Hannah/Chapter 2

A house on a hill. It has its advantages, and its disadvantages. It is hard to climb to, and harder to descend from. Everywhere round about you may see from it; but then every body round about can see you. It is like the city set on a hill, it can not be hid. Its light shines far; but then the blacker is its darkness. However, one need not carry out the metaphor, which speaks for itself.

Hannah Thelluson's ideal of a house had always been a house on a hill. She had a curious dislike to living, either physically or morally, upon low ground. She wanted plenty of breathing-room: space around her and over her: freedom to look abroad on the earth and up to the sky. And, though her nature was neither ambitious nor overbearing, she experienced even yet a childish delight in getting to the top of things, in surmounting and looking down upon difficulties, and in feeling that there was nothing beyond her—nothing unconquered between herself and the sky. At least, that is the nearest description of a sentiment that was quite indescribable, and yet as real as intangible fancies often are.

Therefore it had given her a certain sensation of pleasure to hear that Mr. Rivers had removed from his house in the village, the associations of which he found it impossible to bear, to another, on the top of Easterham Hill, or Down, as it was generally called, being a high open space, breezy, and bright. On it he was building a few cottages—a cottage convalescent hospital he meant it to be—in memory of his late wife.

"I had planned a marble monument," he wrote to Hannah, "a recumbent figure of herself, life-size, with two angels watching at head and foot. But I found this would ​cost nearly as much as the cottage, and it struck me that Rosa would have liked something that was not only a memorial of the dead, but a blessing to the living."

Hannah agreed with him, and that little circumstance gave her a favorable impression of her brother-in-law. She was also touched by the minute arrangements he made for her journey, a rather long one, and her reception at its end. Some of his plans failed—he was not able to meet her himself, being sent for suddenly to the Moat House—but the thoughtful kindness remained, and Miss Thelluson was grateful.

She wound slowly up the hill in her brother-in-law's comfortable carriage, and descended at his door, the door of a much grander house than she expected—till she remembered that since Rosa's death Mr. Rivers's income had been doubled by succeeding to the fortune of a maternal uncle. With him wealth accumulated upon wealth, as it seems to do with some people; perhaps, alas! as a balance-weight against happiness.

Miss Thelluson asked herself this question, in a sad kind of way, when she entered the handsome modern house—very modern it seemed to her, who had been living in old castles these three years, and very luxurious too. She wondered much whether she should feel at home here; able to be happy herself, or make the widower happy—the forlorn man, who had every blessing in life except the crowning one of all, a good wife: the "gift that cometh from the Lord." Was this worse or better for him? He had had it, and it had been taken away. Hannah thought, with a compassion for the living that almost lessened her grief for the dead, how desolate he must often feel, sitting down to his solitary meals, wandering through his empty garden—Rosa had so loved a garden—and back again to his silent room. How he must miss his wife at every step, in every thing about him. A loss sharper even than that one—the sharpness of which she knew so well. But then, she and Arthur had never been married.

"I must try and help him as much as I can—my poor ​brother-in-law!" thought she to herself as she came into the dreary house; all the more dreary because it was such a handsome house; and then she thought no more either of it or its master. For did it not contain what was infinitely more interesting to her—the baby?

Some people will smile at what I am going to say; and yet it is truth—a truth always solemn, sometimes rather sad likewise. There are women in whom mother-love is less an instinct or an affection than an actual passion—as strong as, sometimes even stronger than, the passion of love itself; to whom the mere thought of little hands and little feet—especially "my little hands, my little feet," in that fond appropriation with which one poet-mother puts it—gives a thrill of ecstasy as keen as any love-dreams. This, whether or not they have children of their own; often, poor women! when they are lonely old maids. And such a one was Hannah Thelluson.

As she entered the house (I feel the confession is more pathetic than ridiculous) she actually trembled with the delight of thinking that in a minute more she would have her little niece in her arms; and her first question was, "Where is the baby?"

Apparently a question quite unexpected from any visitor in this house; for the footman, much surprised, passed it to the butler, and the butler circulated it somewhere in the inferior regions; whence presently there appeared a slatternly female servant.

"I am Miss Thelluson, baby's aunt. I want to see my little niece."

