CHAPTER II



The next time we get a glimpse of her is when she appears in the
mournful attire of a widow.

Mr. Twycott had never rallied, and now lay in a well-packed cemetery
to the south of the great city, where, if all the dead it contained
had stood erect and alive, not one would have known him or recognized
his name. The boy had dutifully followed him to the grave, and was
now again at school.

Throughout these changes Sophy had been treated like the child she
was in nature though not in years. She was left with no control over
anything that had been her husband's beyond her modest personal
income. In his anxiety lest her inexperience should be overreached
he had safeguarded with trustees all he possibly could. The
completion of the boy's course at the public school, to be followed
in due time by Oxford and ordination, had been all previsioned and
arranged, and she really had nothing to occupy her in the world but
to eat and drink, and make a business of indolence, and go on weaving
and coiling the nut-brown hair, merely keeping a home open for the
son whenever he came to her during vacations.

Foreseeing his probable decease long years before her, her husband in
his lifetime had purchased for her use a semi-detached villa in the
same long, straight road whereon the church and parsonage faced,
which was to be hers as long as she chose to live in it. Here she
now resided, looking out upon the fragment of lawn in front, and