For several years her husband could not bear the light; she learned, therefore, to work in darkness, and thus made a large embroidered carpet.

"Into this carpet," said she, as she once spoke accidentally of herself, "have I worked many tears." One of the many hypochondriacal fancies of her husband was, that he was about to fall into a yawning abyss, and only could believe himself safe so long as he held the hand of his wife.

Thus for one month after another she sate by his couch.
At length the grave opened for him; and thanking his wife for the happiness he had enjoyed in the house of sickness on earth, he sank to rest, in full belief of a land of restoration beyond.

When he was gone, it seemed to her as if she were as useless in the world as an old almanack; but here also again her soul raised itself under its burden, and she regulated her life with peace and decision.

In course of years she grew more cheerful, and the originality of her talents and disposition which nature had given to her, and which, in her solitude, had undisturbedly followed their own bent, brought a freshness with them into social life, into which she entered at first rather from resolution than from feeling at ease in it.
"The Lord ordains all things for the best;" that had always been, and still remained, the firm anchorage of her soul.