Hannah/Chapter 4

It is a mistake to take for granted, as in books and life we perpetually do, that people must always remain the same. On the contrary, most people are constantly changing—growing, let us hope, but still changing—in character, feelings, opinions. If we took this into account we should often be less harsh to judge; less piteously misjudged ourselves. For instance, we resolve always to love our friend and hate our enemy; but our friend may prove false, and our enemy kind and good. What are we then to do? To go on loving and hating as before? I fear we can not. We must accept things as they stand, and act accordingly. Or—and this is a common case—we may ourselves once have had certain faults, which we afterward had sense to see and correct; yet those who knew us in our faulty days will never believe this, and go on condemning us forever—which is a little hard. And again, we may have started honestly on a certain course, and declared openly certain opinions or intentions, which we afterward see cause to modify, or even to renounce entirely. Time and circumstance have so altered us that we are obliged to give our old selves the lie direct, or else to be untrue to our present selves. In short, we must just retract, in act or word, boldly or weakly, nobly or ignobly, as our natures allow. And though we have been perfectly sincere throughout, the chances are that no one will believe us; we shall be stamped as hypocrites, renegades, or deep designing schemers to the end of our days. This, too, is hard; and it takes a strong heart and a clear conscience to bear it.

​When Hannah Thelluson consented to come to her brother-in-law's house, and he thankfully opened to her his dreary doors, they were two most sorrowful people, who yet meant to make the best of their sorrow, and of one another, so as to be a mutual comfort, if possible. At least this was her intent; he probably had no intent at all beyond the mere relief of the moment. Men—and young men—seldom look ahead as women do.

Now two people living under the same roof, and greatly dependent upon one another, seldom remain long in a state of indifference; they take either to loving or hating; and these two, being both of them good people, though so very different in character, were not likely to do the latter. Besides, they stood in that relation which of all others most attracts regard―of reciprocally doing good and being done good to. They shared one another's burdens, and gave one another help. Consequently the burdens lightened, and the help increased, every day that they resided together.

Their life was very equable, quiet, and, at first, rather dull. Of course the widower did not visit, or receive visitors. Occasional family dinners at the Moat House, and a few morning calls received and paid, were all that Hannah saw of Easterham society. She had the large handsome house entirely to herself often from morning to night; for gradually Mr. Rivers went back to his parish duties, which he once used most creditably to fulfill. Consequently, instead of hanging about the house all day, he was frequently absent till dinner-time. This was a great source of satisfaction to Miss Thelluson; at first—let the honest truth be told because she was heartily glad to get rid of him; by-and-by from sincere pleasure at the good it did him.

"Work always comforts a man," she said to herself, when she saw him come in, fresh from battling with rain and wind, or eager to secure her help and sympathy in some case of distress in the parish, his handsome face looking ten years younger, and his listless manner gaining energy and decision.

​"You were right, Aunt Hannah," he would often say, with an earnest thoughtfulness that was yet not exactly sadness. "To preach to sufferers one needs to have suffered one's self. I shall be a better parson now than I used to be, I hope—on week-days, certainly, and perhaps even on Sundays, if you will continue to look over my sermons."

Which, people began to say, were much better than they used to be, and Hannah herself thought so too. She always read them, and, after a while, criticised them, pretty sharply and fearlessly, every Saturday night. On other nights she got her brother-in-law into the habit of reading aloud; first, because it was much the easiest way of passing the evening—and after being out all day, he absolutely refused to go out again, lessening even his visits to the Moat House whenever he could—secondly, because soon she came to like it very much. It was like falling into a dream of peace to sit sewing at Rosie's little clothes (for Aunt Hannah did all she could for her darling with her own hands), silent—she always loved silence—yet listening to Mr. Rivers's pleasant voice, and thinking over, quietly to herself, what he was reading. In this way, during the first three months, they got through a quantity of books, both of prose and poetry, and had grown familiar enough now and then to lay the books down, and take to arguments—quarreling fiercely at times—until either became accustomed to the other's way of thinking, and avoided warlike topics, or fought so honorably and well that the battles ended in mutual respect, and very often in a fit of mutual laughter.

