Hannah/Chapter 8

Hannah's first feeling on discovering her brother-in-law's absence was intense relief. Then, as she sat over the solitary breakfast-table, there came unto her an uneasiness akin to fear. He had done exactly what she had not done; what, in spite of her first instinctive wish, she had decided was unwise and cowardly to do—he had run away.

From what? From the scandal? But since it was all false, and they innocent, what did it matter? Could they not live it down? Dreadful as things had appeared in the long watches of the night, in that clear light of morning, and with the touch of her darling's arms still lingering about her neck, Hannah felt that she could live it down. Perhaps he could not; perhaps he was afraid—and a cold shiver crept over her—a conviction that he was afraid.

In the sick friend she did not quite believe. She knew all Bernard's affairs—knew that though he had an old college companion ill in London, it was no friend close enough to take him suddenly and compulsorily from all his duties—he who so hated going from home. Yes, he must have ​gone on her account, and in consequence of what happened last night. Her first impulse of relief and gratitude sank into another sort of feeling. He had certainly run away, leaving her to fight the battle alone. That is, if he meant them to fight it out. If not, if he wished her to leave him in his absence, he would perhaps take the opportunity of telling her so.

For not yet—not even yet—did that other solution of the difficulty suggest itself to Hannah's mind. Had she looked at the sweet, grave face reflected in the mirror opposite, had she heard the patient, tender voice which answered Rosie's infantile exactions—for she had gone and fetched the child, as usual, after breakfast—the truth would at once have occurred to her concerning any other woman. But it did not concerning herself; or only in that form—a rather sad but perfectly safe one—not that her brother-in-law was growing fond of her, but that she was growing fond of him; fond enough to make his marriage, or any other catastrophe which should part them, not so indifferent to her as it once had been.

But still this was only affection. Hannah had never had a brother, her nearest approach to the tie having been her cousin Arthur, who, from his extreme gentleness and delicacy of health, was less like a brother than a sister—ay, even after he changed into a lover. Now, when not one spark of passion, only sacred tenderness, was mixed up with the thought of him, his memory was less that of a man than an angel. In truth, only since she had lived with Mr. Rivers had Hannah found out what it was to associate with a real man, at once strong and tender, who put a woman in her right place by conscientiously taking his own with regard to her, and being to her at once a shelter and a shield.

Poor Hannah! she had grown so accustomed now to be taken care of, that she felt if fate thrust her out into the bitter world again she should be as helpless as one of those little fledgelings about whom, in the intervals of her meditations, she was telling Rosie a pathetic story. And when ​Rosie said, "Poor little dicky-birds!" and looked quite sad, then, seeing Aunt Hannah look sad too—alas! not about "dicky-birds"—burst into the sympathetic sobbing of her innocent age, Aunt Hannah's heart felt like to break.

It would have broken many a time that day but for the blessed necessity of keeping a bright face before the child—ay, even though sometimes there occurred to her, with a refined self-torture, the thought of what she should do if Mr. Rivers sent her away without Rosie. But she did not seriously fear this—he could not be capable of such cruelty. If he were, why, Aunt Hannah was quite capable of—something else which he might not exactly like, and which perhaps the unpleasant English law might call child-stealing. And she remembered a story, a true story, of an aunt who had once traveled from England to America, and there fairly kidnapped from some wicked relations her dead sister's child; pretended to take it out for a walk, and fled over snow and through forests, traveling by night and hiding by day, till she caught the New York steamer, and sailed, safe and triumphant, for English shores.

"As I would sail, for Australia or America, any day, if he drives me to it. Oh, Rosie, you little know what a desperate woman Tannie could be made!"

And Rosie laughed in her face, and stroked it, and said, "Good Tannie, pretty Tannie!" till the demon sank down, and the pure angel that always seems to look out of baby-eyes comforted Hannah in spite of herself. No one can be altogether wretched, for long together, who has the charge of a healthy, happy, loving little child.

Sunday came, but Mr. Rivers did not return, sending as substitute in his pulpit an old college chum, who reported that he had left London for Cambridge, and was staying there in his old college; at which Lady Rivers expressed herself much pleased.

"He shuts himself up far too much at home, which would be natural enough if he had a wife, but for a man in Ber​nard's circumstances is perfectly ridiculous. I hope he will now see his mistake and correct it."

