Bessie's Fortune

After the first great shock of surprise, when the word murderer dropped from his lips, and he reproached his sister so harshly and unreasonably, Burton Jerrold stood with folded arms, and a gloomy, unsympathetic face, as immovable at first as if he had been a stone, and listened to the tale as repeated by his father. But when the tragic part was reached, and he saw the dead man on the floor, his sister crouching in the corner of the room, with Rover at her side, the rude coffin, the open grave, and the secret midnight burial, his breath came in long, shuddering gasps, and the perspiration stood in great drops upon his forehead and about his pallid lips. And when his father said, "I buried him here in this room, under this bed, where I have slept ever since, and he is there now," he started backward as suddenly as if the ghost of the peddler had risen from the floor and confronted him. Then, staggering forward, he would have fallen if Mr. Sanford had not caught him by the arm and supported him a moment.

Bringing him a chair, the clergyman said to him, pityingly: "Sit down, Mr. Jerrold, and try to compose yourself. You are not in fault: no one can blame you."

"No, no, I know it; but it hurts me just the same. The disgrace! I can never be happy again. Oh, Hannah, why did you let him tell me? I cannot bear it, I cannot!" the wretched Burton moaned, and his father replied: "Your sister has borne it for thirty-one years. Are you less brave than she?"

"I don't know. Yes, I believe I am. I have more at stake than she. Our positions are not the same. There is Geraldine, and Grey, I can never look them in the face again, knowing what I know," Burton cried, impetuously, and covering his face with his hands, he sobbed as strong men never sob, save when some terrible storm, which they feel themselves inadequate to meet, is beating pitilessly upon them.

"Oh, brother," Hannah said, in her soft, entreating voice, "this is worse than all the rest. Don't take it so hard. It is not so bad as you think. You will not be disgraced. Geraldine will never know: the world will never know. Char--Mr. Sanford is just as safe as I. He will never tell," and the dark eyes looked for one moment at the man whom, in her excitement and forgetfulness, she had almost called by his Christian name, and who, in response to the call and the look, went to her side, and laying his hand upon her head, said, solemnly: "As heaven is my witness, what I have heard here to-night shall never pass my lips."