Chapter 36 36

The matron who alone has stood

When not a prop seemed left below,

The first lorn hour of widowhood,

Yet, cheered and cheering all the while,

With sad but unaffected, smile.

-CHRISTIAN YEAR

The four months' wife was a widow before she was twenty-one, and there she sat in her loneliness, her maid weeping, seeking in vain for somethi