It may be a dreadful thing to confess, but they did laugh sometimes. Ay, even with the moonlight sleeping, or the white snow falling, on Rosa's grave a mile off—Rosa, who was with the angels, smiling in the eternal smile of God. These others, left behind to do their mortal work, were not always miserable. Rosie began the change, by growing every day more charming, more interesting, more curious, in her funny little ways, every one of which aunt ​retailed to papa when he came home, as if there had never been such a wonderful baby in any house before.

A baby in the house. Does any body know fully what that is till he—no, say she—has tried it?

Hannah did not. Fond as she was of children, and well accustomed to them, they were all other people's children. This one was her own. On her alone depended the little human soul and human body for every thing in life—every thing that could make it grow up to itself and the world a blessing or a curse. A solemn way of viewing things, perhaps; but Hannah was a solemn-minded woman. She erred, anyhow, on the right side. This was the "duty" half of her new existence; the other half was joy—wholly joy.

A child in the house. Say, rather, an angel; for I think Heaven leaves a touch of the angel in all little children, to reward those about them for their inevitable cares. Rosie was, to other people besides her aunt, a very remarkable child—wonderfully sweet, and yet brave even as a baby. She never cried for pain or fretfulness, though she sometimes did for passion; and for sorrow—a strange, contrite, grown-up kind of sorrow—whenever she did any thing the least wrong, which was very seldom. She was usually a perfect sunbeam of brightness, wholesomeness, and content. Her delicacy and fragility, which were only that of a flower reared up in darkness, and recovering its healthy colors as soon as ever it is brought into the sun, soon became among the things that had been. Not a child in all Easterham seemed more likely to thrive than Rosie Rivers; and every body, even at the Moat House, now acknowledged this, to Miss Thelluson's great glory and delight. Grace's also—unto whom much credit was owing.

Hannah had taken her rather rashly perhaps—wise people sometimes do, upon instinct, rather rash things. She thought so herself when one day, accidentally asking Grace some apparently trivial question, the girl burst into tears, confessed that she was a married woman, and her hus​band had run away from her. "But I was married, indeed I was, and his sisters know it!" Which the sisters, who were in fact sisters-in-law, resolutely confirmed; but no more facts could be gained. Nor did Hannah like to inquire, having a feeling that poor women's miseries were as sacred as rich ones'. It was an unwelcome discovery—a nurse with a living and, probably, scape-grace husband might prove very inconvenient; still she had grown fond of the girl, who was passionately devoted to Rosie.

"For Rosie's sake I must keep her, if possible; and for her own sake, poor thing, I can not bear to send her away. What must I do?"

Rosie's father, to whom she thus appealed—for, despite what he had said, she persistently consulted him in every thing—answered decisively, "Let her stay." So Grace staid. But Miss Thelluson insisted that she should no longer pass under false colors, but be called Mrs. Dixon; and finding she had no wedding-ring—her husband, she declared, had torn it from her finger the day he left her—Hannah took the trouble to buy her a new one, and insisted upon her wearing it, saying, "She hated all deceits of every kind." Upon which Grace looked up to her with such grateful, innocent eyes, that, Quixotic as her conduct might appear to some people—it did at the Moat House, where the girls laughed at her immoderately—she felt sure the story was true, and that she should never repent having thus acted.

This was the only incident of the winter; and as week after week passed by, and nothing ill came of it, no runaway husband ever appeared, and poor Grace brightened into the tenderest nurse, the most faithful servant, hardly thinking she could do enough for her mistress and the child, Hannah ceased to think of it, or of any thing unpleasant, so busy and contented was she.

More than content—that she had always been—actually happy. True, she had thought her May-time wholly past; but now, as spring began to waken, and she and Rosie began to gather primroses in the garden and daisies in the ​lanes, it seemed to her as if her youth had come back again. Youth, fresh and full, added to all the experience, the satisfied enjoyment, of middle age. They were like two babies together, she and Rosie, all through this Rosie's first earthly spring. They crawled together on the sunny grass-plot; they played bo-peep round the oak-tree; they investigated with the deepest interest every new green leaf and flower and insect; for she tried to make her child like the Child in the Story without an End—a companion and friend to all living things. And Rosie, by the time she was eighteen months old, with her sweetness, intelligence, and the mysterious way the baby-soul opened out to the wonders and beauty of this our world, had taught her aunt Hannah quite as much as Aunt Hannah had taught her, and become even a greater blessing than the blessings she received.