Hannah answered nothing. She knew she was being talked at, as was the habit of the Moat House. Her only protection was not to seem to hear. She had, as he desired, taken Bernard's message to his family, even showing the letter, and another letter she got from him respecting Mr. Hewlett, the clergyman, also evidently meant to be shown. Indeed, he wrote almost daily to her about some parish business or other, for Hannah had become to him like her lost sister—his "curate in petticoats." But every letter was the briefest, most matter-of-fact possible, beginning "My dear sister," and ending "your affectionate brother." Did he do this intentionally, or make the epistles public intentionally? She rather thought so. A wise, kind precaution; and yet there is something painful and aggravating in any friendship which requires precautions.

Day after day Hannah delivered her brother-in-law's messages, and transacted his business, speaking and looking as calmly as if she were his mere locum tenens, his faithful "curate"—as if her throat were not choking and her hands trembling, with that horrible lie of Dixon's ever present to her mind. She tried to find out whether it had ever reached others' minds—whether there was any difference in the way people glanced at or addressed her; but beyond a certain carelessness with which she was usually treated at the Moat House when Mr. Rivers was not present, and a slight coldness in other houses—which might or might not have been her own morbid fancy—she discovered nothing.

The clergyman sent by Bernard, being of no imposing personality or high worldly standing, but only just a poor "coach" at Cambridge, was not invited to stay at the Moat House; so Miss Thelluson had to entertain him herself till Monday. It was an easy task enough; he was very meek, very quiet, and very full of admiration of Mr. Rivers, concerning whose college life he told Hannah sto​ries without end. She listened with an interest strangely warm and tender; for the tales were all to his credit, and proved him to have been then, as now, a man who, even as a young man, was neither afraid of being good nor ashamed of being amiable. They made her almost forgive herself for another fact which had alarmed and startled her—that she missed him so much.

People of Hannah's character, accustomed of sad necessity to stand alone until self-dependent solitude becomes second nature, do not often "miss" other people. They like their friends well enough, are glad to meet and sorry to part; but still no ordinary parting brings with it that intense sense of loss of which Hannah was painfully conscious now her brother-in-law was away. She had thought the child was company enough; and so Rosie was in daylight hours—the little imperious darling, who ruled Aunt Hannah with a rod of iron, except when Aunt Hannah saw it was for the child's good to govern her, when she turned the tables with a firm gentleness that Rosie never disobeyed—but after Rosie had gone to bed the blank silence which seemed to fall upon the house was indescribable.

Oh, the lonely tea-table!—for she had abolished seven o'clock dinners; oh, the empty drawing-room, with its ghostly shadows and strange noises! The happy home felt as dreary as Bernard must have found it after poor Rosa died. In the long hours of evening solitude Hannah's thoughts, beaten back by the never-ceasing business of the day, returned in battalions, attacking her on every weak side, often from totally opposite sides, so that she retired, worsted, to her inner self—the little secret chambers which her soul had dwelt in ever since she was a child. Yet even there was no peace now. Bernard had let himself into her heart with that wonderful key of sympathy which he so well knew how to use, and even in her deepest and most sacred self she was entirely her own no more. Continually she wanted him—to talk to, to argue with, to laugh with, nay, even to laugh at sometimes. She missed ​him everywhere, in every thing, with the bitter want of those who, having lived together for many months, come inevitably, as was before said, either to dislike one another excessively, or—that other alternative, which is sometimes the most fatal of the two—to love one another. Such love has a depth and passion to which common feelings can no more be compared than the rolling of a noisy brook to the solemn flow of a silent river which bears life or death in its waveless but inexorable tide.

Ay, it was life or death. Call affection by what name you will, when it becomes all-absorbing it can, in the case of persons not akin by blood, lead but to one result, the love whose right end is marriage. When Hannah, as her brother-in-law's continued absence gave her more time for solitary reflection than she had had for many months, came face to face with the plain fact, how close they had grown, and how necessary they were to one another, she began, startled, to ask herself if this so-called sisterly feeling were really sisterly? What if it were not? What if she had deceived herself, and that sweet, sad, morning dream, which she had thought protected her from all other dreams of love and marriage, had been, after all, only a dream, and this the reality? Or would it have grown into such had she and Bernard met as perfect strangers, free to fall in love and marry as strangers do?

"Suppose we had—suppose such a thing had been possible?" thought she. And then came a second thought. Why was it impossible? Who made it so—God or man?