Upon this the slatternly girl led the way up a steep stair to the nursery. It was a long, low, gloomy room, which struck chilly on entering, even in full summer, for its only window looked northeast, and was shaded by an overhanging tree. It had in perfection the close nursery atmosphere of the old school, whose chiefest horror seemed to be fresh air. Sunless, smothery, dull, and cold, it was the last place in the world for any young life to grow up in. It cast a weight even upon the grown woman, who ​loved light and air, and would never, either physically or mentally, willingly walk in gloom.

Miss Thelluson contemplated sadly that small pale effigy of a child, which lay in the little crib, with the last evening light slanting across it through a carelessly-drawn curtain. It lay, not in the lovely attitudes that sleeping children often assume, but flat upon its back, its arms stretched out cruciform, and its tiny feet extended straight out, almost like a dead child. There was neither roundness nor coloring in the face, and very little beauty. Only a certain pathetic peace, not unlike the peace of death.

"Don't touch her," whispered Miss Thelluson, as the nurse was proceeding roughly to take up her charge. "Never disturb a sleeping child. I will wait till to-morrow."

And she stood and looked at it—this sole relic of poor Rosa; this tiny creature, which was all that was left of the Thelluson race, notable and honorable in its day, though long dwindled down into poverty and obscurity.

As she looked there came into Hannah's heart that something—mothers say they feel it at the instant when God makes them living mothers of a living babe; and perhaps He puts it into the hearts of other women, not mothers at all, in solemn, exceptional cases, and for holy ends—that passionate instinct of protection, tenderness, patience, self-denial—of giving every thing and expecting nothing back, which constitutes the true ideal of maternity. She did not lift the child; she would not allow herself even to kiss its little curled-up fingers, for fear of waking it; but she consecrated herself to it from that moment—as only women and mothers can, and do.

Nurse, who disliked her authority being set aside, approached again. "Never mind touching it, miss; we often do. It only cries a bit, and goes off to sleep again."

But Hannah held her arm. "No, no!" she said, rather sharply; "I will not have the child disturbed. I can wait. It is my child."

And she sat down on the rocking-chair by the crib side ​with the air of one who knew her own rights, and was determined to have them. All her nervous doubt of herself, her hesitation and timidity, vanished together; the sight before her seemed to make her strong—strong as the weakest creatures are when the maternal instinct comes into them. At the moment, and forever henceforth, Hannah felt that she could have fought like any wild beast for the sake of that little helpless babe.

She sat a long while beside it; long enough to take in pretty clearly the aspect of things around her. Though she was an old maid, or considered herself so, she had had a good deal of experience of family life in the various nurseries of friends and employers; upon which her strong common-sense and quick observation had made many internal comments. She detected at once here that mournful lack of the mother's eye and hand; the mother's care and delight in making all things orderly and beautiful for the opening intelligence of her darling. It was quite enough to look around the room to feel sure that the little sleeper before her was nobody's darling. Cared for, of course, up to a certain extent, in a stupid, mechanical way; but there was nobody to take up, with full heart, the burden of motherhood, and do the utmost for the little human being who, physiologists say, bears, in body and soul, the impress of its first two years of life with it to the grave.

"And this duty falls to me; God has given it to me," said Hannah Thelluson to herself. And without a moment's questioning, or considering how far the labor might outweigh the reward, or indeed whether the reward would ever come at all, she added solemnly, "Thank God!"

"I shall be here again before bedtime," said she aloud to the nurse as she rose.

"You can't, miss," returned the woman, evidently bent on resistance; "I always goes to bed early, and I locks my nursery door after I've gone to bed."

"That will not do," said Miss Thelluson. "I am baby's aunt, as you know, and her father has given her into my charge. The nursery must never be locked against me, ​day or night. Where is the key?" She took it out of the door and put it into her pocket, the nurse looking too utterly astonished to say a word. "I shall be back here again punctually at half-past nine."

"My first battle!" she thought, sighing, as she went away to her own room. She was not fond of battles; still, she could fight—when there was something worth fighting for; and even her first half hour in the widower's household was sufficient to show her that the mistress of it would require to have eyes like Argus, and a heart as firm as a rock. This was natural; like every thing else, quite natural: but it was not the less hard, and it did not make her home-coming to the house on the hill more cheerful.

