passage she could not let pass without a _comment_. The moral she
drew from it was not very _new_, to be sure. The girl had heard it a
hundred times before--and a hundred times more she could have heard
it, without suspecting it to be tedious. Rosamund loved her
grandmother.

The old lady loved Rosamund too; and she had reason for so doing.
Rosamund was to her at once a child and a servant. She had only _her_
left in the world. They two lived together.

They had once known better days. The story of Rosamund's parents,
their failure, their folly, and distresses, may be told another time.
Our tale hath grief enough in it.

It was now about a year and a half since old Margaret Gray had sold
off all her effects, to pay the debts of Rosamund's father--just
after the mother had died of a broken heart; for her husband had fled
his country to hide his shame in a foreign land. At that period the
old lady retired to a small cottage in the village of Widford in
Hertfordshire.

Rosamund, in her thirteenth year, was left destitute, without fortune
or friends: she went with her grandmother. In all this time she had
served her faithfully and lovingly.

Old Margaret Gray, when she first came into these parts, had eyes,
and could see. The neighbors said, they had been dimmed by weeping:
be that as it may, she was latterly grown quite blind. "God is very
good to us, child; I can _feel_ you yet." This she would sometimes
say; and we need not wonder to hear, that Rosamund clave unto her