Hannah had hitherto never fairly considered the matter—not even when Grace's misery had brought it home. With her natural dislike to what she called "walking through muddy water," she had avoided it, as one does avoid any needlessly unpleasant thing. Now, when she felt herself turning hot and cold at every new idea which entered her mind, and beginning to think of her brother-in-law—not at all as she was wont to think—the question came, startlingly, was she right or wrong in so doing? ​For she was one of those women after the type of Jeanie in "Auld Robin Gray," to whom the mere fact,

was the beginning and end of every thing.

But was it a sin? Could she find any thing in the Bible to prove it such? She took down a "Concordance," and searched out all the texts which bore upon the subject, but found none, except that prohibition adduced once by Mrs. Dixon—"Thou shalt not take a wife to her sister in her life-time"—of which the straightforward, natural interpretation was that, consequently, it might be done after her death.

Right or wrong. That, as Mr. Rivers had more than once half satirically told her, was, in all things, the sole question in Hannah's mind. As for the social and legal point—lawful marriage—that, she knew, was impossible; Bernard had said so himself. But was the love which desired marriage—absolute love, as distinguished from mere affection—also a sin? If it should spring up in her heart—of his she never thought—should she have to smother it down as a wicked thing?

That was her terror, and that alone. The rest, and whatever it must result in, was mere misery; and Hannah was not afraid of misery, only of sin. Yet, when day after day Bernard's absence lengthened, and except these constant business letters she had no personal tidings whatever from him, there grew in her mind a kind of fear. The house felt so empty without him that she sometimes caught herself wondering how he managed without her—who brought him his hat and gloves, and arranged his daily memoranda—for, like most other excellent men, he was a little disorderly, and very dependent upon the women about him. Who would take care of him, and see that he had the food he liked, and the warm wraps he required? All these thoughts came continually back upon Hannah, in a piteously human, tender shape, quite different from that dim dream-love, that sainted remembrance, of her ​lost Arthur. He was not a man like Bernard, helpless even while helpful, requiring one woman's whole thought and care—he was an angel among the angels.

That power which every good man has to turn all his female ministrants into slaves, by being himself the very opposite of a tyrant; who can win from all household hearts the most loyal devotion, because exacting none—this, the best prerogative and truest test of real manhood, was Bernard's in a very great degree. It was, as Hannah had once innocently told him, a blessing to live with him, he made other people's lives so bright. She had no idea how dark the house could feel till he was gone—till, day after day slipping by, and he not returning, it settled itself for the time into a house without a master, a solar system without a sun.

When she recognized this, the sense of her fast-coming fate darkened down upon Hannah. She was not a young girl, to go on deceiving herself to the end; nay, hers was the kind of nature that can not deceive itself if it would. During the first week of Bernard's absence she would have almost gone wild sometimes, but for the strong conviction—like poor Grace's, alas!—that she had done nothing wrong, and the feeling, still stronger, that she could always bear any thing which only harmed herself.

Then she had the child. In all that dreadful time, which afterward she looked back upon as a sort of nightmare, she kept Rosie always beside her. Looking in her darling's face—the little fragile flower which had blossomed into strength under her care, the piece of white paper upon which any careless hand might have scribbled any thing, to remain indelible through life—then Aunt Hannah took heart even in her misery. She could have done no wrong, since, whatever happened to herself, she had saved, by coming to Easterham, the child.

On the second Saturday of Mr. Rivers's absence Hannah was sitting on the floor with Rosie, in the drawing-room, between the lights. It had been a long, wet, winter day, and had begun with a perplexing visit from the church​warden, wanting to know if the vicar had come home, and, if not, what must be done for Sunday. Hannah had had no letter, and could not tell; could only suggest that a neighboring clergyman might probably have to be sent for, and arrange who it should be. And the vexed look of the old church-warden, a respectable farmer; a certain wonder he showed at his principal's long absence—"so very unlike our parson"—together with a slight incivility to herself, which Hannah, so fearfully observant now, fancied she detected in his manner, made her restless and unhappy for hours after. Not till she had Rosie beside her, and drank of the divine lethe-cup which infant hands always bring, did the painful impression subside. Now, in the peace of firelight within, and a last amber gleam of rainy sunset without, she and Rosie had the world all to themselves; tiny fingers curled tightly round hers, with the sweet, imperative "Tannie, tum here!" and a little blue and white fairy held out its mushroom-like frock, with "Rosie dance, Tannie sing!" And Tannie did sing, with a clearness and cheerfulness long foreign to her voice; yet she had had a sweet voice when she was a girl. When this, her daily business of delight, came, the tempting spirits, half angel, half demon, which had begun to play at hide-and-seek through the empty chambers of poor Hannah's heart, fled away, exorcised by that magic spell which Heaven gives to every house that owns a child.