It was a new house comparatively, and every thing about it was new. Nothing could be more different from the old-fashioned stateliness in which she had lived at Lord Dunsmore's. But then there she was a stranger; this was home. She glanced through the house in passing, and tried to admire it, for it was her brother-in-law's own property, only lately bought. Not that he liked it—he had told her mournfully that he neither liked nor disliked any thing much now—but it was the most suitable house he could find.

She went out into the garden, and wept out a heartful of tears in the last gleam of the twilight, then she came back and dressed for the seven o'clock dinner, for which the maid, who appeared at the door, saying she had been specially ordered to attend on Miss Thelluson, told her Mr. Rivers was sure to return.

"The first time master ever has returned, miss, to a regular late dinner, since the poor mistress died."

This, too, was a trial. As Hannah descended, attired with her usual neatness, but in the thorough middle-aged costume that she had already assumed, there flashed across her a vision of poor Rosa, the last time, though they little knew it was the last, that she ran into her sister's room just before dinner; all in white, her round rosy arms and neck gleaming under the thin muslin, so happy herself, ​and brightening all around her with her loving, lovesome ways. And now, a mile distant, Rosa slept under the daisies. How did her husband endure the thought?

With one great sob Hannah smothered down these remembrances. They would make the approaching meeting more than painful—intolerable. She felt as if the first minute she looked into her brother-in-law's face and grasped his hand, both would assuredly break down, although over both had grown the outside composure of a six-months-old sorrow.

He himself seemed in dread of a "scene," and watchful to avoid it, for instead of meeting her in the drawing-room, she found him waiting for her at the stair-foot, under the safe shelter of all the servants' eyes.

"I am late," he said. "I must apologize."

Then they shook hands. Mr. Rivers's hand was trembling, and very cold, but that was all. He said nothing more, and led her at once into the dining-room.

In such circumstances how dreadful sometimes are little things—the little things that unconsciously crop up, stinging like poisoned arrows. There was one—Hannah recalled it long afterward, and so did others—dwelling malignly upon the innocent, publicly uttered, kindly words.

The table had been laid for two persons, master and mistress, and the butler held for Miss Thelluson the mistress's chair. Struck with a sudden pang, she hesitated—glanced toward Mr. Rivers.

"Take it," he said, in a smothered kind of voice; "it is your place now. I hope you will keep it always."

So she sat down in Rosa's seat; with Rosa's husband opposite. How terrible for him to see another face in the room of that dear, lovely one, over which the coffin-lid had closed! It was her duty, and she went through it; but she felt all dinner-time as if sitting upon thorns.

During the safe formalities of the meal she had leisure to take some observation of her brother-in-law. He was greatly altered. There had passed over him that great blow—the first grief of a lifetime; and it had struck him ​down as a man of naturally buoyant temperament usually is struck by any severe shock—sinking under it utterly. Even as sometimes those whom in full health disease has smitten die quicker than those who have been long inured to sickness and suffering.

His sister-in-law observed him compassionately but sharply; more sharply than she had ever done before. The marriage having been all settled without her, she had not to criticise but to accept him as Rosa's choice, and had actually only seen him twice—on the wedding-day, and the one brief visit afterward. She had noticed him little, until now. But now, when they were to live together as brother and sister; when he expected her to be his friend and companion, daily and hourly; to soothe him and sympathize with him, put up with all his moods and humors, consult him on all domestic matters, and, in short, stand to him in the closest relation that any woman can stand to any man, unless she is his mother or his wife, the case was altered. It behooved her to find out, as speedily as possible, what sort of man Mr. Rivers was.

He had a handsome face, and yet—this "yet" is not so unfair as it seems—it was likewise a good face; full of feeling and expression. A little feminine, perhaps—he was like his mother, the first Lady Rivers, who had been a very beautiful woman; and once Hannah had thought it boyishly bright—too bright to interest her much, but it was not so now. The sunshine had all gone out of it, yet it had not attained the composed dignity of grief. Irritable, restless, gloomy, morbid, he seemed in that condition into which a naturally good-tempered man is prone to fall when some great shock has overset his balance, and made him the exact opposite of what he once was—hating every thing and every body about him, and himself most of all.

