose, more than you think. She will be a bit of her mother and of you always beside me; and your letting me take care of her will be almost equivalent to your taking care of me, as you wanted to do, but my hard fate would not allow it."

And then all she was resigning rushed back upon Hannah's mind—the sweetness of being loved, the tenfold sweetness of loving.

"Oh, my Bernard, my Bernard!" she sobbed, and thought if she could once again, for only one minute, have her arms round his neck, and her head on his shoulder, the giving him up would be less hard. And she wondered how she could have been so thoughtlessly happy an hour ago, when things were in exactly the same position as now, only she saw them in a different light. Hers was one of those bitter destinies, in which the aspect of circumstances, often even of duties, changed every hour.

Still re-reading her letter, she felt it must go, just as it was. It was right he should know her exact mind, and be set free to act as was best for himself. She finished and sealed it; but she wept over it very much—so much that her child heard her.

A little white ghost with rosy cheeks peeped over the ​crib side, and stared, half-frightened, round the unfamiliar room.

"Rosie wake up! Tannie tying! Then Rosie ty too." Then came a little wail—"Tannie take her, in Tannie own arms!"

No resisting that. All love-anguish, love-yearning, fled far away; and Hannah half forgot Bernard in her innocent passion for Bernard's child.

The letter went, but it brought no answer back. At first Hannah scarcely expected one. He would naturally take time to consider his decision, and she had put it to him as an absolute decision, proposing that, after this event, neither she nor Rosie should go back to Easterham. If he was to be free, the sooner he was free the better. Suspense was sore, as she knew.

A letter of his had crossed hers, written at the very hour she wrote, but in oh! such a different tone—a real love-letter, out of the deepest heart of an impulsive man, to whom nothing seems impossible. How hard, how cruel must hers have seemed! Still, she was glad she had written it. More and more the misery of a woman who feels that her love is not a blessing but a misfortune to her lover forced itself upon Hannah's mind. Through all the present pleasantness of her life—her long idle mornings with her darling, her afternoons with Lady Dunsmore, shopping, visiting, or enjoying that charming companionship which was fast growing into the deliberate friendship of middle age, often firmer than that of youth—through all this came the remembrance of Bernard, not as a joy, as at first, but an actual pain.

For his silence continued: nay, seemed to be intentionally maintained. He forwarded her letters in blank envelopes, without a single word. Was he offended? Had she, in her very love, struck him so hard that he could not forgive the blow?

"I hope your brother-in-law is well," Lady Dunsmore would say, courteously looking away while Hannah opened the daily letter, at first with a trembling anxiety, afterward ​with a stolid patience that expected nothing. "We shall be delighted to see him here. And tell him he ought to come soon, or his little girl will forget him. Three weeks is a long trial of memory at her age."

"Oh, Rosie will not forget papa. And he is busy—very busy in his parish." For Hannah could not bear he should be thought to neglect his child.

Yet how explain that she could not deliver the message, could not write to him, or ask him to come? His possible coming was the greatest dread she had. Apart from him she could be stern and prudent; but she knew if he stood before her, with his winning looks and ways—his sisters sometimes declared that from babyhood nobody ever could say no to Bernard—all her wisdom would melt away in utter tenderness.

By-and-by the fear or the hope—it seemed a strange mixture of both—came true. One day, returning from a drive, leaving Lady Dunsmore behind somewhere, she was told there was a gentleman waiting for her.

"Papa! papa! Dat papa's stick!" shrieked Rosie, in an ecstasy, as her sharp young eyes caught sight of it in the hall.

Hannah's heart stood still; but she must go on%; the child dragged her. And Rosie, springing into papa's arms, was a shield to her aunt greater than she knew.

Mr. Rivers kissed his little girl fondly. Then, wasting no time in sentiment, the butterfly creature struggled down from him, and offered him a dilapidated toy.

"Rosie's horse broken—papa mend it."

