“ ‘Almost a year?’ I exclaimed in stupid wonder! ‘and that child?’
“ ‘Is my husband’s youngest boy.’
“ ‘Then you married to take care of another’s children.’
“ ‘Yes, I could not refuse him,—fortune had prospered him, so that he could afford to take care of poor Mary, and I consented, though I was almost ashamed to become a bride at my age.’
“ ‘At your age! why you look younger and prettier than ever, Fanny, in that tasteful little cap.’
“ ‘Do not laugh at me, dear Mrs. ——, I know it was foolish to marry for love at forty-five, but William was so lonely, and his poor children were so desolate.’
“ ‘Then it was William Grey you married?’
“ ‘To be sure;—did you think it could be any one else?’
“ ‘Ah!’ said Mary smiling, ‘William would not have won her even now, if it had not been for his motherless children. Fanny has been so long accustomed to sacrifice her own inclinations, that she cannot be persuaded to any self-indulgence unless some duty be closely connected with it.’
“Fanny Wilbank still lives; the beauty of her noble countenance has faded beneath the touch of time, and many a thread of silver is mingled with her dark locks, yet is she the centre of a circle of loving and beloved friends, still the same, patient, tender, self-forgetting being, that she was in the day of her early adversity.”