Hannah/Chapter 5

Miss Thelluson had always been lamentably deficient in the quality which is called "respect of persons." She tended her servant half the night through as carefully as if poor Grace had been her personal friend, and a lady ​born. There was, indeed, much of the lady about the girl, which was Hannah's great comfort in having her as nurse—a refinement of manner and feeling, and a fine sense of honor, not always found in her class. For since she had been mistress of a large house and many servants Miss Thelluson had discovered to her grief that, in these days, the moral standard of kitchen and parlor was not always the same. Still, in her nurse she had always comfort; and Grace, probably on account of this difference, or for other reasons—now patent enough—had seemed to dislike mixing much with the other servants. Her mistress could trust her thoroughly. She was, indeed, quite a personal friend—as every faithful servant ought to be.

When the poor girl came to herself she poured her whole sad story into her mistress's patient ear.

"I had no idea I was doing wrong—no, that I hadn't!" moaned she. "Two or three in our village had married their sister's husband. What can a poor working-man do when he is left with a lot of children, but get their aunt to come and look after them? And then, if she's young, or, indeed, anyhow, people are sure to begin talking. Isn't it better to stop their wicked tongues by marrying her at once, and making all right and comfortable? For they're not comfortable—I wasn't. And they're not real brother and sister, whatever master says. And I'm sure they can be married; for there was our old squire, he married two sisters, and had two families, one all girls, the other boys. And the eldest son by the second marriage—young Mr. Melville—came in for the property, and is the squire now. And nobody ever said his mother wasn't lawfully married, no more than, when I came home from London, the neighbors said I wasn't married to Jim. Married in church, too, though we were Methodists both; and neither the parson nor our own minister ever said a word against it."

Though the poor girl talked in a wild, rambling, excited fashion, still there was some sense in her arguments; and when she implored Miss Thelluson to speak to Mr. Rivers again, and repeat all she said, and ask if there was not a ​chance of his having been mistaken, or if he could not, at least, prevent the marriage with Ann Bridges, Hannah scarcely knew what to say. At last, just to soothe her—for, out of consideration to her mistress, Grace had kept her misery to herself for a day and a half, till it had almost driven her frantic—she promised to do her best in the matter.

"And you'll do it at once, miss; and tell master that whatever is done should be done at once, or Jim will get married, and then what is to become of me and my poor child? It isn't myself that I care for. I didn't do wrong God knows I didn't! And I don't mind what folk say of me; but it's my poor boy. And it's Jim, too, a little; I don't want Jim to do wrong either."

And she shed a few tears over even the bad fellow, who, she confessed, had in his drunken fits beaten her many a time.

"But I forgive him, for he was drunk," said she, using that too common but mistaken excuse. "And then I had the children to comfort me. Such dear little things they were, and so fond of me! And he'll go and bring that woman Bridges to be step-mother over them, and she is a bad temper, and she's sure to ill-treat them, poor lambs! Jenny's poor little motherless lambs! I must go back to them directly." And she sat up in bed, in an agony of distress. "Oh, miss, please give me my clothes, and I'll get up and dress, and be off by daylight."

This bitter grief, not over her own boy—who, she said, was safe with his grandmother—but over her dead sister's children, touched Hannah to the quick. She could understand it so well.

"You must lie quiet," said she; "or, rather, you must go back to your own bed beside Rosie. You have quite forgotten Rosie."

The right chord was struck. The young woman had evidently a strong sense of duty, besides being excessively fond of her charge; for Rosie was a little creature that won every body. So she sat up, fastened back her di​sheveled hair, and with her mistress's help tottered back to the nursery. Soon she settled herself in her customary corner, stretching out a caressing hand to the crib beside her bed, where, sleeping quite alone, but as sweetly as if all the angels of heaven were watching over her, little Rosie lay.

"Ah! baby, baby," Grace sobbed, "what would have become of me all these months without you, baby!"

What would become of many a miserable woman if it were not for a baby!

