“Hannah!  Hannah!  Hannah! how you do go on!  Tell Herman Brudenell about his own mother’s treatment of me, indeed!  I will never forgive you if you do, Hannah!  Do you think it will be such a pleasant thing for him to hear?  Consider how much it would hurt him, and perhaps estrange him from his mother too!  And what! shall I do anything, or consent to anything, to set my husband against his own mother?  Never, Hannah!  I would rather remain forever in my present obscurity.  Besides, consider, she was not so much to blame for her treatment of me!  You know she never imagined such a thing as that her son had actually married me, and—­”

“I should have told her!” interrupted Hannah vehemently.  “I should not have borne her evil charges for one moment in silence!  I should have soon let her know who and what I was!  I should have taken possession of my rightful place then and there!  I should have rung a bell and sent for Mr. Herman Brudenell and had it out with the old lady once for all!”

“Hannah, I could not! my tongue was tied by my promise, and besides—­”

“It was not tied!” again dashed in the elder sister, whose unusual vehemence of mood seemed to require her to do all the talking herself.  “Herman Brudenell—­he is a generous fellow with all his faults!—­released both you and myself from our promise, and told us at any time when we should feel that the marriage ought not any longer to be kept secret it might be divulged.  You should have told her!”

“What! and raised a storm there between mother and son when both those high spirits would have become so inflamed that they would have said things to each other that neither could ever forgive?  What! cause a rupture between them that never could be closed?  No, indeed, Hannah!  Burned and shriveled up as I was with shame in the glare of that lady’s scornful look, I would not save myself at such a cost to him and—­to her.  For though you mayn’t believe me, Hannah, I love that lady!  I do in spite of her scorn!  She is my husband’s mother; I love her as I should have loved my own.  And, oh, while she was scorching me up with her scornful looks and words, how I did long to show her that I was not the unworthy creature she deemed me, but a poor, honest, loving girl, who adored both her and her son, and who would, for the love I bore them—­”

“Die, if necessary, I suppose!  That is just about what foolish lovers promise to do for each other,” said the elder sister, impatiently.

“Well, I would, Hannah; though that is not what I meant to say; I meant that for the love I bore them I would so strive to improve in every respect that I should at last lift myself to their level and be worthy of them!”

“Humph! and you can rest under this ban of reproach!”