At last Mrs. Geraldine was better, and signified her willingness to let her sister-in-law return to her own home, from which she had been absent so long. She had received, with a good deal of equanimity, the news of her son's engagement with Bessie, whom she remembered as a lovely child, wholly unlike her mother.
"If that woman were living, I would never consent to the marriage," she said; "but as it is, I am willing, though I had hoped that in your travels abroad you might have found some high-born English girl with a title, but it is something to marry a niece of Lady Jane, and I dare say Miss McPherson will make the girl her heir; so I will welcome her as my daughter, and perhaps she will brighten up the house, which is at times insufferably dull, with your father growing more and more silent and gloomy every day. I should not wonder if he were to become crazy, like your grandfather."
Grey did not reply to this, or tell her that he could guess in part what it was which had made his father grow old so fast, and blanched his hair to a snowy white, unusual to one of his years. It was the secret hidden under the bed-room floor which had affected his whole life, and affected it all the more because he had brooded over it in silence, and never spoken to any one upon the subject. Once Hannah attempted to say something to him, but he had repulsed her so fiercely that she never tried again, and he did not guess what efforts Grey had made to find the rightful heirs of Joel Rogers. Like his wife, he did not object to Grey's engagement. Bessie was a desirable parti, as she would, in all probability, inherit her aunt's large fortune, and he signified his approval; and in all Boston there was not a happier man than Grey, on the morning when, with his Aunt Hannah, he at last started for Allington, telling her when he bade her good-by at the station that he should bring Bessie to her early the following day.
It was a most lovely October morning when Grey drove Bessie through the rocky lane in the pasture land up to the old house, of which he had told her on Christmas Eve, at Stoneleigh, almost two years ago, and which seemed neither new nor strange to Bessie, so strong an impression had his description made upon her.
"There she is; that is Aunt Hannah," Grey said, as a tall, slender woman, in a plain black dress, came to the open door and stood waiting for them.