been a widower for nearly ten years; for the last three his house had
been directed by a widowed sister, Mrs. Rossall, who had twin girls. Mr.
Athel found it no particular hardship to get away from town and pursue
his work at The Firs, a delightful house in the midst of Surrey's
fairest scenery, nor would Mrs. Rossall allow that the surrender of high
season cost her any effort. This lady had just completed her
thirty-second year; her girls were in their tenth. She was comely and
knew it, but a constitutional indolence had preserved her from becoming
a woman of fashion, and had nurtured in her a reflective mood, which, if
it led to no marked originality of thought, at all events contributed to
an appearance of culture. At the time of her husband's death she was at
the point where graceful inactivity so often degenerates into
slovenliness. Mrs. Rossall's homekeeping tendencies and the growing
childhood of her twins tended to persuade her that her youth was gone;
even the new spring fashions stirred her to but languid interest, and
her music, in which she had some attainments, was all but laid aside.
With widowhood began a new phase of her life. Her mourning was
unaffected; it led her to pietism; she spent her days in religious
observance, and her nights in the study of the gravest literature. She
would have entered the Roman Church but for her brother's interposition.
The end of this third year of discipline was bringing about another
change, perhaps less obvious to herself than to those who marked her
course with interest, as several people did. Her reading became less
ascetic, she passed to George Herbert and the 'Christian Year,' and by
way of the decoration of altars proceeded to thought for her personal
adornment. A certain journal of society which she had long ago abandoned
began to show itself occasionally in her rooms, though only as yet by
oversight left to view. She spoke with her brother on the subject of
certain invitations, long neglected, and did not seem displeased when he
went beyond her own motion to propose the issuing of cards for a