Hannah sighed as she listened, though trying not to listen, to his fault-finding with the servants, sometimes sotto voce, sometimes barely restrained by his lingering sense of right from breaking out into actual anger—he ​who was, Rosa used to assert, the sweetest-tempered man, the most perfect gentleman in all the world. Yet even his crossness was pathetic—like the naughtiness of a sick child, who does not know what is the matter with him. Hannah felt so sorry for him! She longed to make excuse for those domestic delinquencies, and tell him she would soon put all right; as she knew she could, having been her father's housekeeper ever since she was a girl of sixteen.

She was bold enough faintly to hint this, when they got into the drawing-room, where some trivial neglect had annoyed him excessively, much more than it deserved; and she offered to rectify it.

"Will you really? Will you take all these common household cares upon yourself?"

"It is a woman's business; and I like it."

"So she used to say. She used constantly to be longing for you, and telling me how comfortable every thing was when her sister was housekeeper at home. She—she—"

It was the first time the desolate man had ventured off the safe track of commonplace conversation, and though he only spoke of Rosa as "she"—it seemed impossible to him to call her by her name—the mere reference to his dead wife was more than he could bear. All the floodgates of his grief burst open.

"Isn't this a change!—a terrible, terrible change!" he cried, looking up to Hannah with anguish in his eyes. A child's anguish could not have been more appealing, more utterly undisguised. And, sitting down, he covered his face with his hands, and wept—also like a child.

Hannah wept too, not with such a passionate abandonment; it was against her nature, woman though she was. Her own long-past sorrow, which, she fancied, most resembled his, and had first drawn her to him with a strange sympathy, had been a grief totally silent. From the day of Arthur's death she never mentioned her cousin's name. Consolation she had never asked or received from any human being—this sort of affliction could not be comforted. Therefore she scarcely understood, at first, how Ber​nard Rivers, when the seal was once broken, poured out the whole story of his. loss in a continuous stream. For an hour or more he sat beside her, talking of Rosa's illness and death, and all he had suffered; and then going over and over again, with a morbid intensity, his brief, happy married life; apparently finding in this overflow of heart the utmost relief, and even alleviation.

Hannah listened, somewhat surprised, but still she listened. The man and the woman were as unlike as they well could be; yet, thus thrown together—bound together, as it were, by the link of a common grief, their very dissimilarity, and the necessity it involved of each making allowances for, and striving heartily not to misjudge the other, produced a certain mutual interest, which made even their first sad evening not quite so sad as it might have been.

After a while Hannah tried to lure Mr. Rivers out of his absorbing and pitiably self-absorbed grief into a few practical matters; for she was anxious to get as clear an idea as she could of her own duties in the household and the parish. Her duties only; her position, and her rights—if she had any—would, she knew, fall into their fitting places by-and-by.

"Yes, I have a large income," said Mr. Rivers, sighing. "Far too large for me and that poor little baby. She would have enjoyed it, and spent it wisely and well. You shall spend it instead. You shall have as much money as you want, weekly or monthly; just as she had. Oh, how clever she was! how she used to bring me her books to reckon over, and make such fun out of them, and fall into such pretty despair if they were the least bit wrong! My own Rosa! My merry, happy wife!—yes, I know I made her happy! She told me so—almost her last words."

"Thank God for that!"

"I do."

Hannah tried to put into the heart-stricken man the belief—essentially a woman's—that a perfect love, even when lost, is still an eternal possession—a pain so sacred ​that its deep peace often grows into absolute content. But he did not seem to understand this at all. His present loss—the continually aching want—the daily craving for love and help and sympathy—these were all he felt, and felt with a keenness indescribable. How could the one ever be filled up and the other supplied?

Hannah could not tell. She grew frightened at the responsibility she had undertaken. A kind of hopelessness came over her; she almost wished herself safe back again in the quiet school-room with her little Ladies Dacre. There, at least, she knew all her duties, and could fulfill them; here they already seemed so complicated that how she should first get them clear, and then perform them, was more than she knew. However, it was not her way to meet evils beforehand, or to try and put more than the day's work into the day. She was old enough to have ceased to struggle after the impossible.

