“Bessie—­your wife—­the heir!  And does she know what we do?” Mr. Jerrold gasped, and Grey replied: 

“Yes, everything—­and knew it before I married her.  Listen, and I will tell you all.”

Ringing the bell, Grey bade the servant who appeared bring a glass of wine, which he made his father swallow, and then, supporting him with his arm, he told him everything, from the night when he had knelt upon the snow in the woods and asked to be forgiven for his grandfather’s sin, down to the present time.

“And you knew it all these years when I was trying to hide it from you,” Mr. Jerrold said; “and you have worked while I have only sat still and brooded; and you have found the heir in Bessie.  Are you sure it is Bessie?  Oh, Grey!  God bless you, my boy!  You do not know what a load of care you have taken from me, for, though my father’s sin is none the less, it does not hurt me as much, and I feel as if I could forgive him all.  I do not believe he was so much in fault.  The peddler struck him first, you know.  I must see Hannah, and hear the story again.  What time do you return to Allington?”

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: