He can tell you very little; he has known the character of Dalton; he
has seen with fear his assiduous attentions--tenfold multiplied since
your leave. He has trembled for the issue: this very morning he observed
a travelling carriage at the door;--they drove away together. You have
no strength to question him. You see that he fears the worst: he does
not know Madge so well as you.
----And can it be? Are you indeed widowed with that most terrible of
widowhoods? Is your wife living, and yet--lost! Talk not to such a man
of the woes of sickness, of poverty, of death; he will laugh at your
mimicry of grief.
----All is blackness; whichever way you turn, it is the same; there is
no light; your eye is put out; your soul is desolate forever! The heart
by which you had grown up into the full stature of joy and blessing, is
rooted out of you, and thrown like something loathsome, at which the
carrion dogs of the world scent and snuffle!
They will point at you, as the man who has lost all that he prized; and
she has stolen it, whom he prized more than what was stolen! And he, the
accursed miscreant----. But no, it can never be! Madge is as true as
Heaven!
Yet she is not there: whence comes the light that is to cheer you?
----Your children?
Ay, your children,--your little Nelly,--your noble Frank,--they are
yours,--doubly, trebly, tenfold yours, now that she, their mother, is a
mother no more to them forever!
Ay, close your doors; shut out the world; draw close your curtains; fold
them to your heart,--your crushed, bleeding, desolate heart! Lay your
forehead to the soft cheek of your noble boy;--beware, beware how you
dampen that damask cheek with your scalding tears: yet you cannot help
it; they fall--great drops--a river of tears, as you gather him
convulsively to your bosom!
"Father, why do you cry so?" says Frank, with the tears of dreadful
sympathy starting from those eyes of childhood.
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