How Grace had ever left her own Hannah could not imagine; but found afterward it was the hard necessity of earning money, the grandmother being very poor, and Jim Dixon having gone off in search of work, and left the whole combined families in the old woman's hands. Now he reclaimed his three eldest, but disowned Grace's unfortunate babe.

"My boy—remember my boy!" implored she, as in the dim dawn of the morning her mistress left her, hoping her utter exhaustion would incline her to sleep. "Promise me that you will speak to the master, if only for the sake of my poor boy."

Hannah promised; but when she went back to her room and thought it all over—for she could not sleep—she was sorely perplexed. There might be some mistake, even though Mr. Rivers, who was a magistrate as well as a clergyman, spoke so decidedly. Grace's arguments were strong; and the case of Mr. Melville, whom she had herself met at the Moat House, was, to say the least, curious. She herself knew nothing of the law. If she could only speak to any body who did know, instead of to her brother-in-law! Once she thought of writing to Lady Dunsmore; but then what would the countess imagine? No doubt, that she wanted the information for herself. And Hannah grew hot all over with shame and pain, and another feeling which was neither the one nor the other, and which she did not stay to analyze, except that it made her feel more reluctant than ever to name the subject again to Mr. Rivers.

​Still Grace was so unfortunate; so innocently wicked—if wickedness there was. And the projected marriage of Dixon seemed much more so.

"Mr. Rivers will never allow it in his church. He surely would not sanction such a cruel thing, even if it be legal. And there is no time to lose. Whatever it costs me, I must speak to him at once."

With this resolution, and deadening her mind to any other thoughts, Hannah lay down, and tried to sleep, but in vain. After an hour or two of restless tossing, she dressed herself, and descended to the breakfast-room.

There she found Mr. Rivers playing with little Rosie—contrary to his habit; for he seldom saw her of mornings. He looked a little confused at being discovered.

"I sent for the child," said he. "Don't you think, Aunt Hannah, she is old enough to come down to breakfast with us?"

"Not quite," said Hannah, smiling; "but she can stay and play about on the floor. I dare say she will be good—won't she, auntie's darling?"

And auntie clasped fondly the little thing, who had tottered up to her and hid the pretty fair head in her gown-skirt. Mr. Rivers looked at them, and turned suddenly away—as he often did now.

Rosie behaved beautifully—for about five minutes!—and then began to perpetrate a few ignorant naughtinesses; such as pulling down a silver fork, and a butterknife, with a great clatter; then creeping beneath the table, and trying to stand upright there, which naturally caused a bump on the head, and a scream so violent that Aunt Hannah, frightened out of all proprieties, quitted her seat and walked up and down the room, soothing in her arms the piteous little wailer.

"This will never do," said papa, sternly. "Pray take the child up stairs."

Which Hannah thankfully did, and staid away some minutes; feeling that, after all, the nursery was the safest, the most peaceful, and the pleasantest room in the house.

​When she came back, her brother-in-law had finished breakfast, and was standing gazing out of the sunshiny window in a sort of dream. His temporary crossness had subsided; his face, though grave, was exceedingly sweet. Now that she had grown used to it, and it had gradually brightened, if not into happiness, at least into composure and peace, Hannah sometimes thought she had seldom seen so thoroughly sweet a face—such a combination of the man and the woman—that beautiful woman whose picture at the Moat House she often looked at, and wondered what kind of young creature the first Lady Rivers had been. Apparently not like the second Lady Rivers at all.

It was exactly his mother's smile with which Mr. Rivers turned round now.

"So the little maid is comforted at last. What influence you women have over babies, and what helpless beings we men are with them! Why, it is as much as papa can do to keep Miss Rosie quiet for five minutes, and Aunt Hannah has her the whole day. Do you never tire of her?"

"Never. No more does Grace, who has an instinctive love for children—which all women have not, I assure you. This is what makes her so valuable as a nurse."

Hannah said this intentionally; for, not two minutes before, the girl had run after her with a wild white face. "Have you spoken to the master? Will you speak to him? Don't forsake me! Ask him to help me! Oh, Miss Thelluson, I'm fond of your child—think of mine!" Even if Hannah had not liked and respected Grace so much, to her good heart, now open to all children for Rosie's sake, this argument would have struck home.