"Papa wishes he could mend it, with a few other broken things!" said Mr. Rivers, bitterly, till, seeing Rosie's pitiful face, he added, "Never mind, my little woman; papa will try. Go with Grace, and I will come and see Rosie presently."

And so he shut the door upon nurse and child, in a way that made Hannah see clearly he was determined to speak with her alone. But his first words were haughty and cold.

​"I suppose it is scarcely necessary for me to apologize for coming to see my daughter? I had likewise another errand in London—Adeline is here, consulting a doctor. She has been worse of late."

"I am very sorry."

Then he burst out: "You seem to be sorry for every body in the world—except me! How could you write me that letter? As if my fate were not hard enough before, but you must go and make it harder."

"I wished to lighten it."

"How? By telling me to go and marry some one else? What sort of creature do you think a man must be—more, what sort of creature is he likely to grow to—who loves one woman and marries another? For I love you. You may not be young, or beautiful, or clever. I sometimes wonder what there is about you that makes me love you. I fight against my love with every argument in my power. But there it is, and it will not be beaten down. I will marry you, Hannah, if I can. If not, I will have as much of you—your help, your companionship—as ever I can. When are you coming home?"

"Home?"

"I say it is home: it must be. Where else should you go to? I can not be parted from my daughter. Rosie can not be parted from you. For Rosie's sake, my house must be your home."

"What shall I do?" said Hannah, wringing her hands. "What shall I do?"

She thought she had made her meaning plain enough; but here was the work all to do over again. If she had ever doubted Bernard's loving her, she had no doubt of it now. It was one of those mysterious attractions, quite independent of external charms, and deepened by every influence that daily intimacy can exercise. She fully believed him when he said, as he kept saying over and over again, that if he did not marry her he would never marry any other woman. And was she to bid him go away, and never see her more? This, when their love was no unholy ​love, when it trenched upon no natural rights, when no living soul could be harmed by it, and many benefited, as well as they themselves?

Hannah could not do it. All her resolutions melted into air, and she let him see that it was so. Anyhow, he saw his power, and used it. With a hungry heart he clasped and kissed her.

"Now we are friends again. I have been hating you for days, but I'll forgive you now. You will not write me any more such letters? We will try not to quarrel again."

"Quarrel! oh, Bernard!" and then she made him let her go, insisting that they must be friends, and only friends, just now.

"Perhaps you are right. I beg your pardon. Only let me hold your hand."

And so they sat together, silent, for ever so long, till both had recovered from their agitation. Hannah made him tell her about Adeline, who was fast declining, nobody quite saw why; but they thought some London doctor might find it out. And Adeline herself was eager to come.

"Chiefly, I think, because you are here. She wants you, she says. She will not have any of her own sisters to nurse her; to Bertha especially she has taken a violent dislike, only we don't mind the fancies of an invalid. I brought Adeline up to town myself. Her husband had some business to attend to; but he comes up with Bertha to-morrow."

"He should have come with his wife to-day;" and then Hannah stopped herself. Of-what use was it to open the family eyes to an impossible and therefore imaginary wrong? What good would it do? probably much harm. Yet her heart ached for unfortunate Adeline.

She suggested going at once to see her, for Bernard had left her close at hand, in one of those dreary lodgings which seem chiefly occupied by invalids, the most of London fashionable physicians living in streets hard by ​Their patients come to be near them, settling down for a few weeks in these sad rooms to recover or to die, as fate might choose.

"Yes, do let me go," repeated Hannah. "Shall I fetch Rosie to play with papa while I leave a message for Lady Dunsmore?"

When she came back with the child in her arms Bernard told her she looked quite her old self again. So did he. And she was glad to throw the shield of their former peaceful, simple life over the strong passion that she perceived in him, and felt more and more in herself- the smothered, silent tragedy which might embitter all their coming days.

