Great were the rejoicings both in Boston and Allington over the return of the travelers, and great the surprise of all, when it was known that Bessie had come back an heiress to no mean fortune. But just who the great uncle was from whom her money had come to her, none, except Grey's father and Mr. Sanford ever knew, and if they had, few would have remembered the peddler of more than forty years ago whose disappearance had caused no remark, and awakened no suspicion. Could Bessie have had her way she would have told the story fearlessly and moved the bones of her kinsman to another resting-place, but Grey and Mr. Sanford overruled her, both for Hannah's sake and for the sake of Grey's father, who could not have borne the talk it would have created.
Mr. Jerrold had never been the same since that night when he heard his father's confession, and he was fast growing into a morbid, misanthropic man, whom his wife, not without reason, feared would one day be crazy.
Every year he shrank more and more from meeting his fellowmen, and at last he abandoned business altogether, and remained mostly at home in a room which he called his office, and where he saw only those he was obliged to see. The money lying in his bank in Hannah's name, but which he knew was intended for some one else, and the shares in the mines and quarries of Wales, troubled him greatly, for somewhere in the world there were people to whom they belonged, and he sometimes felt that if he and his sister were guiltless of their father's crime, they were, at least, thieves and robbers, because of the silence upon which he himself had insisted. More than once recently he had resolved to tell Grey, and let him decide the matter, and it was upon this very thing he was brooding, on the morning when his son was announced. Grey had reached Allington the previous day, and found his mother there waiting to receive him.
"I wanted your father to come with me, but he would not. He dislikes Allington worse than I do, and mopes all day in his room just as his father did. I wonder if there is any insanity in the family," she said to Grey, who answered, cheerily: "Not a bit of it, mother; and if there is Bessie's advent among us will exorcise the demon. I am going to Boston to-morrow to see father, and shall bring him back with me a different man entirely."
He found his father in his room, moping, as his mother had said, and was struck with the change in him, even during the few months he had been away. He stooped more than ever, and there was in his whole appearance an air of weakness and brokenness of spirit pitiable to see in a man who had once been so proud and strong.