of forty, had no idea at all of passing her future life amidst the
ordinary penances of widowhood. She had hitherto endeavoured to do her
duty, knowing that in accepting her position she was bound to take the
good and the bad together. She had certainly encountered hitherto much
that was bad. To be scolded, watched, beaten, and sworn at by a
choleric old man till she was at last driven out of her house by the
violence of his ill-usage; to be taken back as a favour with the
assurance that her name would for the remainder of her life be
unjustly tarnished; to have her flight constantly thrown in her face;
and then at last to become for a year or two the nurse of a dying
debauchee, was a high price to pay for such good things as she had
hitherto enjoyed. Now at length had come to her a period of relaxation
--her reward, her freedom, her chance of happiness. She thought much
about herself, and resolved on one or two things. The time for love
had gone by, and she would have nothing to do with it. Nor would she
marry again for convenience. But she would have friends,--real friends;
friends who could help her,--and whom possibly she might help. She
would, too, make some career for herself, so that life might not be
without an interest to her. She would live in London, and would become
somebody at any rate in some circle. Accident at first rather than
choice had thrown her among literary people, but that accident had,
during the last two years, been supported and corroborated by the
desire which had fallen upon her of earning money. She had known from
the first that economy would be necessary to her,--not chiefly or
perhaps not at all from a feeling that she and her daughter could not
live comfortably together on a thousand a year,--but on behalf of her
son. She wanted no luxury but a house so placed that people might
conceive of her that she lived in a proper part of the town. Of her
daughter's prudence she was as well convinced as of her own. She could
trust Henrietta in everything. But her son, Sir Felix, was not very
trustworthy. And yet Sir Felix was the darling of her heart.

At the time of the writing of the three letters, at which our story is
supposed to begin, she was driven very hard for money. Sir Felix was
then twenty-five, had been in a fashionable regiment for four years,
had already sold out, and, to own the truth at once, had altogether
wasted the property which his father had left him. So much the mother
kne