"It is all the child's doing," Hannah said, laughing and blushing, one day, when Mr. Rivers came suddenly in, and found her dancing through the hall with Rosie in her arms, and singing too at the top of her voice. "She is the sunbeam of the house. Every servant in it spoils her, and serves her like a little queen. As for me, auntie makes a goose of herself every hour in the day. Doesn't she, Rosie? At her time of life, too!"

"What is your time of life? for I really don't know," said Mr. Rivers, smiling. "Sometimes you look quite young, and then, again, I fancy you must be fully as old as I am."

"Older. Thirty-one."

"Well, I am thirty; so when you die of old age I shall begin to quake. But tell her not to die, Rosie." And a sad look came across his face, as it still often did. Hannah knew what it meant. "Bid her live and take care of us both. What in the wide world should we two do without Aunt Hannah."

And Rosie, with that chance instinct of babyhood, often so touching, patted with her tiny soft hand her aunt's cheek, saying, wooingly, "Nice Tannie, pitty ​Tannie"—which had been her first attempt at "Aunt Hannah."

"Tannie"—the name clung to her already, as baby petnames always do—pressed the little breast to hers in a passion of delight and content, knowing that there was not a creature in the world—no woman, certainly—to come between her and her child. Her child! Twenty mothers, she sometimes thought,

of that she felt for her motherless darling.

The father stood and watched them both. As Rosie grew older and more winning he began to take more notice of his little girl, at least when Aunt Hannah was present to mount guard over her, and keep her good and quiet.

"You look quite a picture, you two! Hannah" (he sometimes called her "Hannah" without the "Aunt"), "you must be excessively fond of that child?"

She laughed—a low, soft, happy laugh. Her feeling for little Rosie was a thing she could not talk about. Besides, its sacredness had a double root, as it were; and one root was in the dead mother's grave.

"The little thing seems very fond of you too, as well she may be," continued Mr. Rivers. "I trust she may yet repay you for all your love. I hope—I earnestly hope—that you and she may never be parted."

A natural thought, accidentally expressed. Hannah said to herself over and over again that it must have been purely accidental, and meant nothing; yet it shot through her like a bolt of ice. Was there a chance, the dimmest, remotest chance, that she and the child might be parted? Did he, now that the twelvemonth of mourning had expired, contemplate marrying again—as Lady Dunsmore had foretold he would? Indeed, in a letter lately (for she still wrote sometimes, and would by no means lose sight of her former governess) the countess had put the direct question, at which Miss Thelluson had only smiled.

​Now she did not smile. She felt actually uneasy. She ran rapidly over, in her mind, all the young ladies he had seen or mentioned lately—very few; and he seemed to have no interest in any. Still there might be some one whom she had never heard of: and if so, if he married again, would he require her—of course he would!—to quit the House on the Hill, and leave behind his little daughter?

"I could not! No! I will not," thought she. And after the one cold shiver came a hot thrill of something more like fierceness than her quiet nature had known for long. "To expect me to give up my child. It would be cruel, barbarous!" And then came a sudden frantic idea of snatching up Rosie in her arms and running away with her, anyhow, anywhere, so as to hide her from her father. "I shall do it—I know I shall—if he drives me to it. He had better not try!"

And hot tears dropped on the little white night-gown which Aunt Hannah was vainly endeavoring to tie. It was Sunday night; and she always sent Grace to church, and put the child to bed herself, of Sundays. Bitter, miserable tears they were, too, but only on account of the child. Nothing more. Afterward, when she recalled them and what had produced them, this first uneasy fear which had shot across the calm heaven of her life-a heavenly life it had grown to be since she had the child—Hannah felt certain that she could have looked the child's angel, or its mother, in the face, and declared positively they were nothing more.

But the notion of having to part from Rosie, under the only circumstances in which that parting was natural and probable, having once entered her mind, lurked there uneasily, troubling often the happy hours she spent with her darling; for the aunt, wholly engrossed with her charge, had her with her more than most mothers, with whom their children's father holds rightly the first place. Nevertheless Miss Thelluson did her duty most satisfactorily by her brother-in-law; whenever papa wanted auntie, little Rosie was remorselessly sent away, even though auntie's ​heart followed her longingly all the while. But she had already learned her lesson—she never allowed the child to be a trouble to the father.

