MRS. HAVERILL. I hope to see him to-day; may I not take him some kind word from you?
HAVERILL. My lawyers in New York had instructions to provide him with whatever he needed.
MRS. HAVERILL. They have done so, and he wants for nothing; he asks for nothing, except that I will seek out the poor young wife—only a girl herself—whom he is obliged to desert, in New York.
HAVERILL. His marriage was a piece of reckless folly, but I forgave him that.
MRS. HAVERILL. I am sure that it was only after another was dependent on him that the debts of a mere spendthrift were changed to fraud—and crime.
HAVERILL. You may tell him that I will provide for her.
MRS. HAVERILL. And may I take him no warmer message from his father?
HAVERILL. I am an officer of the United States Army. The name which my son bears came to me from men who had borne it with honour, and I transmitted it to him without a blot. He has disgraced it, by his own confession.
MRS. HAVERILL. I cannot forget the poor mother who died when he was born; her whose place I have tried to fill, to both Frank and to you. I never saw her, and she is sleeping in the old graveyard at home. But I am doing what she would do to-day, if she were living. No pride—no disgrace—could have turned her face from him. The care and the love of her son has been to me the most sacred duty which one woman can assume for another.
HAVERILL. You have fulfilled that duty, Constance. Go to my son! I would go with you, but he is a man now; he could not look into my eyes, and I could not trust myself. But I will send him something which a man will understand. Frank loves you as if you were his own mother; and I—I would like him to—to think tenderly of me, also. He will do it when he looks at this picture. [Taking a miniature from his pocket.