Book account

The farm-house was shut up,
and Hannah took her post as chief nurse to the boy she loved so much,
and whose condition puzzled her a little. Once, in the first days of his
illness, when, after an absence of an hour or so, she re-entered the
room, where his father was keeping watch, he lifted his bright,
fever-stricken eyes to her face, and asked:
"Who was the man?"
"What man?" Hannah and her brother asked, simultaneously, a great fear
in the heart of each lest the other had betrayed what Grey was not to
know.
"Have you told him?" Burton whispered to his sister, who answered:
"You know I have not." Then, turning to Grey, who was still looking at
her, she said to him again: "What man?"
For a moment the wild, bright eyes regarded her fixedly; then there
seemed to come over the boy a gleam of reason, and he replied:
"I don't know."
After that he never mentioned the man again, or in any way alluded to
the secret weighing so heavily upon the two who watched him so
constantly--Hannah and his father.


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