And now the funeral was over, and she was going home that very afternoon--to the gloomy house among the rocks, where she had grown old, and her hair gray long before her time--going back to the burden which pressed so heavily upon her, and from which she shrank as she had never done before. Not that she wished to stay in that grand house, where she was so sadly out of place, but she wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, so that she escaped from the one spot so horrible to her. She was thinking of all this and standing with her face to the window, when her brother entered the room and began, abruptly: "I say, Hannah, I want to ask you something. Just before Aunt Wetherby died, she had a long talk with me on various matters, and among other things she said she believed there was something troubling you and father, some secret you were hiding from me and the world. Is it so? Do you know anything which I do not?"

"Yes, many things."

The voice which gave this reply was not like Hannah's voice, but was hard and sharp, and sounded as if a great ways off, and Burton could see how violently his sister was agitated, even though she stood with her back to him. Suddenly he remembered that his aunt had also said: "If there is a secret, never seek to discover it, lest it should bring disgrace." And here he was, trying to find it out almost before she was cold. A great fear took possession of Burton then, for he was the veriest moral coward in the world, and before Hannah could say another word, he continued: "Yes, Aunt Wetherby was right. There is something; there has always been something; but don't tell me, please, I'd rather not know."

He spoke very gently for him, for somehow, there had been awakened within him a great pity for his sister, and by some sudden intuition he seemed to understand all her loneliness and pain. If there had been a wrongdoing it was not her fault; and as she still stood with her back to him, and did not speak, he went up to her, and laying his hand upon her shoulder, said to her: "I regret that I asked a question which has so agitated you, and, believe me, I am sorry for you, for whatever it is, you are innocent."

Then she turned toward him with a face as white as ashes and a look of terror in her large black eyes, before which he quailed. Never in his life, since he was a little child, had he seen her cry, but now, after regarding him fixedly a moment, she broke into such a wild fit of sobbing that he became alarmed, and passing his arm around her, lead her to a seat and made her lean her head upon him, while he smoothed her heavy hair, which was more than half gray, and she was only three years his senior.




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