She was schoolmistress again, true; but where were her children?
Those of them whom she loved best, were swept away by the cholera; and could she face the remnant, each in mourning for a parent or a brother?
That alone was grief enough for her; and yet that was the lightest of all her griefs.

She loved Tom Thurnall--how much, she dared not tell herself; she longed to "save" him.

She had thought, and not untruly, during the past cholera weeks, that he was softened, opened to new impressions: but he had avoided her more than ever--perhaps suspected her again more than ever--and now he was gone, gone for ever.

That, too, was grief enough alone.

But darkest and deepest of all, darker and deeper than the past shame of being suspected by him she loved, was the shame of suspecting her own mother--of believing herself, as she did, privy to that shameful theft, and yet unable to make restitution.