CHAPTER XXIII.
I again resumed the manuscript, trembling for the revelations which it might make.
"Never again," wrote my mother, "did I behold my noble, gallant father.
His death was sudden, as if shot down in the battle field, without one warning weakness or pain.

In the green summer of his days he fell, and long did my heart vibrate from the shock.

How desolate to me was the home to which I returned! The household fire was indeed extinguished.
The household god laid low.

I saw at one glance that in my breast alone his memory was enshrined; that there alone was sacred incense burning.
Mrs.Lynn, (I will speak of her by her name hereafter,) though only one year had passed since his death, was assuming those light, coquettish airs which accord as little with the robes of widowhood as the hues of the rainbow or the garlands of spring.
"I saw with exquisite pain and shame, that she looked upon me as a rival of her maturer charms, and gladly yielded to my wish for retirement.

She always spoke of me as 'the child,' the 'little bookworm,' impressing upon the minds of all the idea of my extreme juvenility.