So she sat watching, with a pity almost motherly, the desolate man, with whom, it seemed, for a time at least, her lot was cast; inwardly praying that she might have strength to do her duty by him, and secretly hoping that it might not be for long; that his grief, by its very wildness might wear itself out, and the second marriage, which Lady Dunsmore had prognosticated as the best thing which could happen to him, might gradually come about.

"Rosa would have wished it—even Rosa," the sister thought, choking down a not unnatural pang, "could she see him as I see him now."

It was a relief to catch an excuse for a few minutes' absence; she took out her watch, and told her brother-in-law it was time to go up to the nursery.

"Nurse does not like it; I see that; but still I must go. Every night before I sleep I must take my latest peep at baby."

"Ah, that reminds me—I have never asked you what you think of baby. I don't know how it is—I fear you will think me very wicked," added the widower, sighing, "but I can not take the interest I ought to take in that ​poor child. I suppose men don't care for babies—not at first—and then her birth cost me so much."

"It was God's will things should be thus," answered Hannah, gravely. "It should not make you dislike your child—Rosa's child."

"God forbid!—only that I can not feel as I ought to feel toward the poor little thing."

"You will in time." And Hannah tried to draw a picture such as might touch any father's heart—of his wee girl toddling after him, his big girl taking his hand, and beginning to ask him questions, his sweet, grown-up girl becoming his housekeeper, companion, and friend.

Mr. Rivers only shook his head. "Ah, but that is a long time to wait. I want a friend and companion now. How am I ever to get through these long, lonely years?"

"God will help you," said Hannah, solemnly, and then felt half ashamed, remembering she was preaching to a clergyman. But he was a man, too, with all a man's weaknesses, every one of which she was sure to find out ere long. Even already she had found out a good many. Evidently he was of a warm, impulsive, affectionate nature, sure to lay upon her all his burdens. She would have the usual lot of sisters, to share most of the cares and responsibilities of a wife, without a wife's blessings or a wife's love.

"I must go now. Good-night," she said.

"Good-night? Nay, surely you are coming back to me again? You don't know what a relief it has been to talk to you. You can not tell how terrible to me are these long, lonely evenings."

A moan, to Hannah incomprehensible. For her solitude had no terror—had never had. In early youth she would sit and dream for hours of the future—a future which never came. Now she had done with dreaming; the present sufficed her—and the past. She liked thinking of her dear ones living, her still dearer ones dead, and found in their peaceful, unseen companionship all she required. Never was there a person less dependent on outward society. And yet when she had it she rather enjoyed it—only she ​never craved after it, nor was it any necessity or her existence. On such women, who themselves can stand alone, others always come and lean—men especially.

As Miss Thelluson quitted him, Mr. Rivers looked after her with those restless, miserable eyes of his, from which the light of happiness seemed fled forever.

"Pray come back soon," he said, imploringly. "I do so hate my own company."

"Poor man! How sad it would be if we women felt the same!" thought Hannah. And she, who understood, and could endure, not only solitude but sorrow, took some comfort to herself—a little more, also, in the hope of imparting comfort.

A child asleep! Painters draw it. Poets sing about it. Yet the root of its mystery remains a mystery still. About it seem to float the secrets of earth and heaven—life and death; whence we come, and whither we go: what God does with and in us, and what He expects us to do for ourselves. It is as if, while we gaze, we could catch drifting past us a few threads of that wonderful web—which, in its entirety, He holds solely in His own hands.

Hannah Thelluson looked on this sleeper of six months old with a feeling of not merely tenderness, but awe. She listened to the soft breathing—which might have to draw its last sigh—who knows?—perhaps eighty years hence, when she and all her generation were dead, buried, and forgotten. The solemnity of the charge she had undertaken came upon her tenfold. She stood in the empty nursery, apparently left deserted for hours, for the fire was out, and the candle flickered in its socket. Strange shadows came and went; among them one might almost imagine human shapes—perhaps the dead mother gliding in to look at her lonely child. Even as in some old ballad about a cruel step-mother—

​and then reproached the new wife, saying—the words came vividly back upon Hannah's mind—

A notion pathetic in its very extravagance. To Hannah Thelluson it scarcely seemed wonderful that any mother should rise up from "under the mools," and come thus to the rescue of her children.

