Bessies Fortune | Page 4

then, for he was the veriest moral coward in the world, and before Hannah could say another word, he continued:
"Yes, Aunt Wetherby was right. There is something; there has always been something; but don't tell me, please, I'd rather not know."
He spoke very gently for him, for somehow, there had been awakened within him a great pity for his sister, and by some sudden intuition he seemed to understand all her loneliness and pain. If there had been a wrongdoing it was not her fault; and as she still stood with her back to him, and did not speak, he went up to her, and laying his hand upon her shoulder, said to her:
"I regret that I asked a question which has so agitated you, and, believe me, I am sorry for you, for whatever it is, you are innocent."
Then she turned toward him with a face as white as ashes and a look of terror in her large black eyes, before which he quailed. Never in his life, since he was a little child, had he seen her cry, but now, after regarding him fixedly a moment, she broke into such a wild fit of sobbing that he became alarmed, and passing his arm around her, lead her to a seat and made her lean her head upon him, while he smoothed her heavy hair, which was more than half gray, and she was only three years his senior.
At last she grew calm, and rising up, said to him:
"Excuse me, I am not often so upset--I have not cried in years--not since Rover died," here her voice trembled again, but she went on quite steadily. "He was all the companion I had, you know, and he was so faithful, so true. Oh, it almost broke my heart when he died and left me there alone!"
There was a world of pathos in her voice, as she uttered the last two words, "There alone," and it flashed upon Burton that there was more meaning in them than was at first indicated; that to live there alone was something from which his sister recoiled. Standing before her, with his hand still upon her head, he remembered, that she had not always been as she was now, so quiet and impassive, with no smile upon her face, no joy in her dark eyes. As a young girl, in the days when he, too, lived at home, and slept under the rafters in the low-roofed house, she had been full of life and frolic, and played with him all day long. She was very pretty then, and her checks, now so colorless, were red as the damask roses which grew by the kitchen door, while her wavy hair was brown, like the chestnuts they used to gather from the trees, in the rocky pasture land. It was wavy still, and soft and luxurient, but it was iron grey, and she wore it plain, in a knot at the back of her head, and only a few short hairs, which would curl about her forehead in spite of her, softened the severity of her face. Just when the change began in his sister. Burton could not remember, for, on the rare occasions when he visited his home he had not been a close observer, and had only been conscious of a desire to shorten his stay as much as possible, and return to his aunt's house, which was much more to his taste. He should die if he had to live in that lonely spot, he thought, and in his newly awakened pity for his sister, he said to her, impulsively:
"Don't go back there to stay. Live with me. I am all alone, and must have some one to keep my house. Von and I can get on nicely together."
He made no mention of his father, and he did not half mean what he said to his sister, and had she accepted his offer he would have regretted that it had ever been made. But she did not accept it, and she answered him at once:
"No, Burton, so long as father lives I must stay with him, and you will be happier without than with me. We are not at all alike. But I thank you for asking me all the same, and now it is time for me to go, if I take the four o'clock train. Father will be expecting me."
Burton went with her to the train, and saw her into the car, and bought her _Harper's Monthly_, and bade her good-by, and then, in passing out, met and lifted his hat to the Misses Grey, Lucy and Geraldine, who had been visiting in Boston, and were returning to Allington.
This encounter drove his sister from his mind, and made him think of his