Grey told him, and he continued: "I shall go with you--first to see Hannah, and then to Grey's Park in the evening. Poor Hannah! she has had such a lonely life!"
Three hours later and Mr. Jerrold was driven to the house in the pasture-land, in the phaeton which Lucy had sent to the station to meet Grey, who walked to Grey's Park, where Bessie greeted him as rapturously as if weeks instead of hours had passed since she saw him.
Mr. Jerrold had expected to find his sister alone, and was a little disappointed to see the Rev. Mr. Sanford there, cozily taking tea in the pleasant south room, where the morning-glories were trained across the windows, and the early June roses were looking in.
"Oh, Burton, how glad I am to see you! and how well you are looking!" Hannah cried, as she went forward to meet her brother, in whom she saw a change, as if he had suddenly grown young.
And he did feel younger and happier than he had in years; and as soon as Mr. Sanford took his leave, which he did immediately after tea, Burton plunged at once into the principal object of his visit.
"I have come," he said, "to open the doors and windows of that ghostly room, and let in the light and air of Heaven. Grey has told me everything, and I feel like a new man. Even the--the--the thing father did, does not seem to me quite as it did. Would you mind telling me again the particulars of the quarrel?--how it commenced, I mean--nothing more."
He had risen as he was talking, and going into the bedroom, threw back the heavy curtains, and opening the windows and blinds, sat down in his father's chair, while Hannah stood beside him and told him how both men had drank until their reason was clouded, and how the peddler had called her father a cheat and a liar, and struck him first, and how--But here her brother stopped her, and said: "That will do. I am satisfied that what father did was done in self-defense, and so the world would have said, and acquitted him, too, I am sure. I almost wish you had told at the time. We should have lived it down, though I might never have married Geraldine and never have had Grey. No, sister, you did right, and having kept it so long, we must keep it still. No use to unearth it now, though I would give half my life and every dollar I own--yes, I'd give everything except my boy Grey, to know it had never been there," and he pointed to the corner of the room, where the bed was still standing, and under which was the hidden grave.