degrees to the grave, when her only child had just completed her fifth
year.

My father, the younger son of a nobleman who traced his lineage from
Simon de Montfort, had been married in his own estate and among his
peers before he met my mother. Poor himself (his commission in the army
constituting his sole livelihood), he had espoused the young and
beautiful widow of a brother officer, who, in dying, had committed his
wife and her orphan child to his care and good offices, on a
battle-field in Spain, and with her hand he had received but little of
this world's lucre. The very pension, to which she would have been
entitled living singly, was cut off by her second marriage, and with
habits of luxury and indolence, such as too often appertain to the
high-born, and cling fatally to the physically delicate, the burden of
her expenses was more than her husband could well sustain.

Her parents and his own were dead, and there were no relatives on either
side who could be called upon for aid, without a sacrifice of pride,
which my father would have died rather than have made. He was nearly
reduced to desperation by the circumstances of the case, when,
fortunately perhaps for both, she suddenly sickened, drooped, and died,
in his absence, during her brief sojourn at a watering-place, and all
considerations were lost sight of at the time, in view of this
unexpected and stunning blow--for Reginald Monfort was devoted, in his
chivalric way, to his beautiful and fragile wife, as it was, indeed, his
nature to be to every thing that was his own. Her very dependence had
endeared her to him, nor had she known probably to what straits her
exactions had driven him, nor what were his exigencies. Perhaps (let me
strive to do her this justice, at least), had he been more open on these
subjects, matters might have gone better. Yet he found consolation in