"Not one man in a thousand cares to be troubled about any thing, you may depend upon that," she said, one day, gayly, to the second Miss Rivers, who was now about to be married.

"Who taught you that?—my brother? Well, you must have had plenty of experience of him, faults and all; almost as much as his wife had," said the sister, sarcastically; which made Hannah rather sorry that she had unwittingly betrayed the results of her year's experience at the House on the Hill.

Yes; she knew her brother-in-law pretty well by this time—all his weaknesses, all his virtues; better, he told her, and she believed it, than his own sisters knew him. IIe was so unlike them in character, tastes, and feelings that she had now ceased to wonder why he chose none of them to live with him and Rosie, but preferred rather his wife's sister, who might a little resemble his wife, as Hannah sometimes vaguely wished she did.

More especially when the approaching marriage forced him out of his retirement, and he had to officiate in the festivities as eldest brother, instead of poor Austin, whom nobody ever saw or spoke of. Bernard had to act as head of the house, Sir Austin being very frail now; and he accepted his place and went through his duties with a cheerfulness that Hannah was surprised yet glad to see. If only he could have had beside him the bright, beautiful wife who was gone, instead of a grave sister like herself! Still she did her best; went out with him when he asked her, and at other times staid quietly at home—half amused, half troubled, to find how she, who in the first months of winter almost longed for solitude, now began to find it just a little dull. She was not so glad of her own company as she used to be, and found the evenings, after Rosie's bedtime, rather long. Only the evenings: of mornings, when Rosie was with her, she felt no want of any kind.

​Following the wedding—to which Miss Thelluson was of course asked and, somewhat unwillingly, went, seeing Mr. Rivers wished it—came many bridal parties, to which she was invited, too. Thence ensued a small difficulty—ridiculous in itself, and yet involving much—which, when her brother-in-law urged her to accompany him everywhere, she was at last obliged to confess.

"I can't go," she said, laughing—it was much better to make it a jesting than a serious matter. "The real truth is, I've got no clothes."

And then came out another truth, which Mr. Rivers, with his easy fortunes and masculine indifference to money, had never suspected, and was most horrified at—that, her salary as governess ceasing, Aunt Hannah had absolutely nothing to live upon. Though dwelling in the midst of luxury, and spending unlimited sums upon housekeeping weekly, the utmost she had had to spend upon herself, since she came to the House on the Hill, was an innocent fifteen-pound note laid by from last year, the remains of which went in the wedding gown of quiet gray silk which had replaced her well-worn black one.

"Dreadful!" cried Mr. Rivers. "While you have been doing every thing for me, I have left you like a pauper."

"Not exactly," and she laughed again at his vehement contrition. "Indeed, I had as much money as I wanted, for my wants are small. Remember, I have been for so many years a poor governess."

"You shall never be poor again, nor a governess, either. I can not tell you how much I owe you—how deeply I respect you. What can I say? Rather, what can I do?" He thought a little, and then said, "The only plan is, you must let me do for you exactly what I would have done for my own sister. Listen, while I explain."

He then proposed to pay her a quarterly allowance, or annuity, large enough to make her quite independent personally. Or, if she preferred it, to make over the principal in a deed of gift, from which she could draw the same sum as interest at her pleasure.

​"And, you understand, this is quite between ourselves. My fortune is my own, independent of my family. No one but us two need ever be the wiser. Only say the word, and the matter shall be settled at once."

Tears sprang to Hannah's eyes.

"You are a good, kind brother to me," she said. "Nor would it matter so very much, as, if I did take the money, I should just make a will and leave it back to Rosie. But I can not take it. I never yet was indebted to any man alive."

"It would not be indebtedness—only justice," argued he. "You are a practical woman: let me put it in a practical light. I am not giving; only paying, as I should have to pay some other lady. Why should I be more just and liberal to a stranger than to you? This on my side. On yours—what can you do? You are fed and housed, but you must be clothed. You are not a lily of the field. Though"—looking at her as she stood beside him, tall and slender and pale—"I sometimes think there is a good deal of the lily about you, Aunt Hannah. You are so single-minded and pure-hearted; and, like the lilies, you preach me a silent sermon many a time."

