Bessie's Fortune

Breakfast was waiting in the pleasant dining-room at Grey's Park, where Burton Jerrold sat before the fire, with his head bent down and his face so white and ghastly that his wife, when she came in and saw him, was moved with a great pity for him, though she wondered much that his sorrow should be so acute for the father he had never seemed very fond of in life. Stooping over him she kissed him softly, and said: "I am sorry you feel so badly, Burton. Your father was old, and quite ready to die; surely that should comfort you a little."

"Yes, yes, I know; but please don't talk to me now," he replied, with a gesture of the hand as if to silence her.

He was not sorry for his father's death, but he was willing, nay glad, that she should think so, for he could not tell her of the load of shame from which he should never be free.

"What would she say if she knew?" he asked himself, as he remembered all her pride of blood, and birth, and family. And Grey, his only boy, of whom he was so proud, and who, he fully expected, would some day fill one of the highest posts in the land;--what would he say if he knew his father was the son of a murderer? Burton would not soften the crime even in thought, though he knew that had his father been arrested at the time, he could only have been convicted of manslaughter, and possibly not of that. But he called it by the hard name murder, and shuddered as he thought of Grey.

"But he never will know," he said to himself, "Hannah will keep her promise, and I do not fear Mr. Sanford, though I'd give half my fortune--yes, all--if he had not been told. Grey will never know. But I know, and must meet his innocent eyes, and hear him talk of his grandfather as of saint."

It was at this point in his soliloquy that Grey came slowly in, his face whiter than his father's, with dark rings around his eyes, which were heavy and swollen with the tears he had shed. Grey had not slept at all, for the dreadful words, "I killed a man, and buried him under my bed," were continually ringing in his ears, while the ghost of the murdered man seemed present with him, urging him to vengeance for the wrong, until at last, when he could bear it no longer, he stretched his hands out into the darkness, and cried: "What is it you want with me? I am not to blame, but if there is any thing I can do to make it right, I'll do it, when I am man. Now, go away and do not torment me so."