When Evelina met them in the doorway, after meeting was done, she
bowed with a sweet cold grace to the bride, who courtesied blushingly
in return, with an awkward sweep of her foot in the bridal satin
shoe. The bridegroom did not look at Evelina at all. He held his chin
well down in his stock with solemn embarrassment, and passed out
stiffly, his bride on his arm.

Evelina, shining in the sun like a silver lily, went up the street,
her father stalking beside her with stately swings of his cane, and
that was the last time she was ever seen at meeting. Nobody knew why.

When Evelina was a little over thirty her father died. There was not
much active grief for him in the village; he had really figured
therein more as a stately monument of his own grandeur than anything
else. He had been a man of little force of character, and that little
had seemed to degenerate since his wife died. An inborn dignity of
manner might have served to disguise his weakness with any others
than these shrewd New-Englanders, but they read him rightly. "The
Squire wa'n't ever one to set the river a-fire," they said. Then,
moreover, he left none of his property to the village to build a new
meeting-house or a town-house. It all went to Evelina.

People expected that Evelina would surely show herself in her
mourning at meeting the Sunday after the Squire died, but she did
not. Moreover, it began to be gradually discovered that she never
went out in the village street nor crossed the boundaries of her own
domains after her father's death. She lived in the great house with
her three servants--a man and his wife, and the woman who had been
with her mother when she died. Then it was that Evelina's garden
began. There had always been a garden at the back of the Squire's