Hannah was sobbing as if her heart would break.
"How glad I would be to clear Nora and her child from shame, no one but
the Searcher of Hearts can know! But I dare not! I am bound by a vow! a
solemn vow made to the dying! Poor girl! with her last breath she
besought me not to expose Mr. Brudenell, and not to breathe one word of
his marriage with her to any living soul!" she cried.
"And you were mad enough to promise!"
"I would rather have bitten my tongue off than have used it in such a
fatal way! But she was dying fast, and praying to me with her uplifted
eyes and clasped hands and failing breath to spare Herman Brudenell. I
had no power to refuse her--my heart was broken. So I bound my soul by a
vow to be silent. And I must keep my sacred promise made to the dying; I
must keep it though, till the Judgment Day that shall set all things
right, Nora Worth, if thought of it all, must be considered a fallen
girl and her son the child of sin!" cried Hannah, breaking into a
passion of tears and sobs.
"The devotion of woman passes the comprehension of man," said the
minister reflectively. "But in sacrificing herself thus, had she no
thought of the effect upon the future of her child?"
"She said he was a boy; his mother would soon be forgotten; he would be
my nephew, and I was respected," sobbed Hannah.
"In a word, she was a special pleader in the interest of the man whose
reckless haste had destroyed her!"
"Yes; that was it! that was it! Oh, my Nora! oh, my young sister! it was
hard to see you die! hard to see you covered up in the coffin! but it is
harder still to know that people will speak ill of you in your grave,
and I cannot convince them that they are wrong!" said Hannah, wringing
her hands in a frenzy of despair.
For trouble like this the minister seemed to have no word of comfort. He
waited in silence until she had grown a little calmer, and then he said: "They say that the fellow has fled. At least he has not been seen at the
Hall since the arrival of his wife. Have you seen anything of him?"
"He rushed in here like a madman the day she died, received her last
prayer for his welfare, and threw himself out of the house again, Heaven
only knows where!"