“I shall take him with me,” her brother replied, “I shall put him in school somewhere in England or Germany, and send him eventually to Oxford.  But you will stay here, won’t you?  I’d rather you would.”

“Yes,” she answered, still more sadly, for she fully understood the intense selfishness of the man, who went on: 

“I shall be happier, knowing you are here, for I cannot have the house sold, or rented, or even left alone, lest by some chance the secret of our lives should be discovered.  I am almost as morbid on the subject as father was:  but with you here, I shall feel safe.  You can have any one live with you whom you choose, and I will supply you with plenty of money.  So I do not see why you should not in time be quite content.”

“Yes, brother,” Hannah said, very low; “but shall I not see Grey for years?”

“Perhaps not; I don’t know,” was her brother’s reply, as he arose to go, without a single throb of pity for the woman who was to be left alone in the home so hateful to him.

But Grey, when he heard of the plan, which did not surprise him, comforted her with the assurance that he should spend all his long vacations with her, as he did not mind crossing the ocean at all.

“I may be with you oftener than if I were in America, and then some time I’ll go to Carnarvon and begin the search.  So, don’t feel so badly,” he said to her as he saw the great tears roll down her cheeks, and guessed in part her sorrow.

And so the necessary arrangements were made as rapidly as possible, and one Saturday about the middle of March, Hannah stood on the wharf in New York with a feeling like death in her heart, and saw Grey sail away and leave her there alone.

CHAPTER XVI.

EXPECTING BESSIE.

After Miss McPherson had sent her letter to her nephew, Archie, asking him to give his little daughter to her keeping, her whole nature seemed to change, and there was on her face a look of happy expectancy rarely seen there before.  Even her cook, Sarah, and her maid, Flora, noticed and discussed it as they sat together by the kitchen fire; but as Miss McPherson never encouraged familiarities with her domestics, they asked her no questions, and only wondered and speculated when she bade them remove everything from the small bedroom at the end of the upper hall, which communicated with her own sleeping apartment.  But when this room was papered and painted, and furnished with a pretty carpet of drab and blue, and a single iron bedstead with lace hangings, and a child’s bureau and rocking-chair, and more than all when a large doll was bought, with a complete wardrobe for it, Flora could no longer restrain her curiosity, but asked if her mistress were expecting a child.

“Yes,” was the reply, “my grandniece, Betsey, who was named for me.  She lives at Stoneleigh, my old home in Wales, and I may get a letter any day saying she has sailed.  I shall go to New York to meet her so have my things ready for me to start at a moment’s notice.”