It was pallid now, as the face of a corpse, and there
were hard lines about the mouth, which quivered with pain. But, at the
touch of Bessie's soft fingers, the hardness relaxed, and, covering her
eyes, Hannah burst into a paroxysm of weeping.
"Dear auntie," Bessie said, "my auntie, because you are Grey's, how you
must have suffered, and how I wish I could have come to you. There would
have been no terror here for me, because, you see, it was not
premeditated; it was an accident, not a crime, and God, I am sure,
forgave it long ago. No, Grey;" and now she turned to him, and, winding
her arms around his neck, went on: "It is not a disgrace you ask me to
share it is a misfortune, a trouble; and do you think I would shrink
from it a moment--I, who have borne so much that _was_ disgrace?"
He knew she was thinking of her mother, but he said nothing except to
fold her in his arms and kiss her flushed, eager face, while she went
on:
"But who was this man? Where did he live, and had he no friends to make
inquiries for him?"
Grey remembered now that he had simply said, the _peddler_, without
giving the name, and he hastened to say:
"He was Joel Rogers, a Welshman, from Carnarvon, and it was for his
sister Elizabeth, or her heirs, that I was searching, when I first came
to Stoneleigh.
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