"Oh, if this baby's father ever brings home a strange woman to be unkind to her, what shall I do? Any thing, I think, however desperate. Rosa, my poor Rosa, you may rest in peace. God do so to me, and more also, as the Bible says, if ever I forsake your child."

While she spoke, half aloud, there was a tap at the door.

"Come in, nurse." But it was not the nurse; it was the father.

"I could not rest. I thought I would come too. They never let me look at baby."

"Look, then. Isn't she sweet? See how her little fingers curl round her papa's hand already."

Mr. Rivers bent over the crib—not unmoved. "My poor little girl! Do you think, Aunt Hannah, that she will ever be fond of me?"

"I am sure she will."

“Then I shall be so fond of her."

Hannah smiled at the deduction. It was not her notion of loving—especially of loving a child. She had had enough to do with children to feel keenly the truth that, mostly, one has to give all and expect nothing—at least, for many years. But it was useless to say this, or to put any higher ideal of paternal affection into the young father's head. He was so completely a young man still, she said to herself; and felt almost old enough, and experienced enough, to be his mother.

Nevertheless, Mr. Rivers seemed much affected by the sight of his child, evidently rather a rare occurrence.

​"I think she is growing prettier," he said. "Anyhow, she looks very peaceable and sweet. I should like to take her and cuddle her, only she would wake and scream."

"I am afraid she would," said Hannah, smiling. "You had better go away. See, there comes nurse."

—Who entered in somewhat indignant astonishment, at finding not only Miss Thelluson, but Mr. Rivers, intruding on her domains. Whereupon the latter, with true masculine cowardice, disappeared at once.

But when Aunt Hannah—who accepted gladly the welcome name—rejoined him in the drawing-room, she found him pacing to and fro with agitated steps.

"Come in, sister, my good sister. Tell me you don't think me such a brute as I have been saying to myself I am. Else why should that woman have thought it so extraordinary—my coming to look at my own child? But I do not mean to be a brute. I am only a miserable man, indifferent to every thing in this mortal world. Tell me, shall I ever get out of this wretched state of mind? Shall I ever be able to endure my life again?"

What could Hannah say? or would there be any good in saying it? Can the experience of one heart teach another? or must each find out the lesson for itself? I fear 80. Should she—as, with the strange want of reticence which men sometimes exhibit much more than we women, he poured forth the anguish of his life—open to him that long-hidden and now healed, though never-forgotten, woe of hers? But no! she could not. It was too sacred. All she found possible was gently to lead him back to their old subject of talk—commonplace, practical things—the daily interests and duties by which, as a clergyman, he was necessarily surrounded, and out of which he might take some comfort. She was sure he might if he chose; she told him so.

"Oh no," he said, bitterly. "Comfort is vain. I am a broken-down man. I shall never be of any good to any body! But you will take care of my house and my child. Do just as you fancy. Have every thing your own way."

​"In one thing I should like to have at once my own way," said she, rushing desperately upon a subject which she had been resolving on all the evening. "I want to change rooms with baby."

"Why? Is not yours comfortable? Those horrid servants of mine! I desired them to give you the pleasantest room in the house."

"So it is; and for that very reason baby ought to have it. A delicate child like her should live in sunshine, physically and morally, all day long. The nursery only catches the sun for an hour in the day."

"How can you tell, when you have not been twelve hours in the house?"

She touched the tiny compass which hung at her watchchain.

"What a capital idea! What a very sensible woman you must be!" And Mr. Rivers smiled for the first time that evening. Miss Thelluson smiled too.

"What would become of a governess if she were not sensible? Then I may have my way?"

"Of course! Only—what shall I say to grandmamma? She chose the nursery, and was quite content with it."

"Grandmamma is probably one of the old school, to whom light and air were quite unnecessary luxuries-nay, rather annoyances."

"Yet the old school brought up their children to be as healthy as ours."

