The voice which gave this reply was not like Hannah’s voice, but was hard and sharp, and sounded as if a great ways off, and Burton could see how violently his sister was agitated, even though she stood with her back to him.  Suddenly he remembered that his aunt had also said:  “If there is a secret, never seek to discover it, lest it should bring disgrace.”  And here he was, trying to find it out almost before she was cold.  A great fear took possession of Burton 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