“Yes,” answered Madelon, sadly. “He was traveling in America and in New York he fell in love with a pretty actress. He married her and sent a letter to tell us what he had done. Father cursed his only son and forbade him to ever return to the home he had disgraced.”
“An actress. It is always an actress that must break hearts. What a cruel, wretched, proud world it is,” Molly cried, with startling vehemence.
Madelon Trueheart looked at her in sad surprise.
“It is very kind of you to feel for us like that,” she said. “It was bitter, was it not! We are such an old family and so proud! But we loved Ernest so—dear mother and I—that we would have forgiven him, and made the best of his low-born bride. But, alas, father would not have it so. He forbade us sternly ever to think of the erring one again. Then in just a little while—two years, no more—came the message that he was dead.”
Molly lay back among the silken cushions of her easy chair pale, but with burning eyes. She moved her lips slightly in an almost inaudible whisper:
“Ernest—Ernest Trueheart.”
“Was it not dreadful?” sighed Madelon. “I think father must have been gradually growing more tender, for he almost went mad with remorse at the news of Ernest’s early death. And mother, poor soul, you can easily see that her heart is broken, and her health fading. She has never held up her head since he died, though it is nearly fifteen years ago. Can you blame me now, dear, that I feel it my first duty to stay with my afflicted parents?”
Molly did not answer. She was sobbing softly in her handkerchief, and Madelon went on:
“If Ernest’s wife would have come to us when he died we would have received her, and loved her for the sake of the dead. But she was proud as we had been, and refused our proffers with scorn. Mother wrote to her that if she had a child we wanted her to give it to us. But she did not even reply. None could blame her, could they since father had been so hard at first?”
“What was her name?” asked Molly, almost in a whisper.