"Not always silent," said she, yet was pleased at the compliment. He had never made her a pretty speech before. Then, too, his urging her to remain with him, on the only possible terms on which she could remain—those he proposed—proved that he was not contemplating marriage, at least not immediately.

All he said was thoroughly kind, generous, and wise. Besides, her sound common-sense told her that clothes did not grow upon bushes; and that if she were to continue as mistress of the House on the Hill, it was essential that Rosie's aunt and Mr. Rivers's sister-in-law should not go dressed, as he indignantly put it, "like a pauper." She considered a little, and then, putting her pride in her pocket, she accepted the position of matters as inevitable.

"Very well, Mr. Rivers. Give me the same salary that I received from Earl Dunsmore, and I will take it from you ​as I did from him. It will cover all my personal needs, and even allow me, as heretofore, to put by a little for my old age."

"Your old age? Where should that be spent but here, in my house?"

"Your house may not always be—" She stopped; she had not the heart to put into plain words the plain fact that he might marry again—few men were more likely to do so. But he seemed to understand it.

"Oh, Hannah!" he said, and turned away. She was so vexed at herself that she dropped the conversation at once.

Next day Miss Thelluson found on her toilette-table, in a blank envelope, a check for a hundred pounds.

At first she felt a strong inclination to throw the money into the fire; then a kind of sensation of gratitude.

"If I had not liked him I couldn't have touched a halfpenny; but I do like him. So I must take it, and try to please him as much as I can."

For that reason, and to do him credit when she went out with him, poor Hannah expended more money and thought over her clothes than she had done for years, appearing in toilettes so good and tasteful, though simple still, that the Moat House girls wondered what in the world had come over her to make her look so young.

We are always changing within and without, modified more or less, as was said in the beginning of this chapter, by continually changing circumstances. Had any one a year ago shown Hannah her picture, as she often appeared now, in pretty evening dress—she had lovely round arms still, and it was Rosie's delight to catch them bare, and fondle and hug them to her little bosom as "dollies"—Hannah would have said such a woman was not herself at all. Yet it was; and hers, too, was the heart, wonderfully gay and light sometimes, which she carried about through the day, and lay down to sleep with at night, marveling what she had done that Heaven should make her life thus content and glad.

​The change was so gradual that she accepted it almost without recognition. Ay, even when there came an event which six months ago she would have trembled at—the first dinner-party at the House on the Hill, given in honor of the bride.

"I must give it, I suppose," said Mr. Rivers. "You will not mind? I hope it will not trouble you very much."

"Oh no."

"Be it so, then." He walked off, and then came back, saying, a little awkwardly, "Of course, you understand that you keep your usual place as mistress here."

"Certainly, if you wish it."

So she sat at the head of his table, and did all the honors as lady of the house. At which some other ladies, country people from a distance (for it was a state dinner-party), looked—just a little surprised. One especially, a malign-looking old dowager, with two or three unmarried daughters, whispered:

"His sister-in-law, did you tell me? I thought she was quite a middle-aged person. Better, perhaps, if she had been. And they live here together—quite alone, you say? Dear me!"

The words were inaudible to Miss Thelluson, but she caught the look, and during the evening several other looks of the same inquisitorial kind. They made her feel—she hardly knew why—rather uncomfortable. Otherwise she would have enjoyed the evening considerably. No woman is indifferent to the pleasure of being mistress of an elegant, well-ordered house, where her servants like her and obey her—she doing her duty and they theirs, so that all things go smoothly and well, as they did now. Also she liked to please Mr. Rivers, who was much easier to please than formerly. His old sweet temper, that poor Rosa used so fondly to dilate on, had returned; and oh! what a rare blessing is a sweet temper in a house, especially in the head of it! Then, by this time, his sister-in-law understood his ways, had grown used to his very weaknesses, and found they were not so bad, after all. He was far from being her ​ideal, certainly; but who are they that ever find their ideal? And Hannah sighed, remembering her own—the loveliest and most lovable nature she had ever met, or so it had appeared to her in her girlhood's long-ended dream. But God had taken Arthur home; and thinking of him now, it was more as an angel than as a mortal man.