"I hope the young woman is better this morning, and that you did not fatigue yourself too much with her last night," said Mr. Rivers, coldly; and then began speaking of something else. But Hannah, bracing up her courage, determined to discharge her unpleasant duty at once.

​"Have you ten minutes to spare? Because I have a special message to you from Mrs. Dixon."

"What Mrs. Dixon?"

"Grace. She insists upon it she has a legal right to the name."

"She is under a complete delusion, and the sooner she wakes up out of it the better. Pray, Hannah, do not, with your weak womanish pity, encourage her for a moment."

Mr. Rivers spoke sharply—more sharply than any gentleman ought to speak to any lady; though men sometimes think they are justified in doing so—to wives and sisters. But her brother-in-law had never thus spoken to Hannah before—she was not used to it; and she looked at him, first surprised, then slightly indignant.

"My pity is not weak or womanish, nor do I call it pity at all. It is simple love of justice. Either Grace is married or not married. All I want is, for her sake and the child's, to find out the exact law of the case."

"Which is just what I told her last night. No doubt she was married, as she says; only the marriage, being illegal, is null and void."

"But she says such marriages are not uncommon."

"I believe they are not, in the lower classes. Nevertheless, those who risk them must take the consequences. The wife is only the mistress, and the children are baseborn. I beg your pardon for putting plain facts into plain language, but you compel me. Why will you meddle in this unpleasant matter? It can be nothing to you."

And he looked at her keenly as he spoke, but Hannah did not perceive it just then. Her interest was too strongly excited for the cruel position of poor Grace. She recalled involuntarily an old argument of Lady Dunsmore on this very subject—whether any wrong could be exactly "nothing" to any honest-minded man or woman, even though he or she were not personally affected thereby.

"Pardon me," she answered, gently, "it is something to me to see any human being in great misery, if by any possibility that misery could be removed. Are you quite ​sure you are right as to the law? It can not always have been what you say, because Grace tells me of a certain Mr. Melville who visits at the Moat House—" And Hannah repeated the story. "Can it be possible," added she, "that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor?"

"No. But in 1835 the law was altered, or at least modified: all such marriages then existing were confirmed, and all future ones declared illegal. Melville escaped by a hair-breadth only, his parents having been married in 1834."

"Then what was right one year was wrong the next? That is, to my weak womanly notions, a very extraordinary form of justice."

Her brother-in-law regarded her inquiringly. Evidently he was surprised; did not at first take in the intense single-mindedness of the woman who could thus throw herself out of herself, and indignantly argue the cause of another, even though it trenched upon ground so delicate that most feminine instincts would have let it alone. He looked at her; and then his just nature divining the utter innocence and indifference out of which she spoke, he said nothing—only sighed.

"You are a very good woman, Hannah—I know that—and Grace ought to be exceedingly obliged to you. But you can not help her-not in the least."

"And can not you? Could you not, at least, prevent the man's marrying another woman—as he means to do in your very church next Sunday?"

"Does he? The brute!" cried Mr. Rivers, passionately. Then, relapsing into his former coldness—"I fear nothing can be done. The former marriage being invalid, he can contract another at any time—legally, I mean; the moral question is a different thing."

"So it seems," said Hannah, bitterly; for she was vexed at his manner—it seemed so hard, so unlike his usual warm, generous way of judging matters. "But," she argued, resolved to leave not a stone unturned for her poor servant's ​sake, "if the marriage with Grace was unlawful, why can not he be prosecuted for that, as for bigamy or similar offenses? Either it was a crime, or it was not. If it was, punish it by the law; if not—"

"You reason like a woman," interrupted Mr. Rivers angrily. "When I, a man, have already argued the question with myself in every possible way—" He stopped abruptly. "I mean that you women will only see two sides of a subject—the right and the wrong."

"Yes, thank Heaven!"

"Whereas there are many sides, and a man requires to see them all. But we are slipping into ethical discussion, which you and I are rather prone to, Aunt Hannah. Suppose, instead, we go and look at our roses?"

