For eighteen years of her life, as wife, mother, and widow, no letters came to her from her English home.

We had just celebrated my seventeenth birthday when the first letter came.

It informed my mother that no less than three lives, which stood between her and the inheritance of certain portions of the family property, had been swept away by death.

The estate and the fortune which I have already mentioned had fallen to her in due course of law, and her surviving relatives were magnanimously ready to forgive her at last! We wound up our affairs at Saint Domingo, and we went to England to take possession of our new wealth.
At first, the return to her native air seemed to have a beneficial effect on my mother's health.

But it was a temporary improvement only.
Her constitution had been fatally injured by the West Indian climate, and just as we had engaged a competent person to look after my neglected education, my constant attendance was needed at my mother's bedside.