Looking round on the men she saw now—and they had been a good many lately—she found no one equal to Bernard Rivers. As he took his place again in society, a young widower who had passed from under the blackest shadow of his loss, though it had left in him an abiding gravity, he would have been counted in all circles an attractive person. Handsome, yet not obnoxiously so; clever—though perhaps more in an appreciative than an original fashion; pleasant in conversation, yet never putting himself obtrusively forward, he was a man that most men liked, and all women were sure to admire amazingly. Hannah saw—she could not help seeing—how daughters brightened as he came near, and mothers were extraordinarily tender to him; and, in fact, had he perceived this—which he did not seem to do, being very free from self-consciousness—Bernard Rivers would have run a very good chance of being thoroughly "spoiled."

He was not yet spoiled, however; it was charming to watch him, and see how innocently he took all this social flattery, which Hannah noticed with considerable amusement, and a sort of affectionate pleasure at thinking that, however agreeable he was abroad, he was still more so at home, in those quiet evenings, now sadly diminished. She wondered sometimes how long they would last, how soon her brother-in-law would weary of her companionship, and seek nearer and fonder ties. Well, that must be left to fate; it was useless speculating. So she did her best now; and when several times during dinner he glanced across the table to her and smiled, and also came more than once through the drawing-rooms to look for her, and say a kindly word or two, Hannah was a satisfied and happy woman.

​Only—during the pause of a long piece of concerted music by the three remaining Misses Rivers—fancying she heard Rosie cry, she crept away up stairs, and finding her sitting up in her crib, sobbing from a bad dream, Aunt Hannah caught her child to her bosom more passionately than usual. And when the little thing clung for refuge to her, and was soothed to sleep again under showers of kisses, Hannah thought, rejoicingly, that there was one creature in the world to whom she was absolutely necessary, and all in all.

His guests being at length gone, the host stood on his hearth-rug meditative, even grave.

"Well, Hannah!" he said at last.

She looked up.

"So our dinner-party is safe over. It went off beautifully, I must say!”

"Yes, I think it did."

"And I am so much obliged to you for all the trouble you must have taken. I do like to have things nice and in order—every man does. Especially as Lady Rivers was there. They think so much of these matters at the Moat House."

Hannah, half pleased, half vexed, she scarce knew why, answered nothing.

"Yes, it was very pleasant, and the people were pleasant too. But yet I think I like our quiet evenings best."

"So do I," Hannah was going to say, and then hesitated, with a curious kind of shyness, for she had been thinking the very same. Wondering also how long this gay life they now led was to go on, and whether it would end in that climax for which she was always preparing herself—Bernard Rivers taking a second wife, and saying to his sister-in-law, "Thank you; I want you no more. Good-by!" A perfectly right, natural, and desirable thing, too, her reason told her. And yet—and yet— Well! she would, at least, not meet difficulties half-way, but would enjoy her halcyon days while they lasted.

So she sat down with him on the chair he placed for her, ​one on either side the fire, and proceeded to talk over the dinner and the guests, with other small, familiar topics, which people naturally fall into discussing when they are perfectly at home with each other, and have one common interest running through their lives. All their associations now had the easy freedom of the fraternal relation, mingled with a certain vague sentiment, such as people feel who are not really brother and sister; but, having spent all their prior lives apart, require to get over a sort of pleasant strangeness, which has all the charm of traveling in a new country.

In the midst of it, when they were laughing together over some wonderful infantine jest of little Rosie's, there came a knock at the door, and a face looked stealthily in.

Hannah sprang up in terror. "Oh, Grace! What is it? Any thing wrong with baby?"

"No, miss, nothing. How wrong of me to frighten you so!" cried the young woman, contritely, as Miss Thelluson dropped back in her chair, so pale that Mr. Rivers hastily brought her a glass of wine, and spoke sharply to the nurse.

Grace looked at him with a scared face. "It's true, Sir; I hardly know what I'm saying or doing. But never mind! The little one is all right; it's only my own trouble. And I've kept it to myself all day long because I wouldn't trouble her when she was busy over her dinner-party. But oh! miss, will you speak to me now, for my heart's breaking?"