Go and look at roses when a fellow-creature was hanging on every breath of theirs for hope or despair! Hannah had never thought her brother-in-law so hard-hearted.

"I can't go," she said. "I must first speak to poor Grace. What shall I say to her?"

"Whatever you like. But I think the less you say the better. And perhaps, if you could gently hint it, the sooner she leaves us the better. Of course she will have to leave."

"Leave!" repeated Hannah, much startled by the new phase which this most unlucky affair was assuming. "Why 'of course?' I never thought of her leaving."

"Do you not see? But no, you can not—you see nothing at all!" muttered Bernard Rivers to himself. "Do you not perceive," continued he, earnestly, "that we live in a house on a hill, morally as well as physically? That a clergyman must keep himself out of the slightest shadow of evil comment? I especially, both as rector of Easterham and as Sir Austin's son, must expect to have my acts and motives sharply criticised, and perhaps many a motive ascribed to me which does not exist. No; I have been thinking the matter over all the morning, and I see no alternative. Grace ought to go. I believe Lady Rivers and all at the Moat House would say the same."

​Hannah drew back. She had never resisted her brother-in-law before—not even in cases where she had thought him a little wrong: though this happened seldom. She had found out that, like most men who are neither selfish nor egotistical, he was remarkably just. Now she felt him to be unjust. To send away Rosie's fond and faithful nurse would be to the child herself a very harmful thing—to Grace, in her circumstances, a bitter unkindness, not to say an actual wrong; and Miss Thelluson was not the woman to stand tamely by and see a wrong done to any human being if she could help it.

Still it was needful to be very guarded, and she might even have been less courageous had not the allusion to the Moat House and its opinions—always more or less shallow and worldly—stirred up in her something of that righteous indignation which blazed up, quite unexpectedly sometimes, in Aunt Hannah's quiet bosom.

"Excuse me," she said, more formally than she was used to speak, in the free and pleasant, even affectionate, relations that now subsisted between Mr. Rivers and herself. "Lady Rivers is mistress of the Moat House, but not of the House on the Hill. When you did me the honor to give me that position, you distinctly said I should manage it as I chose. I claim my right. For Rosie's sake, I must beg of you not to send away her nurse."

"Good Heavens! you will not see! How can I, placed as I am, keep in my house a woman who is disgraced for life?"

"Not disgraced; only unfortunate. She is a very good girl indeed. She protests solemnly she had not an idea that in marrying James Dixon she was doing wrong."

"How you women do hold to your point!" said Mr. Rivers, in great irritation, almost agitation. "But she has done wrong. She has broken the law. In the eye of the law she is neither more nor less than a poor seduced girl, mother of a bastard child."

Now Hannah Thelluson was an exceedingly "proper" person. That is, though not ignorant of the wickedness ​of the world—the things "done in secret," as St. Paul terms them—she agreed with St. Paul that it was a shame to speak of them, unless unavoidable, and for some good end. If duty required, she would have waded through any quantity of filth; but she did not like it; she preferred keeping in clean paths if possible. Oftentimes she had been startled, not to say shocked, by the light way in which some fast young ladies who came about the Moat House, and even the Misses Rivers themselves, talked of things which she and the girls of her generation scarcely knew existed, and certainly would never have spoken about, except to their own mothers. And among the qualities in Mr. Rivers which first drew her toward him was one which women soon instinctively find out in men—as men, they say, in women—that rare delicacy of thought and action which no outward decorum can ever imitate, because it springs from an innate chastity of soul. Thus, when, in his excitement, Mr. Rivers used such exceedingly plain ugly words, Miss Thelluson looked at him in intense astonishment, and blushed all over her face.

Some people called Hannah a plain woman—that is, she was tall and thin and colorless, not unlike the white lily she had been compared to; but when she blushed, it was like the white lily with a rosy sunset glow upon it. For the moment she looked absolutely pretty. Something in Mr. Rivers's eyes made her conscious that he thought so—or, at least, that he was thinking of her, and not of poor Grace or the subject in hand at all.