She was sitting there, going through "Mary, Mary, quite contrary," "Banbury Cross," the history of the young gentleman who "put in his thumbs and pulled out the plums," with other noble nursery traditions—all sung to tunes composed on the spot, in that sweet, clear soprano which always made Rosie put up her small fingers with a mysterious "Hark! Tannie's singing!" when a ring came to the door-bell.

Hannah's heart almost stopped beating. Should she fly? Then there was a familiar voice in the hall, and Rosie shrieked out in an ecstasy, "Papa come! papa come!" ​Should she hide? Or should she stay, with the child beside her, a barrier against evil eyes and tongues without and miserable thoughts within? Yes, that was the best thing, and Hannah did it.

Mr. Rivers came in; and, shaking hands with his sisterin-law, took his little girl in his arms. Rosie clung to him in an ecstasy of delight. She, too, had not forgotten papa.

"I thought she would forget," he said. "Baby memories are short enough."

"But Rosie is not a baby; and papa has only been away eleven days."

Eleven days!—then he would know she had counted them. As soon as the words were uttered Hannah could have bitten her tongue out with shame.

But no; he did not seem to notice them, or any thing but his little girl. He set Rosie on his lap, and began playing with her, but fitfully and absently. He looked cold, pale, ill. At last he said, in a pathetic kind of way:

"Hannah, I wish you would give me a glass of wine. I am so tired."

And the eyes which were lifted up to hers for a minute had in them a world of weariness and sadness. They drove out of Hannah's mind all thoughts of how and why she and he had parted, and what might happen now they met, and threw her back into the old domestic relationship between them. She took out her keys, got him food and drink, and watched him take both and revive after them with almost her old pleasure. Nay, she scarcely missed the old affectionate "Thank you, Hannah, you are so good," which never came.

Presently, when Rosie, growing too restless for him, was dismissed with the customary "Do take her, Aunt Hannah, nobody can manage her but you," Hannah carried the little one to bed, and so disappeared, not a word or look having been exchanged between them except about the child. Still, as she left him sitting in his arm-chair by his own fireside, which he said he found so "cozy," she, like little ​Rosie, was conscious of but one feeling—gladness that papa was come home.

At dinner, too, how the whole table looked bright, now that the master's place was no longer vacant! Hannah resumed hers; and, in spite of the servant's haunting eyes and greedy ears, on the watch for every look and word that passed between these two innocent sinners, there was a certain peace and content in going back to the old ways once more.

When they were left alone together, over dessert, Mr. Rivers looked round the cheerful room, saying, half to himself, "How comfortable it is to be at home!" and then smiled across the table to her, as if saying mutely what he had said in words a hundred times, that it was she who made his home so comfortable. And Hannah smiled in return, forgetting every thing except the pleasantness of having him back again—the pure delight and rest in one another's society which is at the root of all true friendship, all deep love. They did not talk much; indeed, talking seemed dangerous; but they sat a long time in their opposite seats, as they had sat day after day for so many months, trying to think, feel, and speak the same as heretofore.

But it was in vain. In this, as in all false positions, the light once admitted could never again be hidden from; the door once open could never be shut.

Mr. Rivers proposed going to the drawing-room at once. "I want to talk to you; and here the servants might be coming in."

Hannah blushed violently, and then hated herself for doing so. Why should she be afraid of the servants coming in? Why tremble because he "wanted to talk to her?" Such a common occurrence—a bit of their every-day life, which went on, and must go on, externally, just the same as before.

So she rose, and they went into the drawing-room.

It was the prettiest room in the house; full of every thing that a man of taste and refinement could desire, in ​order to make—and it does help to make—a happy home. Yet the master of it looked round with infinite sadness in his eyes, as if it gave him no pleasure, as if he hardly saw it.

"Hannah," he said at last, when they had gone through the form of tea, and she had taken her work—another empty form, for her hands shook so she could hardly thread her needles—"Hannah, I had better not put off my business with you—my message to you, rather. You must understand I fulfill it simply as a matter of duty. I hope you will not be offended?"

