Just a year after the grand wedding at Grey's Park, there was born to Burton and Geraldine a little boy, so small and frail and puny, that much solicitude would have been felt for him had there not been a greater anxiety for the young mother, who went so far down toward the river of death that every other thought was lost in the great fear for her. Then the two sisters, Hannah and Lucy, came, the latter giving all her time to Geraldine, and the former devoting herself to the feeble little child, whose constant wail so disturbed the mother that she begged them to take it away where she could not hear it cry, it made her so nervous.
Geraldine did not like children, and she seemed to care so little for her baby that Hannah, who had loved it with her whole soul the moment she took it in her arms and felt its soft cheek against her own, said to her brother one day: "I must go home to-morrow, but let me take baby with me. His crying disturbs your wife, who hears him however far he may be from her room. He is a weak little thing, but I will take the best of care of him, and bring him back a healthy boy."
Burton saw no objection to the plan, and readily gave his consent, provided his wife was willing.
Although out of danger, Geraldine was still too sick to care for her baby, and so it went with Hannah to the old home among the rocks, where it grew round and plump, and pretty, and filled the house with the music of its cooing and its laughter, and learned to stretch its fat hands toward the old grandfather, who never took it in his arms, or laid his hands upon it. But Hannah once saw him kneeling by the cradle where the child was sleeping, and heard him whisper through his tears: "God bless you, my darling boy, and may you never know what it is to sin as I have sinned, until I am not worthy to touch you with my finger. Oh, God forgive and make me clean as this little child."
Then Hannah knew why her father kept aloof from his grandson, and pitied him more than she had done before.
It was the first of October before Geraldine came up to Allington to claim her boy, of whom she really knew nothing.
Only once since her marriage had she been to the farm-house, and then she had driven to the door in her handsome carriage with the high-stepping bays, and had held up her rich silk dress as she passed through the kitchen into the "best room," around which she glanced a little contemptuously.