CHAPTER II.


Several weeks elapsed before Sarah Bond recovered sufficiently from
the shock, ay, and genuine grief, occasioned by her father's death,
so as to investigate her affairs; the hardness and the tyranny she
had borne for so many years had become habitual, and her own will was
absolutely paralysed by inaction. Jacob Bond had always treated his
daughter as if she were a baby, and it was some time before she could
collect herself sufficiently to calculate upon her future plans. She
had no friends; and the sister to whom, despite her father's cruel
words, her heart clung so fondly, was far from her, she knew not
where. The mourning for herself and her servant was ordered from a
neighbouring shop, with a carelessness as to expense which made people
say that Sarah was of habits different from her father.

The rector and curate of the parish both called, but she shrunk
from strangers. The very first act, however, of her liberty, was to
take a pew at church, a whole pew, to herself, which she ordered to
be curtained all round. Some said this indicated pride, some said
ostentation; but it was simply shyness. And soon after she placed in
the aisle a white marble tablet, "To the memory of Jacob Bond, who
died in the seventy-eighth year of his age, deeply lamented by his
sorrowing daughter."

Some ladies connected with a society for clothing the poor, called
upon and explained to her their object; she poked five old guineas
into the hands of the spokeswoman, but forbade the insertion of her
donation in the visitor's book. During the following week she had