And yet when she found herself walking with him in the safe loneliness of Regent Street crowds, Hannah was not unhappy. Her long want of him had made him terribly dear. He, too, appeared to snatch at the present moment with a wild avidity.

"Only to be together—together," said he, as he drew her arm through his and kept it there. And the love thus cruelly suppressed seemed to both a thing compared to which all young people's love—young people who can woo and marry like the rest of the world—was pale and colorless. Theirs resistance had but strengthened, because it was only a struggle against circumstance: unmingled with any conscience stings, like as of those who fight against some sinful passion. But their passion, though legally forbidden, was morally pure and free from blame.

So they walked on together; content, accepting the joy of the hour, making gay remarks, and peeping into shop windows, in a childish sort of way, till they reached the gloomy house where Bernard's sister lay. Then they forgot themselves and thought only of her.

Adeline was greatly changed. Never very pretty, now she was actually plain. There was a sickly ghastliness about her, a nervous, fretful look, which might be either mental or physical—probably was a combination of both. ​Not a pleasant wife for a man to come home to; and young Mr. Melville, who was a mere ordinary country squire, without any tastes beyond hunting, shooting, and fishing, was a little to be pitied too. Still, men must take their wives, as women take their husbands, for better for worse.

"I am very ill, you see, Miss Thelluson," said the invalid, stretching out a weary hand. "It was very kind of Bernard to take all this trouble to bring me up to a London doctor, but I don't think it will do any good."

Hannah uttered some meaningless hope, but faintly, for she saw death in the girl's face. She was only a girl still, and yet in some ways it was the face of an old woman. The smothered pangs of half a lifetime seemed written there.

"I bring good news," said Bernard, cheerfully. "I found a letter in the hall saying that Herbert will be here to-morrow, possibly even to-night."

Adeline looked up eagerly.

"To-night! And any body with him?"

"Bertha, I believe. Her mother insisted she should come."

A miserable fire flashed in the poor sunken eyes.

"She shall not come! I will not have her! I want no sisters; my maid is nurse enough. Besides, it is all a sham, a wretched sham. Bertha has no notion of nursing any body!"

"I think you are mistaken, dear," said Bernard, soothingly. "Hannah, what do you say? Ought not her sister to be with her?"

Hannah dropped her eyes; and yet she felt the miserable girl was watching her with an eagerness actually painful, as if trying to find out how much she guessed of her dreary secret; which, weak and silly as she was in most things, poor Adeline had evidently kept with a bravery worthy of a better cause.

"I see no use in Bertha's coming," said she again, with a great effort at self-control. "I know her better than ​Hannah does. She is no companion to an invalid; she hates sickness. She will be always with Herbert, not with me. I heard them planning Rotten Row in the morning and theatres every night. They are strong and healthy and lively, while I—"

The poor young wife burst into tears.

"I will stay beside her," whispered Hannah to Bernard. "Go you away."

After he was gone Adeline burst out hysterically: "Keep her away from me! the sight of her will drive me wild. Keep them all away from me, or I shall betray myself—I know I shall. And then they will all laugh at me, and say it is ridiculous nonsense; as perhaps it is. You see"—clutching Hannah's hand—"she is by law his sister too. He couldn't marry her, not if I were dead twenty times over. Sometimes I wish he could, and then they dared not go on as they do. I could turn her out of the house, like any other strange woman who was stealing my husband's heart from me."

Hannah made no answer; tried to seem as if she did not hear. Incurable griefs are sometimes best let alone; but this of Adeline's, having once burst its bonds, would not be let alone.

"Tell me," she said, grasping Hannah's hand—"you are a good woman; you will tell me true—is it all nonsense my feeling this as I do? How would you feel if you were in my place? And if you were Bertha, would you do as she does? Would you try to make your sister's husband fond of you, as he ought not to be of any woman except his wife, and then say, 'Oh, it's all right, we're brother and sister?' But is it right? Hannah Thelluson, is it right? Suppose your sister had been living, how would it have been between you and Bernard?"