"Why do you not oftener wear white—I like it so much?" he said, softly touching her gown, a thick muslin, embroidered with black, which she thought would be a sort of medieval compromise. She was so fond of white that it was half regretfully she had decided she was too old to wear it. But among her new dresses she could not resist this one. It pleased her to have it noticed, or would have done, had not her mind been full of other things.

"I was going to the picnic in Langmead Wood, you know; but never mind that just now. Before I start I ​shall have to tell poor Grace her doom. A heavy blow it will be. Do not ask me to make it worse by telling her she must leave us."

Bernard was silent.

"I can not bear to resist your will," pleaded she. "When I first came here I made up my mind to obey you—that is, in all domestic things—even as she would have done. But even she would have resisted you in this. Were she living now, I am sure she would say exactly as I do—dear, tender-hearted Rosa!"

"Why do you name her?" said Mr. Rivers, in a low tone. "Are you not afraid?"

"Afraid! Why should I be? Of all women I ever knew, my sister had the truest heart, the quickest sense of justice. If she thought a thing was right, she would say it—ay, and do it, too—in face of the whole world. So would I."

"Would you? Are you one of those women who have courage to defy the world?"

"I think I am, if I were tried; but I never have been tried. I hope I never may be; and I hope, too, that you will save me from doing any more in the defiant line," added she, smiling, "by retracting what you said, and letting Grace stay."

"But how can she stay? How can you keep her miserable story a secret?"

"I should not keep it a secret at all. I would tell every body the whole truth, explaining that we drew the line between guilt and innocence; that you refused to marry James Dixon to this new wife of his, but that the poor creature whom he had made believe she was his wife should stay under the shelter of your roof as long as she liked. That, I am sure, would be the just and right way to act. Shall it be so?"

"You are a courageous woman, Hannah. But," added he, with a sad kind of smile, "it is like the courage of little boys venturing on our frozen pond there: they do not know how deep it is. No, no; I can not thus run counter ​to my own people and to all the world. In truth, I dare not."

"Dare not!" Hannah blazed up, in that sudden way of hers whenever she saw a wrong done—doubly so when any one she cared for did it. She had lived with Mr. Rivers nearly a year now, and, whether she cared for him or not, she had never seen any thing in him which made her cease to respect him. Until now. "Dare not!" she repeated, almost doubting if she had heard truly. "When there is a certain course of conduct open to him, be it right or wrong, I always believed that the last reason an honest man gave for declining it would be, 'I dare not!'"

The moment she had made this bitter speech—one of the old sarcastic speeches of her girlhood—Hannah saw it was a mistake; that she was taking with Mr. Rivers a liberty which even a flesh-and-blood sister had no right to take, and she was certain he felt it so. All the proud Norman blood rushed up to his forehead.

"I never knew I was a coward, Miss Thelluson. Since you think me one, I will relieve you of my company."

Opening the French window at once, he passed out of it into the garden, and disappeared.

Hannah stood, overwhelmed. During all the months they had lived under the same roof, and in the close intimacy that was inevitable under the circumstances, she and her brother-in-law had never had any thing approaching to a quarrel. They had differed widely sometimes, but always amicably, and upon abstract rather than personal grounds. Those "sharp words," which even the dearest friends say to one another sometimes, had never passed between them. His extraordinarily sweet temper—oh, how keenly Hannah now appreciated her sister's fond praise of the blessing it was to have a sweet-tempered husband!—his utter absence of worldliness and self-conceit; and that warm, good heart, which, as the cloud of misery slowly passed away from him, shone out in every thing he did and said—all these things made quarreling with Bernard Rivers almost impossible.

​"What have I done?" thought Hannah, half laughing, half crying. "He must think me a perfect virago. I will apologize the minute he comes back."

But he did not come back: not though she waited an hour in the breakfast-room, putting off her household duties, and even that other, as painful as it was inevitable—speaking to poor Grace. But he never came. Then, going into the hall, she saw that his hat and coat had vanished. She knew his appointments of the morning, and was sure now that he was gone, and would be away the whole day.

