In the meanwhile her school-mates and friends had pretty much all
married, or been given in marriage. She was a stranger to the new set of
young people which had come on the stage since her day, while her former
companions lived in a world of new interests, with which she had nothing
in common. Society, in reorganizing itself, had left her on the outside.
The present had moved on, leaving her behind with the past. She asked
nothing better. If she was nothing to the present, the present was still
less to her. As to society, her sensitiveness to the unpleasant
impression made by her personal appearance rendered social gatherings
distasteful to her, and she wore a heavy veil when she went to church.

She was an only child. Her mother had long been dead, and when about this
time her father died she was left without near kin. With no ties of
contemporary interest to hold her to the present she fell more and more
under the influence of the habit of retrospection.

The only brightness of colour which life could ever have for her lay
behind in the girlhood which had ended but yesterday, and was yet so
completely ended. She found her only happiness in the recollections of
that period which she retained. These were the only goods she prized, and
it was the grief of her life that, while she had strong boxes for her
money, and locks and keys for her silver and her linen, there was no
device whereby she could protect her store of memories from the slow
wasting of forgetfulness.

She lived with a servant quite alone in the old Ludington homestead,
which it was her absorbing care to keep in precisely the same condition,
even to the arrangement of the furniture, in which it had always been.

If she could have insured the same permanence in the village of Hilton,