A man, when he's left a widower, don't smarten up the way he's done for nothin'; I know it." Aunt Maria nodded her head aggressively, with a gesture almost of butting.
Maria continued to gaze at her, with that pale, almost idiotic expression.

It was a fact that she had thought of her father as being as much married as ever, even although her mother was dead.

Nothing else had occurred to her.
"Your father's thinkin' of gettin' married again," said Aunt Maria, "and you may as well make up your mind to it, poor child." The words were pitying, the tone not.
"Who ?" gasped Maria.
"I don't know any more than you do," replied Aunt Maria, "but I know it's somebody." Suddenly Aunt Maria arose.

It seemed to her that she must do something vindictive.

Here she had to return to her solitary life in her New England village, and her hundred dollars a year, which somehow did not seem as great a glory to her as it had formerly done.