Then Hannah became more than perplexed—thoroughly unhappy. Even Grace's forlorn face, when she told her—she had not the heart to tell more—that Mr. Rivers could promise nothing, but that she hoped he would prevent the marriage, if possible, failed to affect her much; and Rosie's little arms round her neck, and the fond murmur of "Tannie, Tannie," did not give nearly the comfort that they were wont to do.

"Tannie has been naughty," said she, feeling a strange relief in confessing her sins to the unconscious child. "Tannie has vexed papa. When Rosie grows up she must never vex papa. She must try to be a comfort to him: he has no one else."

Poor Hannah! She had done wrong, and she knew it. When this was the case, nothing and nobody could soothe Hannah Thelluson.

With a heavy heart she got ready for the picnic—a family affair between this house and the Moat House, which was still full of visitors. The girls were to fetch first their brother from the school-house, and then herself; but when the carriage came round Mr. Rivers was not in it.

"Bernard is thoroughly sulky to-day," said the eldest sister. "He doesn't seem to know his own mind at all, whether he will go or won't; but perhaps he may turn up by-and-by. Don't let us bother about him. Such a splendid day it is for a picnic, and Langmead Wood at its loveliest time! Do let us enjoy ourselves."

​They did enjoy themselves, and certainly, Hannah thought, were not much "bothered" by their brother's sulkiness, or afflicted by his absence. The fraternal bond is so free and easy that, except in cases of very special affection, brothers and sisters can speedily console themselves with somebody else.

But with herself it was not so. She thought the girls rather heartless in missing Bernard so little. She missed him a good deal, and set down her regrets as conscience-stings. They hindered half her enjoyment of the lovely wood, just putting on its green clothing, full of primroses and hyacinths, and nest-building birds pouring out on all sides a rapture of spring-time song. She scarcely heard it, or hearing it only gave her pain.

"I was unkind to him," she thought; "unkind to a man whose wife is dead, who goes lonely through the world, and needs every allowance that can be made for him, every comfort that can be given him. He, too, who is always so considerate and kind to me! How ungrateful I have been!"

So absorbed was she in her contrition that she did not notice for ever so long what otherwise would have interested her much—a very patent love-affair now going on between Adeline Rivers and this same Mr. Melville, the young squire whom Grace had mentioned. To bring him "to the point," as one of the girls confidentially told her, this picnic had been planned, hoping that the tender influence of the woody glades of Langmead would open his heart, and turn it from nebulous courtship to substantial marriage—a marriage evidently highly acceptable to the whole family. Which Hannah thought rather odd, considering what she knew of the family opinions, and that it was but the mere chance of a marriage happening before instead of after the year 1835 which saved Herbert Melville from being in the same position as poor Grace's son—a "base-born" child.

Late in the afternoon Bernard appeared. They were all sitting in a circle round the remnants of the dinner. He ​shook hands with every body, ending with Miss Thelluson. Words were impossible there; but Hannah tried to make her eyes say, "Are we friends? I am so sorry." The apology fell hopeless: he was looking in another direction; and she shrank back into herself, feeling more unhappy, in a foolish, causeless, childish sort of way, than she remembered to have done for at least ten years.

If

to be wroth with ourselves for having wronged one we love is pretty nearly as bad; except that in such a case we are able to punish ourselves unlimitedly, as Hannah did, with the most laudable pertinacity, for a full hour. She listened with patience to endless discussions, tête-à-tête, among Lady Rivers and her girls, upon the chances and prospects of the young couple for whose benefit the picnic was made—who, poor things, knew well what they were brought there for, and what was expected of them before returning home. At any other time she would have pitied or smiled at this pair of lovers, who finally slipped aside among the trees, out of sight, though not out of comment, of their affectionate families; and she might have felt half amused, half indignant, at the cool, public way in which the whole matter was discussed. But now her heart was too sore and sad; she just listened politely to every body that wanted a listener, and meantime heard painfully every word her brother-in-law said, and saw every movement he made—not one, however, in her direction. She made a martyr of herself, did every thing she did not care to do, and omitted the only thing she longed to do—to go up straight to Mr. Rivers and say, "Are you angry with me still? Do you never mean to forgive me?"

