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Updated: June 20, 2025
If the two unhappy Henry Leafs father and son could have come out of their graves that night and beheld these three women, daughters and sisters, sitting with Ascott's letter on the table, planning how the household's small expenses could be contracted, its still smaller luxuries relinquished, in order that the boy might honorably pay for pleasures he might so easily have done without!
Fate had decreed it so, she was to be his wife; but one thing she need not endure, and that was unnecessary suspense. She had decided to go to Lady Ascott's ball.... But she wouldn't see him there. He was kept indoors by the gout.
Ascott's anger and annoyance, not that she cared much for this, except so far as it would affect Selina; lastly, the death-blow it was to any possible hope of reclaiming the poor prodigal. Who she did not believe was dead, but still, fondly trusted he would return one day from his wanderings and his swine's husks, to have the fatted calf killed for him and glad tears shed over him.
I think it was this and the fact that, as the congregation took no outward part in the prayers except that of listening to them, Polly and I had nothing to do and we could not even hear the old gentleman who usually "read prayers" which led us into the very reprehensible habit of "playing at houses" in Uncle Ascott's gorgeously furnished pew.
If he don't call soon p'raps I might make bold to send his trunk and his books over to Mr. Ascott's of dear me, I forget the number and the square." Hilary unsuspiciously supplied both. "Yes, that's it the old gen'leman as Mr. Leaf went to dine with every other Sunday, a very rich old gentleman, who, he says, is to leave him all his money. Maybe a relation of yours, Miss?"
About five o'clock he got into his saddle with an unfeigned groan, and out of it again at Mrs. Ascott's door. They told him there that Mrs. Ascott was not at home. Whether this might be the conventional manner of informing him that she declined to receive him, or whether she really was out, he had no means of knowing; so he left his cards for Mrs.
Captain Ascott's fingers trembled, and he paused for an instant and looked down upon the dead, then out sorrowfully to the waiting sea, before he spoke the words, "We therefore commit their bodies to the deep." But, the moment they were uttered, the bier was lifted, there was a swift plunge, and only the flag and the empty boards were left.
But to the mother it was every thing. From the moment she heard its first cry Mrs. Ascott's whole nature seemed to undergo a change. Her very eyes those cold blue eyes of Miss Selina's took a depth and tenderness whenever she turned to look at the little bundle that lay beside her.
"I don't see," said poor Hilary, "what I can do but teach. And oh, if I could only get daily pupils, so that I might come home or nights, and creep into the fireside; and have time to mend the stockings and look after Ascott's linen, that he need not be so awfully extravagant."
Many things she found, and more she guessed at things which stabbed her to the heart, things that she never told, not even to Johanna; but she found no clew whatever to Ascott's whereabouts, intentions, or connections. One thing, however, struck her that most of his clothes, and all his somewhat extensive stock of jewelry were gone; every thing, in short, that could be convertible into money.
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