Molly looks taller, slenderer than usual in her mourning robes. She is one of those who grow slight quickly under affliction. Her rounded cheeks have fallen in and show sad hollows; her eyes are larger, darker, and show beneath them great purple lines born of many tears. She has not seen Luttrell since her return home,--although Letitia has,--and rarely asks for him. Her absorbing grief appears to have swallowed up all other emotions. She has not once left the house. She works little, she does not read at all; she is fast falling into a settled melancholy. "Molly," says Letitia, "Tedcastle is in the drawing-room. He particularly asks to see you. Do not refuse him again. Even though your engagement, as you say, is at an end, still remember, dearest, how kind, how more than thoughtful, he has been in many ways since--of late----" Her voice breaks. "Yes, yes, I will see him," Molly says, wearily, and, rising, wends her way slowly, reluctantly, to the room which contains her lover. At sight of him some chords that have lain hushed and forgotten in her heart for many days come to life again. Her pulses throb, albeit languidly, her color deepens; a something that is almost gladness awakes within her. Alas! how human are we all, how short-lived our keenest regrets! With the living love so near her she for the first time (though only for a moment) forgets the dead one. In her trailing, sombre dress, with her sorrowful white cheeks, and quivering lips, she goes up to him and places her hand in his; while he, touched with a mighty compassion, stares at her, marking with a lover's careful eye all the many alterations in her face. So much havoc in so short a time! "How changed you are! How you must have suffered!" he says, tenderly. "I have," she answers; and then, grown nervous, because of her trouble and the fluttering of her heart, and that tears of late are so ready to her, she covers her face with her hands, and, with the action of a tired and saddened child, turning, hides it still more effectually upon his breast. "It is all very miserable," he says, after a pause, occupied in trying to soothe. "Ah! is it not? What trouble can be compared with it? To find him dead, without a word, a parting sign!" She sighs heavily. "The bitterest sting of all lies in the fact that but for my own selfishness I might have seen him again. Had I returned home as I promised at the end of the month I should have met my brother living; but instead I lingered on, enjoying myself,"--with a shudder,--"while he was slowly breaking his heart over his growing difficulties. It must all have happened during this last month. He had no care on his mind when I left him; you know that. You remember how light-hearted he was, how kindly, how good to all." "He was indeed, poor--poor fellow!" "And some have dared to blame him," she says, in a pained whisper. "You do not?" "No--_no_."