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.