"I offended?"

"You ought not to be, I think, in any case. No lady should take offense because an honest man presumes to love her. But I may as well speak out plainly. My friend Morecamb—"

"Oh, is it that matter again? I thought I was to hear no more of it."

"You never would have done so from me, but circumstances have altered a little, and I have been overborne by the opinion of others."

"What others?"

"Lady Rivers" (Hannah started angrily). "To her, wisely or foolishly, Morecamb has appealed; and, by her advice, has again written to me. They both put it to me that it is my duty, as your brother-in-law, once more to lay the matter before you, and beg you to reconsider your decision. His letter—which I do not offer to show you, for he might not like it, and, besides, there are things said in it to myself which none but a very old friend would venture to say—his letter is thoroughly straightforward, manly, and generous. It makes me think, for the first time, that he is almost worthy of you. In it he says—may I repeat to you what he says?"

Hannah bent her head.

"That his conviction of your worth and his attachment to yourself are such, that if you will only allow him to love you he shall be satisfied, and trust to time for the rest. ​He entreats you to marry him at once, and let him take you from Easterham, and place you in the position which, as his wife, you would, of course, have, and which he knows—we all know—you would so worthily fill."

Bernard had said all this like a person speaking by rote, repeating carefully and literally all that he had before planned to say, and afraid of committing himself by the alteration of a word. Now he paused, and waited for an answer.

It came not.

"He desires me to tell you that, besides the Rectory, he has a good private income; that his two daughters are both married; and that, in case of his death, you will be well provided for. It is a pleasant parish and a charming house. You would have a peaceful home, away, and yet not very far away, from Easterham. You might see Rosie every week—"

Here Hannah turned slowly round, and for the first time Bernard saw her face.

"Good Heavens!" he cried. "What have I done? I meant no harm—Morecamb meant no harm."

"No," she answered, in a hard, dry tone. "He meant—I quite understand it, you see, and, since I understand it, why should I not speak of it?—he meant to stop the mouths of Easterham by marrying me, and taking me away from your house. He is exceedingly kind—and you also."

"I?—oh, Hannah!—I?"

"Why distress yourself? Do I not say you are exceedingly kind?"

But she seemed hardly to know what she was saying. Her horrible, humiliating position between her brother-inlaw and her brother-in-law's friend, the one having unwillingly affixed the stain upon her name, which the other was generously trying to remove, burst upon her with an agony untold.

"Why did I ever come here? Why were you so cruel as to ask me to come here? I came in all innocence. I knew nothing. You, a man, ought to have known."

​He turned deadly pale.

"You mean to say I ought to have known that, although the law considers you my sister, you are not my sister, and our living together as we do would expose us to remarks such as James Dixon made the other night. Most true; I ought to have known. Was that all? or did you mean any thing more than that?"

"Nothing more. Is not that enough? Oh, it is dreadful—dreadful for an innocent woman to have to bear!"

And her self-control quite gone, Hannah rocked herself to and fro; in such a passion of grief as she had never let any one witness in her since she was a child. For, indeed, woman as she was, she felt weak as a child.

But the man was weaker still. Once—twice he made a movement as if he would dart across the hearth to where she sat, but restrained himself, and remained motionless in his seat—attempting no consolation. What consolation could he give? It was he himself who had brought this slander upon her—how cruel and how wide-spread it was he by this time knew, even better than she.

"Hannah," he said, after a little, "we are neither of us young people, to take fright at shadows. Let us speak openly together, as if we were two strangers, viewing the case of two other strangers, placed in the same relation together as ourselves."

"Speak! How can I speak? I am utterly helpless, and you know it. Lady Rivers knows it too; and so, doubtless, does Mr. Morecamb. Perhaps, after all, I should be wisest to accept his generous offer and marry him."

Bernard started, and then composed himself into the same formal manner with which he had conducted the whole conversation.

"Yes, in a worldly point of view, it would be wise; I, speaking as your brother-in-law, am bound to tell you so. wish to do my duty by you; I have no right to allow my own or my child's interest to stand in the way of your happiness." He paused. "I wish you to be happy—God knows I do!" He paused again. "Then—what answer ​am I to give to Morecamb? Am I to tell him to come here and speak for himself?"

"No!" Hannah burst out vehemently. "No—a thousand times no! My heart is my own, and he has not got it. If I were a beggar starving in the streets, or a poor wretch whom every body pointed the finger at—as perhaps they do—I would not marry Mr. Morecamb."

