For herself, she dressed henceforth in drab or black.
For three or four years she remained more or less an invalid.

At the end of that time she regained a fair measure of health, although she seemed not likely ever to be strong.
In the meanwhile her school-mates and friends had pretty much all married, or been given in marriage.

She was a stranger to the new set of young people which had come on the stage since her day, while her former companions lived in a world of new interests, with which she had nothing in common.

Society, in reorganizing itself, had left her on the outside.
The present had moved on, leaving her behind with the past.

She asked nothing better.