Apparently not, for he kept sedulously out of her way, and yet near her, though not a word between them was possible. This behavior at last tantalized her so much that she fairly ran away: stole quietly out of the circle, ​and hid herself in a nut-wood dell, filling her hands with blue hyacinths.

"Hannah, what are you doing?"

"Gathering a nosegay to take home to Rosie."

A brief question and answer. Yet they seemed to clear away the cloud. Mr. Rivers stood watching a little while, and then began helping her to gather the flowers.

"How continually you think of Rosie's pleasure. But you do of every body's. What a warm, good heart you have!"

"Have I? I doubt it," answered Hannah, with a faltering voice; for she was touched by his gentleness, by that wonderfully sweet nature he had—so rare in a man, yet not unmanly, if men could only believe this! Hannah had long ceased to wonder why her brother-in-law was so universally beloved.

"I think you and I rather quarreled this morning, Aunt Hannah? We never did so before, did we?"

"No."

"Then don't let us do it again. Here is my hand."

Hannah took it joyfully, tried to speak, and signally failed.

"You don't mean to say you are crying?"

"I am afraid I am. It is very silly, but I can't help it. I never was used to quarreling, and I have been quite unhappy all day. You see"—and she raised her face with the innocent childlike expression it sometimes wore, more childlike, he once told her, than any creature he ever saw over ten years old—"you see, I had behaved so ill to you—you that are unfailingly kind to me."

"Not kind—say grateful. Oh, Hannah!" he said, with great earnestness, "I owe you more, much more, than I can ever repay. I was sinking into a perfect slough of despond, becoming a miserable, useless wretch, a torment to myself and every body about me, when it came into my head to send for you. You roused me; you made me feel that my life was not ended; that I had still work to do, and strength to do it with. Hannah, if any human being ever saved another, you saved me."

​Hannah was much moved. Still more so when, drooping his head, and playing absently with a mass of dead leaves, from under which blue violets were springing, he added,

"I sometimes think she must have sent you to me—do you?"

"I think thus much—that she would rejoice if I, or any one, was able to do you any good. Any generous woman would, after she had gone away, and could do you good no more. She would wish you to be happy—even if it were with another woman—another wife."

Hannah said this carefully, deliberately; she had long waited for a chance of saying it, that he might know exactly what was her feeling about second marriages, did he contemplate any thing of the sort. He evidently caught her meaning, and was pained by it.

"Thank you. Rosa said much the same thing to me just before she died. But I have no intention of marrying again. At least not now."

Hannah could not tell why, but she felt relieved—even glad. The incubus of several weeks was taken off at once, as well as that other burden, which she had no idea would have weighed her down so much—the feeling of being at variance with her brother-in-law.

He sat down beside her on a felled log, and they began talking of all sorts of things—the beauty of the wood, the wonderfully delicious spring day; and how Rosie would have enjoyed it; how she would enjoy it by-and-by, when she was old enough to be brought to picnics at Langmead. All trivial subjects, lightly and gayly discussed; but they were straws to show how the wind blew, and Hannah was sure now that the wind blew fair again—that Mr. Rivers had forgiven and forgotten every thing.

Not every thing; for he asked suddenly if she had told Grace the bitter truth, and how she bore it.

"Patiently, of course; but she is nearly broken-hearted."

"Poor soul! And you think, Hannah, that if she—Rosa—had been here, she would have let Grace stay?"

​"I am sure she would. She was so just, so pure, so large in all her judgments; she would have seen at once that Grace meant no harm—that no real guilt could attach to her, only misfortune; and, therefore, it was neither necessary nor right to send her away."

"Very well. I came to tell you that she shall not be sent away. I have reconsidered the question, and am prepared to risk all the consequences of keeping her—for my little girl's sake and yours."

