Hester was speaking with a great effort now, and Roger was looking curiously at her.
“Whose letter was it?” he asked; and Hester replied:
“It was his,—your father’s; and it came from—her—your mother.”
With a low, suppressed scream, Roger bounded to Hester’s side, and, grasping her shoulder, said, vehemently:
“From mother, Hester,—from mother! Is she alive, as I have sometimes dreamed? Is she? Tell me, Hester!”
The boy was greatly excited, and his eyes were like burning coals as he eagerly questioned Hester, who answered, sadly:
“No, my poor boy! Your mother is dead, and the letter was written years ago, just before the boat went down. Your father must have had it all the while, though I never knew it—till—well, not till some little while ago, when Mrs. Walter Scott was here the last time. I overheard him telling her about it, and when I found that yellow, stained paper on the table, I knew in a minute it was the letter, and I kept it for you, with the one your father had begun to write. Shall I fetch ’em now, or will you wait till the funeral is over? I guess you better wait.”
This Roger could not do. He knew but little of his mother’s unfortunate life. He could not remember her, and all his ideas of her had been formed from the beautiful picture in the garret, and what Hester had told him of her. Once, when a boy of eleven, he had asked his father what it was about his mother, and why her picture was hidden away in the garret, and his father had answered, sternly:
“I do not wish to talk about her, my son. She may not have been as wicked as I at first supposed, but she disgraced you, and did me a great wrong.”
And that was all Roger could gather from his father; while Hester and Aleck were nearly as reticent with regard to the dark shadow which had fallen on Millbank and its proud owner.