In this new scene, the Peachtree street parlor was changed from its last iteration. The furnishings were not so well-kept, and everything looked a little rough around the edges. Bonnie had said 'Christmas future?'—but there was no sign of Christmas in this shabby chamber. Even Scarlett's gown—the claret one she had been wearing in Melanie's vision—was fraying at the edges. What had happened to her, to make her into such a dowd? She raised her hands and a glimmer of gold flashed on her left hand and Rhett realized: it was not the ostentatious emerald he had given her to. It was Ashley's ring—Scarlett was Ashley's wife, now. Mrs. Wilkes, at last, he thought, nastily. I hope you're happy, Scarlett. It's what you've always wanted.

But Scarlett did not look happy, and a thrill of cruel delight went through Rhett at that realization. And Ashley—he did not look the picture of married bliss, either. He was seated on the sofa with his head in his hands. Scarlett was striding in front of him, looking very angry indeed.

"You forbid me to work?" she was saying, in a loud voice. "God's nightgown, Ashley! Do you like being poor? We've hardly enough to live on since the divorce—would you like us to have to sell this house? And where will we live? Aunt Pitty won't take us in. She wants nothing to do with you since you married me. India has turned her—we haven't a friend left in the world. Where will we go for help, Ashley? Are you going to take care of us?"

Her voice was not meant to be harsh, but the panic, the disgust, in it was evident. Ashley lifted his head from his thin hands to stare at Scarlett balefully.

"You will never let me forget my failings, Scarlett," he murmured, in a beaten voice. "You are a very hard woman to please."

"Hard to please me?" she said, in a wondering tone. "Oh, Ashley—it isn't about me! I wouldn't care if I had to live in a box. Think of Beau—think of how sick he is! Why, Ashley—he'll die if I don't find a way to get enough money for the doctor. I don't get maintenance from Rhett since I was married to you, and you won't let me work. Great balls of fire! You'll let your own son die to keep your silly pride intact? What kind of father are you?"

Ashley dropped his grizzled head back into his hands. "I am a very poor father," he said. "And a very poor husband—God help me. And God help you, for marrying me. At least there is the insurance policy on my life. Uncle Henry Hamilton got it for me—it's worth so much, when I am worth so little. Oh, Scarlett, Scarlett—if only I could die and you be free of me!"

But Scarlett was in no mood for a pity party. Her panic was mounting; it showed in the flutter of her hands, helpless white birds falling, falling, the agitated swish of her tattered skirts. "I made a promise to Melly that I'd take care of Beau—take care of him always. What will Melly think if I let him die, Ashley? I told her I'd take care of you, that you weren't strong—and you won't let me care for you. Oh, Ashley, if Rhett takes this house from us, too, don't you see we'll be homeless? We have nowhere to go—even Tara is lost to us, now. Beau will die in the streets—he'll die like a dog, in the streets!"

At this, Rhett sat up. Tara—what had happened to Tara? How had Scarlett let it slip through her fingers: the thing she loved most in the world?

"She came to you," Bonnie explained without looking at her father. "For help. You took a mortgage on the property —and then you foreclosed. You intended to do it from the start, Daddy. But you didn't let her see that—you let her think you would help her. You wanted to punish her, for marrying Uncle Ashley."

Rhett was angry, now. Never before had Bonnie spoken to him with such reproach. "I would never do that," he swore. "I would never do a thing like that!"

"But haven't you?" Bonnie turned to face him, as the scene in the mirror played on. "You had Uncle Henry cut her off, because she was helping Ashley. It's not such a large step from that to this."

Rhett felt the beginnings of a cold sweat start along his spine. He had no pretensions to goodness, or kindness—gentlemanliness—but at the same time, he did not want to think he could ever cast a sick boy, a penniless family, out into the street.

"Bonnie," he implored her. "Bonnie—you said this is what will be. Is it? Is there any hope of changing it?"

She looked at him a moment longer, and turned back to her mirror, as the scene changed.

Beau Wilkes—older, thinner, haggard-looking as his father, with lips tinged alarmingly blue, was reclining on a bed, white as the sheets he lay upon. Next to him sat a plump young man dressed in the latest fashion, his hair sleek, his mouth drawn up in a cutting smirk. There was something familiar about him, and Rhett felt he should recognize him, but didn't.

"General Pickett," Beau whispered. "It's good to see you, Wade."

Wade! Rhett's mouth hung agape. This coddled, dandyish boy—Wade Hampton Hamilton? He turned to Bonnie, speechless.

"Wade kept good on his promise," she said. "He went West, and made his fortune—just like you did, once. He's tried to mold himself exactly in your image, Daddy—'the very picture of his Uncle Rhett.' Wade is a very rich man, now. Quite as rich as you ever were."

"Why doesn't he help his cousin, then?" asked Rhett, querulously.

As if answering his question, the Wade in the mirror spoke. "Mother said you were sick, Beau," he said shortly, refusing to use the greeting of their childhood. "You look all right to me."

All right? When the boy was wasting away? Rhett watched as Wade sat back in the chair by the sickbed, and lit a cigar, looking as if he wished he were anywhere else than with the boy he had once loved as a brother.

"I'm not—well—Wade, but I'm trying to get better."

"Try a little harder?" suggested Wade with a roguish smile. His teeth flashed below a curling moustache—Wade, with a moustache! And speaking so cruelly! "Nobody likes a layabout, Beau. But I don't fault you for your habits—your pa has never amounted to much, I expect you learned it from him. A lot of people just don't like good hard work, and will do anything to get out of it."

"Wade!" A spasm of coughing wracked Beau's body. "I won't—let you—say such things about—my father."

"Uncle Ashley has freeloaded off my mother for years," said Wade pitilessly. "And mother doesn't have the sense God gave a goose when it comes to financial affairs. She put every bit of it into Tara—that great while elephant."

"That great white elephant"—where had Rhett heard those words before? He did not have time to think; Wade was speaking again.

"I won't give them a penny anymore—I won't support idlers. And you'd better not be one, Beau."

"Wade—I—intend—to get a job studying law—once I am better," Beau protested, faintly. "If I could get better, if I only could…"

"That's your way of asking me for money, isn't it?" Wade wondered. "Your polite, gentlemanly way of asking. Not too polite to ask, though. You all think you can come running to me since Uncle Rhett's cut you off for good, at last. Not that I blame him! He doesn't like hangers-on anymore than I do. Well!" The man that was not the boy Rhett knew reached into his vest pocket and drew out a roll of paper bills in a silver money clip. "I'll help you this last time, Beau—out of the goodness of my heart—but this is the last time, hear and understand?" He scattered a few bills on the floor, just out of the sick boy's reach, turned on his well-polished heel, and stormed from the room.

"Wade would never treat Beau like that," Rhett whispered. "Not the Wade I know."

"Wade has changed," sighed Bonnie. "He has tried every way he knows to get your approval, Daddy. He always loved you very much. But you hadn't time for him anymore, and so he had to try harder and harder. Finally he lost sight of the boy he wanted to be—and he became you."

"But was I ever that cruel?" Rhett wondered.

"Only to the ones you loved," answered Bonnie.