Her name was Lorena Sears, and she had come in with one of the late trains of converts, without friends, relatives, or means, with nothing but her natural gifts and an abiding faith in the saving powers of the new dispensation.

And though she was so alive in her faith, rarely informed in the Scriptures, bubbling with enthusiasm for the new covenant, the new Zion, and the second coming of the Messiah, there had seemed to be no place for her.

She had not been asked in marriage, nor had she found it easy to secure work to support herself.
"She's strong," said Brigham, to his inquiring Elder, "and a good worker, but even Brother Heber Kimball wouldn't marry her; and between you and me, Brother Joel, I never knew Heber to shy before at anything that would work.

You can see that, yourself, by looking over his household." But, after the needful preliminaries, and a very little coy hesitation on the part of the lady, Lorena Sears, spinster, native of Elyria, Ohio, was duly sealed to, for time and eternity, and became a star forever in the crown of, Joel Rae, Elder after the Order of Melchisedek in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and President of the Amalon Stake of Zion.
In the bustle of the start south there were, of necessity, moments in which the crown's new star could not talk; but these blessed respites were at an end when at last they came to the open road.
At first, as her speech flowed on, he looked sidelong at her, in a trouble of fear and wonder; then, at length, absently, trying to put his mind elsewhere and to leave her voice as the muted murmur of a distant torrent.

He succeeded fairly well in this, for Lorena combined admirably in herself the parts of speaker and listener, and was not, he thankfully noted, watchful of his attention.
But in spite of all he could do, sentences would come to seize upon his ears: "...