"What are they going to do in England?" asked Tom.
"Going to live with their relations in Hampshire."
"Ellen will be a fine match for some young English squire," said Tom. "She will have twenty thousand pounds some day, I suppose."
And then we went on talking about other matters.
A little scene took place in the garden next morning, which may astonish some of my readers, but which did not surprise me in the least. I knew it would happen, sooner or later, and when I saw Tom's air, on his arrival the night before, I said to myself, "It is coming," and so sure enough it did. And I got all the circumstances out of Tom only a few days afterwards.
Mary Hawker was now a very handsome woman, about one and forty. There may have been a grey hair here and there among her long black tresses, but they were few and far between. I used to watch her sometimes of an evening, and wonder to myself how she had come through such troubles, and lived; and yet there she was on the night when Tom arrived, for instance, sitting quite calm and cheerful beside the fire in her half-mourning (she had soon dropped her weeds, perhaps, considering who her husband had been, a piece of good taste), with quite a placid, contented look on her fine black eyes. I think no one was capable of feeling deeper for a time, but her power of resilience was marvellous. I have noticed that before. It may, God forgive me, have given me some slight feeling of contempt for her, because, forsooth, she did not brood over and nurse an old grief as I did myself. I am not the man to judge her. When I look back on my own wasted life; when I see how for one boyish fancy I cut myself off from all the ties of domestic life, to hold my selfish way alone, I sometimes think that she has shown herself a better woman than I have a man. Ah! well, old sweetheart, not much to boast of either of us. Let us get on.
She was walking in the garden, next morning, and Tom came and walked beside her; and after a little he said,—
"So you are pretty well contented, cousin?"
"I am as well content," she said, "as a poor, desolate, old childless widow could hope to be. There is no happiness left for me in this life!"
"Who told you that?" said Tom. "Who told you that the next twenty years of your life might not be happier than any that have gone before?"