ence was his marriage with the
first pretty girl he met, poorer than himself, and all the Ormersfield
interest failed to make his mother angry with him.

The cholera of 1832 put an end to poor Henry's desultory life. His
house, in a crowded part of London, was especially doomed by the deadly
sickness; and out of the whole family the sole survivors were a little
girl of ten months old, and a boy of seven years, the latter of whom
was with his grandmother at Northwold.

Mrs. Frost was one of the women of whom affection makes unconscious
heroines. She could never sink, as long as there was aught to need her
love and care; and though Henry had been her darling, the very
knowledge that his orphans had no one but herself to depend on, seemed
to brace her energies with fresh life. They were left entirely on her
hands, her son Oliver made no offers of assistance. He had risen, so as
to be a prosperous merchant at Lima, and he wrote with regularity and
dutifulness, but he had never proposed coming to England, and did not
proffer any aid in the charge of his brother's children. If she had
expected anything from him, she did not say so; she seldom spoke of
him, but never without tenderness, and usually as her 'poor Oliver,'
and she abstained from teaching her grandchildren either to look to
their rich uncle or to mourn over their lost inheritance. Cheveleigh
was a winter evening's romance with no one but Jane Beckett; and the
grandmother always answered the children's inquiries by bidding them
prove their ancient blood by resolute independence, and by that true
dignity which wealth could neither give nor take away.

Of that dignity, Mrs. Frost was a perfect model. A singular compound
of the gentle and the lofty, of tenderness and independence, she had
never ceased to be the Northwold standard of the 'real lady,' too mild
and gracious to be regarded as proud and poor, and yet too dignified
for any liberty to be attempted, her only fault, that touch of pride,
so ladylike and refined that it was kept out of sight, and never
offended, and everything else so sweet and winning that there was
scarcely a being who did not love, as well as honour her, for the
cheerfulness and resignation that had borne her through her many
trials. Her trustful spirit and warm heart had been an elixir of
youth, and had preserved her freshness and elasticity long after her
sister and brother-in-law at Ormersfield had grown aged and sunk into
the gr