There was no one in whom Emma dare confide. So she tortured herself, recalling certain instances that were all pieces of a jigsaw split asunder by cruel circumstances so very long ago. The time between had been like a fast-running brook spilling into a vast ocean. Gone for ever. And yet, and yet! Was it all to do with Emma’s long and desperate wish that the girl-child might have survived? How could she tell whether it was all just wishful thinking born of a terrible loss which, even now, caused her great pain. How could she tell? Dear God, what was she to think?

For weeks now, Emma had been haunted by all those little encounters which only seemed to add to her confusion – the fact that old Sal never had any children of her own, and on a day not too long after Emma was transported, Sal was suddenly in possession of an infant… a girl-child with the same black eyes and dark hair as Marlow himself!

Oh if only it had been possible to discover where old Sal had got the infant! But until now, no one seemed to know; Sal claimed that ‘the little people sent her to me’. Then there was the watch chain. Emma could not satisfy herself as to how it came to be in this house; not belonging to either staff or household, yet discovered soon after Molly’s departure. And, if it had been in Molly’s possession, then how did she acquire it? Had she stolen it? Certainly, as Nelly pointed out, Molly had stolen to survive. Had she been given it, perhaps by an admirer who was himself a thief? Or – and it was this possibility that tormented Emma – had the piece been found by old Sal in the same spot as she had found the girl-child herself?

If that ‘spot’ were none other than the cobbled street behind the prison where she and Nelly were held, Emma would be convinced that the dark-eyed Molly was her long-lost daughter. Hers and Marlow’s!

So deep in thought was Emma that when Nelly came into the drawing-room carrying a lamp before her, Emma did not detect her presence. Instead, she remained by the casement windows, gazing out to a star-studded sky and wondering whether the heavens held the secret of all that went on below.

Placing the lamp on the mantelpiece beside the smaller lamp which Emma had brought down, Nelly took stock of her old friend. It hurt her to see how the slim shoulders were drooped, as though carrying an unbearable weight. Emma’s whole countenance seemed greatly saddened. If only the boy had been spared, Nelly thought now; if only that particular source of joy had not been so heartlessly torn from her. It was true that Marlow was Emma’s strength in these troubled times, and she adored him as always. But the love between a mother and her child was special, a unique and wonderful thing that could never be replaced.