"Because they were probably stronger than ours: we have to pay for the errors of a prior generation; or else the strong ones only lived, the weakly were killed off pretty fast. But I beg your pardon. You set me on my hobby—a governess's hobby—the bringing up of the new generation. Besides, you know the proverb about the perfectness of old bachelors' wives and old maids' children."

"You are not like an old maid, and still less like a governess." He meant this for a compliment, but it was not accepted as such.

​"Nevertheless, I am both," answered Miss Thelluson, gravely. "Nor am I ashamed of it either."

"Certainly not; there is nothing to be ashamed of," said Mr. Rivers, coloring. He could not bear in the smallest degree to hurt people's feelings, and had painfully sensitive feelings of his own. Then came an awkward pause, after which conversation flagged to a considerable degree.

Hannah began to think, what in the wide world should she do if she and her brother-in-law had thus to sit opposite to one another, evening after evening, through the long winter's nights, thrown exclusively upon each other's society, bound to be mutually agreeable, or, at any rate, not disagreeable, yet lacking the freedom that exists between husband and wife, or brother and sister who have grown up together, and been used to one another all their lives. It was a position equally difficult and anomalous. She wished she had known Mr. Rivers more intimately during Rosa's lifetime; yet this would have availed her little, for even that intimacy would necessarily have been limited. A reticent woman never, under any circumstances, cares to be very familiar with another woman's husband, even though he be the husband of her own sister. She may like him sincerely, he may be to her a most true and affectionate friend, but to have his constant exclusive society, day after day and evening after evening, she would either find extremely irksome—or, if she did not—God help her! Even under the most innocent circumstances such an attraction would be a sad—nay, a fatal thing to both parties. People talk about open jealousies; but the secret heart-burnings that arise from misunderstood, half-misunderstood, or wholly false positions between men and women, are much worse. It is the unuttered sorrows, the unadmitted and impossible-to-be-avenged wrongs, which cause the sharpest pangs of existence.

Not that Miss Thelluson thought about these things; indeed, she was too much perplexed and bewildered by her new position to think much about any thing beyond the moment, but she felt sufficiently awkward and uncom​fortable to make her seize eagerly upon any convenient topic of conversation.

"Are they all well at the Moat House? I suppose I shall have the pleasure of seeing some of your family tomorrow?"

"If—if you will take the trouble of calling there. I must apologize"—and he looked more apologetic than seemed even necessary—"I believe Lady Rivers ought to call upon you; but she is growing old now. You must make allowances."

His was a tell-tale face. Hannah guessed at once that she would have a difficult part to play between her brother-in-law and his family. But she cared not. She seemed not to care much for any thing or any body now—except that little baby up stairs.

"One always makes allowances for old people," answered she, gently.

"And for young people, too," continued Mr. Rivers, with some anxiety. "My sisters are so gay—so careless-hearted—thoughtless, if you will."

Hannah smiled. "I think I shall have too busy a life to be likely to see much of your sisters. And, I promise you, I will, as you say, 'make allowances'—except in one thing." And there came a sudden flash into the deepset gray eyes which made Mr. Rivers start, and doubt if his sister-in-law was such a very quiet woman after all. They must not interfere with me in my bringing up of my sister's child. There, I fear, they might find me a little—difficult."

"No. You will have no difficulty there," said he, hastily. "In truth, my people live too much a life of society to trouble themselves about domestic concerns, especially babies. They scarcely ever see Rosie; and when they do they always moan over her—say what a pity it is she wasn't a boy, and that she is so delicate she will never be reared. But, please God, they may be mistaken."

"They shall," said Hannah, between her teeth, feeling that, if she could so bargain with Providence, she would ​gladly exchange ten or twenty years of her own pale life for that little life just beginning, the destiny of which none could foresee.

Mr. Rivers went on talking. It seemed such a relief to him to talk.

"Of course, my father and they all would have liked a boy best. My eldest brother, you are aware—well, poor fellow, he grows worse instead of better. None of us ever see him now. I shall be the last of my name. A name which has descended in an unbroken line, they say, for centuries. We are supposed to have been De la Riviere, and to have come over with William the Conqueror. Not that I care much for this sort of thing." And yet he looked as if he did, a little; and, standing by his fireside, tall and handsome, with his regular Norman features, and well-knit Norman frame, he was not an unworthy representative of a race which must have had sufficient elements of greatness, physical and moral, to be able to keep itself out of obscurity all these centuries. "I am rather Whiggish myself; but Sir Austin is a Tory of the old school, and has certain crotchets about keeping up the family. Things are just a little hard for my father."