"You should not have minded my being busy, poor girl!" said Hannah, kindly. "What is it?" And then, with a sudden instinctive fear of what it was, she added, "But perhaps you would like to go with me into my own room?"

"No, please, I want to speak to the master too. He's a parson, and must know all about it; and it was him that he went to first!"

"My good woman, if you'll only say what 'it' and 'he' refer to; tell me a plain story, and I'll give you the best ​advice I can, whatever your trouble may be." And Mr. Rivers sat down, looking a little bored—like most men, he had a great dislike to "scenes"—but still kindly enough. "Tell me, is it any thing about your husband?"

Hannah had not given him credit for remembering that fact, or for the patience with which he sat down to listen.

"My husband!" cried poor Grace, catching at the word, and bursting out sobbing. "Yes, you're right, Sir, he is my husband, and I shall always believe he is, though he says he isn't, and that I have no claim upon him, no more than any wicked woman in the street. But I was married, Mr. Rivers!" and the poor girl stood wringing her hands, while her tears fell in floods. "He took me to London and married me there (I've got my certificate in my pocket), and when we came back every body knew it. And a year after, my little baby was born—my poor little baby that I never told you of, miss, for fear you should send me away!"

"Is it living?" said Hannah, gravely, having listened, as Mr. Rivers did also, to this torrent of grief-stricken words.

"Yes; he is living, pretty lamb! though many a time I have wished he wasn't, after what his father said when he went away. But that might not be true, no more true than what he sent me word yesterday; and I've been nigh out of my mind ever since!"

"What was it? Do keep to the point. I can not make out the matter if you talk so much," said Mr. Rivers.

Hannah sat silent, waiting for what was coming next. An uneasy feeling, not exactly a fear, but not unlike it, came over her, as she recalled the long-ago discussion at the Moat House about the Dixon family.

Grace gathered herself up, and looked her master in the face. She was a sweet-looking little woman, usually reticent and quiet enough, but now she seemed desperate with her wrong.

"Dixon says, Sir—that's my husband; he's James Dixon, of your parish—that I'm not his wife in law, and he ​can get rid of me whenever he pleases, only he won't do it if I'll come back and live with him, because he likes me, he says, and all the poor children are crying out for me. But that if I won't come back, he shall go and marry another woman, Mary Bridges, of Easterham, that lived as cook with Lady Rivers. He'll put up the banns here next Sunday, he says."

"He can not. It would be bigamy."

"Bigamy! That's taking a second wife while your first wife's living, isn't it, Sir? And I'm living, though I wasn't his first wife; but I suppose that doesn't matter. Oh, why did I ever take him! But it was all for them poor children's sakes; and he was such a good husband to my sister that I thought for sure he'd be a good husband to me!"

Mr. Rivers started. "Stop a minute. Your story is very confused; but I think I take it in now. Is James Dixon the Dixon who once came to me, asking me to marry him to his deceased wife's sister? And were you that person?"

He spoke in a formal, uncomfortable voice; his cheek reddened a little, and he looked carefully away from the corner where Hannah was sitting. She did not move—how could she?—but she felt hot and red, and wished herself anywhere except where she was, and was obliged to remain.

Grace spoke on, full of eager anxiety: "Yes, Sir, he did come to you, I know, and you told him, he said, that I was not the proper person for him to marry. But he thought I was, and so did I, and so did all the neighbors. You see, Sir"—and in her desperation the poor young woman came close up to her master—"I was very fond of my poor sister, and she of me, and when she was dying, she begged me to come and take care of her children. Jim was very glad of it too. And so I went to live with him; it was the most natural thing possible, and—it wasn't wrong, thiss, was it?"

Hannah felt she must answer the appeal. She did so with a half-inaudible but distinct "No."

​"Nobody said it was wrong. Nobody blamed me. And the children got so fond of me, and I made Jim so comfortable, that at last he said he couldn't do without me, and we had better get married at once. Was that wrong, Sir?"

"Yes; it was against the law," said Mr. Rivers, in the same cold tone, looking into the fire, and pushing backward and forward the ring he wore on his little finger—poor Rosa's wedding-ring, taken from her dead hand.