A strange light came into Bernard's eyes.

"That's Hannah! There speaks my good, true Hannah! I thought she had gone away, and some other woman come in her place. Forgive me! I did my duty; but oh, it was hard! I am so glad, so glad!"

He spoke with his old, affectionate, boyish impulsiveness; he was still exceedingly boyish in some things, and perhaps Hannah liked him the better for it—who knows? Even now a faint smile passed over her lips.

"You ought to have known me better. You ought to have been sure that I would not marry any man without loving him. And I told you long ago that I did not love Mr. Morecamb."

"You did; but people sometimes change their minds. And love comes, we know not how. It begins—just a little seed, as it were—and grows, and grows, till all of a sudden we find it a full-grown plant, and we can not root it up, however we try."

He spoke dreamily, and as if he had forgotten all about Mr. Morecamb, then sat down and began gazing into the fire with that dull, apathetic look so familiar to Hannah during the early time of her residence there, when she knew him little, and cared for him less; when, if any one had told her there would come to her such a day as this day, when every word of the sentence he had just uttered would fall on her heart like a drop of burning lead, she would have pronounced it impossible—ridiculously impossible. Yet she was true then—true now—to herself and to all others; perfectly candid and sincere. But would the world ever believe it? Does the world, so ready to find out double or interested motives, ever believe in con​scientious turncoats, righteous renegades? Yet there are such things.

After a while Mr. Rivers suddenly aroused himself.

"I am thinking of other matters, and forgetting my friend. I had better put the good man out of his pain by telling him the truth at once, had I not, Hannah?"

"Certainly."

"Your decision is quite irrevocable?"

"Quite."

"Then we need say no more. I will write the letter at once."

But that seemed not so easily done as said. After half an hour or more he came back with it unfinished in his hand.

"I hardly know how to say what you wish me to say. A mere blank No, without any reasons given. Are there none which could make the blow fall lighter? Remember, the man loves you, Hannah, and love is a precious thing."

"I know it is, when one has love to give back; but I have none. Not an atom."

"Why not? I beg your pardon—I ought not to ask—I have not the slightest right to ask. Still, as I have sometimes thought, a woman seldom lives thirty years without—without some sort of attachment?"

Hannah became much agitated. Rosa, then, had kept sisterly faith, even toward her own husband. Mr. Rivers evidently knew nothing about Arthur; had been all along quite unaware of that sad but sacred story, which Hannah thought sheltered her just as much as widow's weeds might have done.

She hesitated, and then, in her misery, she clung to the past as a kind of refuge from the present.

"I thought you knew it," she answered, very slowly; and quickly, "I thought Rosa had told you. If it will lessen his pain, you may tell Mr. Morecamb that once I was engaged to be married to a cousin of mine. He was ill: they sent him away to Madeira, and there he died."

"He—I did not quite hear." For, indeed, Hannah's words were all but inaudible.

​"He died!"

She had said it out now, and Bernard knew the whole. Those two silent ghosts, of his dead wife and her own dead lover, seemed to come and stand near them in the quiet room. Was it with looks of sorrow or anger?—if the dead can feel either. Arthur—Rosa—in their lives both so loving, unselfish, and dear. Was it of them that the living needed to be afraid?

Mr. Rivers seemed not afraid, only exceedingly and painfully surprised.

"I had no idea of such a thing, or I would never have urged Mr. Morecamb's plea. And yet, tell me, Hannah, is this lost love the only cause of your refusing him? Was this what you referred to when you once said to me, or implied, that you would never marry any body? Is all your heart, your warm, true, womanly heart, buried in your cousin's grave?"

There may be circumstances in which people are justified in telling a noble lie; but Hannah was not the woman to do it. Not though it would at once have placed her beyond the reach of misconstruction, saved her from all others, and from herself—encompassed her henceforward with a permanent shield. Though one little "Yes" would have accomplished all this, she could not say it, for she felt it would have been a lie—a lie to Heaven and to her own soul. She looked down on the floor, and answered, deliberately, "No!"

But the effort took all her strength, and when it was over she rose up totteringly, and tried to feel her way to the door. Mr. Rivers opened it, not making the least ef fort to detain her.

"Good-night!" she said, as she passed him. He, without even an offered hand, said "Good-night" too; and so they parted.