e whose happiness was the whole thought of that
dreary survivor at the chimney corner--and yet so much. And if that
survivor is a woman she has to smile and tell her neighbours of the
bride's happiness, and how great the comfort to herself that her
Elinor's life is assured, and her own ending is now of no particular
importance to her daughter; if it is a man, he is allowed to lament,
which is a curious paradox, but one of the many current in this world.
Mrs. Dennistoun had to put a very brave face upon it all the more
because of the known unsatisfactoriness of Elinor's husband: and she had
to go on with her life, and sit down at her solitary meals, and invent
lonely occupations for herself, and read and read, till her brains were
often dazed by the multiplicity of the words, which lost their meaning
as she turned over page by page. To sit alone in the house, without
a sound audible, except perhaps the movement of the servants going
up-stairs or down to minister to the wants, about which she felt she
cared nothing whether they were ministered to or not, of their solitary
mistress, where a little while ago there used to be the rhythm of the
one quick step, the sound of the one gay voice which made the world a
warm inhabited place to Mrs. Dennistoun--this was more dismal than words
could say. To be sure, there were some extraordinary and delightful
differences; there were the almost daily letters, which afforded the
lonely mother all the pleasure that life could give; and there was
always the prospect, or at least possibility and hope, of seeing her
child again. Those two particulars, it need scarcely be said, make a
difference which is practically infinite: but yet for Mrs. Dennistoun,
sitting alone all the day and night, walking alone, reading alone,
with little to do that was of the slightest consequence, not even the
reading--for what did it matter to her dreary, lonely consciousness
whether she kept afloat of general literature or improved her mind
or not? this separation by marriage was dreadfully like the dreary
separation by death, and in one respect it was almost worse; for death,
if it reaches our very hearts, takes away at least the gnawing pangs of
anxiety. He or she who is gone that way is well; never more can trouble
touch them, their feet cannot err nor their hearts ache; while who can
tell what troubles and miseries may be befalling, out there in the
unknown, the child who has embarked upon the troubled sea o