"But people do it, Sir. I know two or three in our village as have done it, and nobody ever said a word against them. And, as it was, people did begin to say a deal against me." Grace hung her head a minute, and then lifted it up again in fierce innocence. "But it was all lies, Sir. I declare before God it was. I was an honest girl always. I told Jim I wouldn't look at him unless he married me. So he did at last. Look here, Sir."

Mr. Rivers took nervously the marriage certificate, read it over, gave it back again, and still remained silent.

"It's all right, Sir? I know it is! He did marry me?"

"Yes—but—"

"And it wasn't true what he said when, after a while, he took to drinking, and we squabbled a bit—that he could get rid of me whenever he liked, and marry somebody else? It wasn't true, Sir? Oh, please say it wasn't true, if only for the sake of my poor baby!"

And Grace stood waiting for the answer that to her was life or death.

All this while Miss Thelluson had sat silent, scarcely lifting her eyes from the carpet, except once or twice to poor Grace's face, with keen compassion. Not that the question seemed to concern her much, or that she attempted to decide the wrong or right of it; only the whole case seemed so very pitiful. And she had grown fond of Grace, who was a very good girl, and in feeling and education rather superior to her class.

As for Mr. Rivers, the look in his eyes, which he carefully kept from meeting any other's eyes, was not com ​passion at all; but perplexity, uneasiness, even irritation—the annoyance of a man who finds himself in a difficult position, which he wishes sincerely he were well out of.

To Grace's frantic question he gave no reply at all. She noticed this, and the form of her entreaty changed. "You don't think I did wrong to marry him, Sir? You are a parson, and ought to know. Was it wicked, do you think? My sister—that's Mrs. John Dixon, a very good, religious woman, and a Methody, too—told me no; that the Bible said a man was not to marry his wife's sister in her lifetime, which meant that he might do it after her death."

"Apparently you have studied the subject very closely; closer, I doubt not, than I have," replied Mr. Rivers, in that hard voice of his. Hannah thought it at the time almost cruel. "Therefore there is the less need for me to give you any opinion, which I am very reluctant to do."

A blank look came into poor Grace's beseeching eyes. "But, Sir, my sister—"

"Mrs. Dixon is a Dissenter, many of whom, I believe, think as she does on this matter; but we Church people can only hold to the prayer-book and the law. Both forbid such marriages as yours. You being brother and sister—"

"But we weren't, Sir; not even cousins. Indeed, I never set eyes on Jim till just before Jane died."

"You being brother and sister," irritably repeated Mr. Rivers, "or the law making you such—"

"But how could it make us when we were not born so?" pleaded poor Grace, with a passionate simplicity.

"You being brother and sister," Mr. Rivers said, for the third time, and now with actual sternness, "you could not possibly be married. Or if you were married, as you say, it was wholly against the law. James Dixon has taken advantage of this, as I have heard of other men doing; but I did not believe it of him."

Grace turned whiter and whiter. "Then what he says is really true? I am not his wife?"

​"I can't help you; I wish I could," said Mr. Rivers, at last looking down upon the piteous face. "I am afraid it is only too true."

"And my baby, my baby! I don't care for myself much! but my baby!"

"If you ask me to tell you the truth, I must tell it. I refused to marry James Dixon because I knew it would be no marriage at all, and could only be effected by deceiving the clergyman, as I suppose was done. Therefore you are not his wife, and your baby is, of course, an illegitimate child."

Grace gave a shrill scream that might have been heard through the house. Lest it should be heard, or from some other instinct which she did not reason upon, Miss Thelluson jumped up, and shut and bolted the door. When she turned back the poor girl lay on the floor in a dead faint.

Hannah took her up in her arms.

"Please help me!" she said to Mr. Rivers, not looking at him. "I think the servants are all gone to bed. I hope they are; it will be much better. Once get her up stairs, and I can look after her myself."

"Can you? Will it not harm you?"

"Oh no!" and Hannah looked pitifully on the stony face that lay on her lap. "It has been very hard for her. Poor thing! poor thing!"

Mr. Rivers said nothing, but silently obeyed his sister-in-law's orders, and between them they carried Grace up to Miss Thelluson's room. Almost immediately afterward she heard him close the door of his own, and saw no more of him, or any one except her charge, till morning.