She was comely and knew it, but a constitutional indolence had preserved her from becoming a woman of fashion, and had nurtured in her a reflective mood, which, if it led to no marked originality of thought, at all events contributed to an appearance of culture.

At the time of her husband's death she was at the point where graceful inactivity so often degenerates into slovenliness.

Mrs.Rossall's homekeeping tendencies and the growing childhood of her twins tended to persuade her that her youth was gone; even the new spring fashions stirred her to but languid interest, and her music, in which she had some attainments, was all but laid aside.
With widowhood began a new phase of her life.

Her mourning was unaffected; it led her to pietism; she spent her days in religious observance, and her nights in the study of the gravest literature.

She would have entered the Roman Church but for her brother's interposition.
The end of this third year of discipline was bringing about another change, perhaps less obvious to herself than to those who marked her course with interest, as several people did.