There were curious
thoughts crowding in the brain of the grave, quiet man, tumultuous
thoughts, which spanned a score of years and brought with them keen joy
as well as a bitter pain. He was standing before the kitchen fire, with
Hannah near him, holding the warm muffler he was to tie around his
neck. Regarding her fixedly for a moment, he said, addressing her by the
old pet name which had once been so familiar to him:
"Hanny, that is why you said 'no' to me that summer night when we walked
together under the chestnut trees, and I felt that you had broken my
heart?"
Any one who saw Hannah Jerrold at that moment would have called her
beautiful, with the sudden light which shone in her dark eyes, the
bright color which, came to her cheeks, and the softness which spread
itself all over her upturned face, as she answered, promptly, and still
very modestly:
"Yes, Charlie, that was the reason."
For an instant these two, whom a cruel fate had separated, looked into
each other's eyes with a look in which the love of twenty years was
embodied; then involuntarily the hands clasped, and the man and the
woman who had walked together under the chestnut trees twenty years ago,
kissed each other for the first time in their lives, _she_ feeling that
on her part there was nothing unwomanly, nothing wrong in the act, and
_he_ feeling that on his part there was not the shadow of infidelity to
the woman who bore his name and looked so carefully after his welfare.
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