Hannah burst into broken thanks, and then fairly began to cry again. She could not tell what was the matter with her. Her joy was as silly and weak-minded as her sorrow. She was so ashamed of herself as to be almost relieved when Mr. Rivers, laughing at her in a kindly, pleasant way, rose up and rejoined his sisters.

The rest of the day she had scarcely ten words with him, yet she felt as happy as possible. Peace was restored between him and herself, and Grace's misery was lightened a little, though, alas! not much. Perhaps, since even her master said she had done no intentional wrong, the poor girl would get used to her lot in time. It could not be a very dreary lot—to take care of Rosie. And Aunt Hannah longed for her little darling—wished she had her in her arms, to show her the heaps of spring flowers, and the rabbits with their funny flashes of white tails, appearing and disappearing beneath the tender ferns that were shooting up under the dead leaves of last year—life out of death, joy out of sorrow, as God meant it to be.

Nay, even the Rivers family and the rest seemed to drop a little of their formal worldliness, and become young men and maidens, rejoicing in the spring. Especially the well-watched pair of lovers, who had evidently come to an understanding, as desired; for when, after a lengthy absence, they reappeared, bringing two small sticks apiece, as their contributions to the fire that was to boil the kettle, their shyness and awkwardness were only equaled by their expression of blushing content.

Why should not old maid Hannah be content likewise, ​though she was not in her teens like Adeline, and had no lover? But she had a tender feeling about lovers still; and in this blithe and happy spring-time it stirred afresh, and her heart was moved in a strange sort of way—half pleasant, half sad.

Besides, this day happened to be an anniversary. Not that Hannah was among those who keep anniversaries; on the contrary, she carefully avoided them; but she never forgot them. Many a time, when nobody knew, she was living over again, with an ineffaced and ineffaceable vividness, certain days and certain hours burned into her memory with the red-hot iron of affliction. The wounds had healed over, but the scars remained. For years she had never seen yellow November fogs without recalling the day when Arthur sailed; nor cowslips, but she remembered having a bunch of them in her hand when she got the letter telling her of his death, just as he was "getting up May Hill," as they often say of consumptive people. And for years—oh, how many years it seemed!—after that day spring days had given her a cruel pain; as if the world had all come alive again, and Arthur was dead.

To-day, even though it was the very anniversary of his death, she felt differently. There came back into her heart that long-forgotten sense of spring, which always used to come with the primroses and cowslips, when Arthur and she played together among them. The world had come alive again, and Arthur had come alive too, but more as when he was a little boy and her playfellow than her lover. A strange kind of fancy entered her mind—a wonder what he was like now—boy, or man, or angel; and what he was doing in that land, which, try as we will, we can not realize, and are not meant to realize, in any way that would narrow our duties here. Whether he still remained the same, or had altered, as she was conscious she had altered; grown as she had grown, and suffered; no, he could not suffer as she had suffered these ten, eleven years. Did he want her? or was he happy without her? Would they, when they met, meet as betrothed lovers, or ​as the angels in heaven, "who neither marry nor are given in marriage?"

All those thoughts, and many more, went flitting across her mind as Miss Thelluson sat in a place she often took—it saved talking, and she liked it—beside the old coachman on the Moat House carriage, as they drove in the soft May twilight, through glade and woodland, moor and down, to Easterham village. And, when far off, she saw the light shining from a window of the House on the Hill, her heart leaped to it—her heart, not her fancy—for there was her warm, happy, human home. There, under that peaceful roof, centred all her duties, all her delights; there, in the quiet nursery, little Rosie lay sleeping, ready to wake up next morning fresh as the flowers, merry as a young lambkin, developing more and more in her opening child-life—the most wonderful and lovely sight God ever gives us, and he gives it us every day—a growing human soul.

"Oh, if Rosa could only see her now—the daughter for whom she died!" sighed Hannah; and then suppressed the sigh as irreligious, unjust. "No. I think if Rosa came back to us, and saw us now—him and her baby, and me—she would not be unhappy. She would say—what I should say myself, if I died—that when God takes our dead from us, he means us not to grieve forever, only to remember."