the sea-side with her children.

From this journey she did not return. Their father had but just gone
quite out of her reach when the children took scarlet fever, and she
summoned their grandfather to her aid. In this, her first great anxiety
and trouble, for some of them were extremely ill, all that she had found
most oppressive in his character appeared to suit her. He pleased and
satisfied her; but the children were hardly better, so that he had time
to consider what it was that surprised him in her, when she fell ill
herself, and before her husband reached home had died in his father's
arms.

All the children recovered. John Mortimer took them home, and for the
first six months after her death he was miserably disconsolate. It was
not because they had been happy, but because they had been so very
comfortable. He aggravated himself into thinking that he could have
loved her more if he had only known how soon he should lose her; he
looked at all their fine healthy joyous children, and grieved to think
that now they were his only.

But the time came when he knew that he could have loved her much more if
she would have let him; and when he had found out that, womankind in
general went down somewhat in his opinion. He made up his mind, as he
thought, that he would not marry again; but this, he knew in his secret
heart, was less for her sake than for his own.

Then, being of an ardently affectionate nature, and having now no one to
restrain it, he began to study his children with more anxious care, and
consider their well-being with all his might.