A startling way of putting the question, far more so than the questioner dreamed of. For a moment Hannah winced, and then her strong, clear common-sense, as well as her sense of justice, came to the rescue and righted her at once.

​"You might as well ask how would it have been between me and any other woman's husband in whose house I happened to stay. Of course he would have been nothing to me—nothing whatever. I am not married," she added, smiling, "and I can not quite judge of married people's feelings. But I think if I ever loved a man well enough to be his wife, I should not be a jealous wife at all. Sister or friend might come about the house as much as he chose. I could trust him, for I could trust myself. I would be so much to him that he would never care for any body but me. That is, while living. When I was dead"—there Hannah paused, and tried solemnly to put herself in the place of a dead wife—of Bernard's dead wife viewing him tenderly from the celestial sphere—"if the same love for my sister or my friend, which would be his degradation in my lifetime, could be his blessing afterward, let him take it and be blessed!"

Adeline looked astounded. But the hidden sore had been opened, the cleansing healing touch had been applied. There was a reasonableness in her expression as she replied:

"That is altogether a new notion of love. You might not feel so if you were married, or if you were really fond of any body. Now I was very fond of Herbert, even when I knew he liked Bertha. But when he liked me, and married me—seeing that it made him safe never to marry my sister—I thought I could not possibly be jealous again. No more I am, in one sense. They will never do any thing wrong. But there's a great deal short of doing wrong that breaks a wife's heart; and they have broken mine—they have broken mine."

Again rose up the feeble wail of the weak, affectionate soul, who yet had not the power to win or command affection. From sheer pity Hannah forbore to blame.

"Why not speak to them plainly?" suggested she at last. "Why not tell them they are making you unhappy?"

"And be laughed at for my pains, as a sickly, jealous-minded fool! Because he can't ever marry her—the law ​forbids that, you know. After I am dead he must choose somebody else, and she too, and nobody will blame them for any thing; and yet they have killed me."

"Hush—hush!" said Hannah; "that is not true, not right. You yourself allowed they meant no harm, and will never do any thing wrong."

"What is wrong?" cried poor Adeline, piteously. "I want my husband—his company, his care, his love; and I don't get him. He turns to somebody else. And I hate that somebody, even if she is my own sister. And I wish I could drive her out of the house—that I do! or shame her openly, as if she were any strange girl who dared come flirting with my husband. They're wicked women, all of them, and they break the hearts of us poor wives."

There was a certain bitter truth under Adeline's frenzied fancies; but Hannah had no time to reply to either; for, while they were talking, there was a bustle outside. Gay, blooming, excited with her journey, Bertha Rivers burst in, Mr. Melville following her.

"So I am come, Addy dear, though you didn't want me. But you'll be glad of me, I know. Why you're looking quite rosy again; isn't she, Herbert?"

Rosy she was; for her cheeks burned like coals. But the husband, as he carelessly kissed her, never found it out; and Bertha, in her redundant health and exuberant spirits, never noticed the dead silence of her sister's welcome—the sullen way in which she turned her face to the wall, and left them to their chatter and their mirth.

It was the same all the evening; for Hannah, at Adeline's earnest request, had staid. Mrs. Melville scarcely spoke a word. Their plans were discussed, sometimes including her, sometimes not; but all were talked of freely before her. It never seemed to occur to any one—not even to Bernard—that Adeline was dying. And with that wonderful self-command which perhaps only the conscious approach of death could have given to so weak a nature, Adeline never betrayed, by look or word, the se​cret jealousy that, at any rate, had helped to sap her frail life away.

"Come and see me every day," she whispered when Miss Thelluson wished her good-by. "I'll try and remember what you said; but please forget every thing I said. Let nobody guess at it. I shall not trouble any of them very long."

Hannah walked home, strangely silent and sad, even though she was beside Bernard; and feeling, as one often is forced to feel, that other people's miseries would perhaps be worse to bear than one's own.