"
All this was new to Ivory and he hung upon his mother's words,
dreading yet hoping for the light that they might shed upon the
past.
"I arrived at Brentville quite exhausted with the journey and
weighed down by anxiety and dread. I found the house mentioned in
the letter at seven o'clock in the evening, and knocked at the
door. A common, hard-featured woman answered the knock and,
seeming to expect me, ushered me in. I do not remember the room;
I remember only a child leaning patiently against the window-sill
looking out into the dark, and that the place was bare and
cheerless.
"I came to call upon Mr. Aaron Boynton,' I said, with my heart
sinking lower and lower as I spoke. The woman opened a door into
the next
room and when I walked in, instead of seeing your father, I
confronted a haggard, death-stricken young woman sitting up in
bed, her great eyes bright with pain, her lips as white as her
hollow cheeks, and her long, black hair streaming over the
pillow. The very sight of her struck a knell to the little hope I
had of soothing your father's sick bed and forgiving him if he
had done me any wrong.
"'Well, you came, as I thought you would,' said the girl, looking
me over from head to foot in a way that somehow made me burn with
shame.
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