Trevor's eyes grew too dim with weeping, to read it all, and Fanny
finished it. "Here is a little note from your father, Eric, which
dropped out when we opened dear aunt's letter. Shall I read it, too?"
"Perhaps not now, love," said Mrs. Trevor. "Poor Eric is too tired and
excited already."
"Well, then, let me glance it myself, aunty," he said. He opened it,
read a line or two, and then, with a scream, fell back swooning, while
it dropped out of his hands.
Terrified, they picked up the fallen paper; it told briefly, in a few
heartrending words, that, after writing the letter, Mrs. Williams had
been taken ill; that her life was absolutely despaired of, and that,
before the letter reached England, she would, in all human probability,
be dead. It conveyed the impression of a soul resigned indeed, and
humble, but crushed down to the very earth with the load of mysterious
bereavement, and irretrievable sorrow.
"Oh, I have killed her, I have killed my mother!" said Eric, in a hollow
voice, when he came to himself.
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