"You might live with us in Boston," Grey said. "That would be jolly for me; but I don't know how you and mother would hitch together, you are so unlike. I wish I was big, and married, and then I know just where you would go. But father will arrange it, I am sure."
And three weeks later, when Burton came up from Boston after his son, he did arrange it for her.
"It is of no use," he said to her. "I have tried meeting and mingling with my friends, and I feel as if they saw on my face what is always in my mind, and if I stay in Boston I shall some day scream out to the public that my father was a murderer. I could not help it, and I can understand now how Lucy was wrought upon to do what she did in church when they thought her crazy. I shall be crazy, too, if I stay here, and I am going away. Geraldine likes Europe, and so do I; and as I can leave my business as well as not, I shall shut up my house, and go abroad until I feel that I can look my fellowmen in the face."
"And Grey?" Hannah asked, sorrowfully, knowing how dreary her life would be with him so far away.
"I shall take him with me," her brother replied, "I shall put him in school somewhere in England or Germany, and send him eventually to Oxford. But you will stay here, won't you? I'd rather you would."
"Yes," she answered, still more sadly, for she fully understood the intense selfishness of the man, who went on: "I shall be happier, knowing you are here, for I cannot have the house sold, or rented, or even left alone, lest by some chance the secret of our lives should be discovered. I am almost as morbid on the subject as father was: but with you here, I shall feel safe. You can have any one live with you whom you choose, and I will supply you with plenty of money. So I do not see why you should not in time be quite content."
"Yes, brother," Hannah said, very low; "but shall I not see Grey for years?"
"Perhaps not; I don't know," was her brother's reply, as he arose to go, without a single throb of pity for the woman who was to be left alone in the home so hateful to him.
But Grey, when he heard of the plan, which did not surprise him, comforted her with the assurance that he should spend all his long vacations with her, as he did not mind crossing the ocean at all.