"What is hard? I beg your pardon—I am afraid I was not paying much attention to what you said just then. I thought," Hannah laughed and blushed a little—"I thought I heard the baby."

Mr. Rivers laughed too. "The baby will be Aunt Hannah's idol, I see. Don't spoil her, that is all. Grandmamma is always warning me that she must not be spoiled." Then seeing the same ominous flash in Miss Thelluson's eye, he added, "Nay, nay; you shall have Rosie all to yourself, never fear. I am only too thankful to get you here. I hope you will make yourself happy. Preserve for me my fragile little flower, my only child, and I shall bless you all my days."

Hannah silently extended her hand: her brother-in-law grasped it warmly. Tears stood in both their eyes, but still the worst of this meeting was over. They had reached ​the point when they could talk calmly of ordinary things, and consult together over the motherless child, who was now first object to both. And though, whether the widower felt it or not, Hannah still felt poor Rosa's continual presence, as it were; heard her merry voice in pauses of conversation; saw the shadow of her dainty little form standing by her husband's side-these remembrances she knew were morbid, and not to be encouraged. They would fade, and they ought to fade, gradually and painlessly, in the busy anxieties of real life. Which of us, in dying, would wish it to be otherwise? Would we choose to be to our beloved a perpetually aching grief, or a tender, holy memory? I think, the latter. Hannah, who knew something about sorrow, thought so too.

"Good-night," she said, rising, not regretfully, the instant the clock struck ten. "I am an early bird, night and morning. Shall you object to that? No house goes well unless the mistress is early in the morning."

The moment she had said the word she would have given any thing to unsay it. That sweet, dead mistress, who used to come fluttering down stairs like a white bird, with a face fresh as a rose—would the time ever come when her husband had forgotten her?

Not now, at any rate. "Yes," he answered, with evident pain. "Yes; you are the mistress here now. I put you exactly in her place—to manage every thing as she did. She would wish it so. Oh, if we only had her back again!—just for one week, one day! But she never will come back any more!"

He turned away, the forlorn man whom God had smitten with the heaviest sorrow, the sharpest loss, that a man can know. What consolation could Hannah offer him? None, except the feeble one that, in some measure, she could understand his grief; because over her love too the grave had closed. For a moment she thought she would say that; but her lips, when she opened them, seemed paralyzed. Not yet, at any rate—not yet. Not till she knew him better, and, perhaps, he her.

​So she only took his hand, and again said, "Good-night," adding softly, "God bless you and yours!"

"He has blessed us, in sending Aunt Hannah to take care of us."

And so that first evening, which she had looked forward to with no small dread, was over and done.

But long after Hannah had retired she heard her brother-in-law walking about the house with restless persistency, opening and shutting door after door, then ascending to his own room with weary steps, and locking himself in—not to sleep, for he had told her that he often lay awake till dawn. She did not sleep either; her thoughts were too busy, and the change in her monotonous life too sudden and complete for any thing like repose.

She sat at her window and looked out. It was a goodly night, and the moon made every thing bright as day. All along the hill-top was a clear view, but the valley below was filled with mist, under which its features, whether beautiful or not, were utterly indistinguishable. That great white sea of vapor looked as mysterious as the tomorrow into which she could not penetrate; the new life, full of new duties and ties, now opening before her just when she thought all were ended. It interested her a little. She wondered vaguely how things would turn out, just as she wondered how the valley, hid under that misty sea, would look at six o'clock next morning. But soon her mind went back, as it always did in the moonlight, to her own silent past—her own people, her father, mother, sisters, all dead and buried—to her lost Arthur, with whom life too was quite done. He seemed to be saying to her, not near, for he had been dead so long that even his memory had grown phantom-like and far away, but whispering from some distant sphere words she had read somewhere the other day—

​"In my heart! in my heart!" she repeated to herself, and thought how impossible it was that any living love could ever have supplanted—ever could supplant—the dead.