Both the women start violently. Molly, raising her hands to her head, falls back against the wall nearest to her, unutterable horror in her face. Letitia, with a quick, sharp cry, springs to her feet, and then, running to Molly, flings her arms around her.
"Molly, Molly," she exclaims, wildly, "am I going mad? That cannot—it cannot be his child."
Then they cling to each other in silent agony, until at length some cruel band around their hearts gives way, and the sorrowful, healing, blessed tears spring forth.
The last sad scene is over; the curtain has fallen. The final separation has taken place. Their dead has been buried out of their sight.
The room in which he lay has been thrown open, the blinds raised, the windows lifted. Through them the sweet, fresh wind comes rushing in. The heartless sun—now grown cold and wintry—has sent some of its rays to peer curiously where so lately the body lay.
The children are growing more demonstrative. More frequently, and with less fear of reproof, the sound of their mirth is heard throughout the silent house. Only this very morning the boy Lovat—the eldest born, his father's idol—went whistling through the hall. No doubt it was in a moment of forgetfulness he did it; no doubt the poor lad checked himself an instant later, with a bitter pang of self-reproach; but his mother heard him, and the sound smote her to the heart.
Mr. Buscarlet (who is a kind little man, in spite of his "ways and his manners" and a few eccentricities of speech), at a word from Molly comes to Brooklyn, and, having carefully examined letters, papers, and affairs generally, turns their fears into unhappy certainty. One thousand pounds is all that remains to them on which to live or starve.
The announcement of their ruin is hardly news to Letitia. She has been prepared for it. The letter found crushed in her dead husband's hand, although suppressing half the truth, did not deceive her. Even at that awful moment she quite realized her position. Not so Molly. With all the unreasoning trust of youth she hoped against hope until it was no longer possible to do so, trying to believe that something forgotten would come to light, some unremembered sum, to relieve them from absolute want. But Mr. Buscarlet's search has proved ineffective.
Now, however, when hope is actually at an end, all her natural self-reliance and bravery return to her; and in the very mouth of despair she makes a way for herself and for those whom she loves to escape.