"Oh my God! then Agnes is his own child."
None spoke--what each thought sent a thrill of icy horror to every heart. All groaned or wept, none could speak. There are moments in life of speechless agony, when the mind is completely horrified, when anything that breaks the silence comes as a relief. It came now in the sound of the door bell. It was a messenger to Mr. Lovetree. It brought relief to aching minds. It was very short. It only said, "he is dead." It is perhaps wrong to rejoice at the death of a fellow creature, but we could not feel regret.
After the first flush of excitement was over, a note was written to Agnes's mother, simply stating that if she would call at Mrs. Morgan's at her earliest convenience, she would meet with an individual who could tell her of her long-lost daughter. She made it convenient to come immediately, though it was then ten o'clock at night.
It is not reasonable to suppose that she could keep away till morning, particularly as she had heard a word or two at her first visit which left her mind uneasy.
I drop the curtain upon the scene when the mother acknowledges and receives to her arms her long-lost daughter, while I go to carry comfort to the heart of Mrs. De Vrai, the ill-treated wife--the widow of a villain--the mother of his child, soon to be an orphan.
What a load it lifted from her crushed heart, when I told her those three little words--"he is dead."
"Then my child will be safe, at least from his evil influences."
What a dreadful thing it is for a wife to feel upon the death of her husband that she is safe herself, that her child is safe, more safe among strangers than with its own father.
Why should she feel so? Why does she feel so? The answer is still shorter than that which gave her relief--which told her that her child's father was dead. That was composed of three words, this of one. That one word is--Rum!!
It was that which made a villain of him, a double villain to two wives and the children of both. It was that which made him attempt the greatest wrong that a father can do to his own child. Poor Agnes!
It was that which drove Mrs. De Vrai step by step from the paths of peaceful, youthful innocence, comfort and affluence, to--but I will not name the intermediate steps--to that wretched abode where the little girl who sold Hot Corn, and slept in the rain upon the cold stones, breathed her pure life away in prayers to that mother not to drink any more of that soul and body destroying rum.