“Mamma is not in her room—where is she, where is she?” the girl demanded, standing over him like a ghost in the dark.
“Your mother is not— I—I suppose she’s tired, like all the rest of us,” he said, with a sleepy desire to escape this premature awakening. “Why, it’s dark still, Rosalind. Go back to bed, my dear. Your mother—”
“Listen, Uncle John. Mamma is not in her room. No one has slept there to-night; it is all empty; my mother is gone, is gone! Where has she gone?” the girl cried, wildly. “She has not been there all night.”
“Good God!” John Trevanion cried. He was entirely roused now. “Rosalind, you must be making some mistake.”
“There is no mistake. I thought perhaps you might know something. No one has slept there to-night. Oh, Uncle John, Uncle John, where is my mother? Let us go and find her before everybody knows.”
“Rosalind, leave me, and I will get up. I can tell you nothing—yes, I can tell you something; but I never thought it would be like this. It is your father who has sent her away.”
“Papa!” the girl cried; “oh, Uncle John, stop before you have taken everything away from me; neither father nor mother!—you take everything from me!” she said, with a cry of despair.
“Go away,” he said, “and get dressed, Rosalind, and then we can see whether there is anything to be done.”
An hour later they stood together by the half-kindled fire in the hall. John Trevanion had gone through the empty rooms with his niece, who was distracted, not knowing what she did. By this time a pale and gray daylight, which looked like cold and misery made visible, had diffused itself through the great house. That chill visibleness, showing all the arrangements of the room prepared for rest and slumber, where nobody had slept, had something terrible in it that struck them both with awe. There was no letter, no sign to be found of leave-taking. When they opened the wardrobe and drawers, a few dresses and necessaries were found to be gone, and it appeared that Jane had sent two small boxes to the village which she had represented to be old clothes, “colored things,” for which her mistress would now have no need. It was to Rosalind like a blow in the dark, a buffet from some ghostly hand, additional to her other pain, when she found it was these “colored things” and not the prepared, newly made mourning which her stepmother had taken with her. This seemed a cutting off from them, an entire abandonment, which made her misery deeper; but naturally John Trevanion did not think of that. He told her the story of the will while they stood together in the hall. But he could think of nothing to do, nor could he give any hope that this terrible event was a thing to be undone or concealed. “It must have happened,” he said, “sooner or later; and though it is a shock—a great shock—”
“Oh, Uncle John, it is—there was never anything so terrible. How can you use ordinary words? A shock! If the wind had blown down a tree it would be a shock. Don’t you see, it is the house that has been blown down? we have nothing—nothing to shelter us, we children. My mother and my father! We are orphans, and far, far worse than orphans. We having nothing left but shame—nothing but shame!”