The fate of so young a wife and mother touched deeply all who had known her, and some who knew her only by name.

[Moultrie made Mrs.Cropper's death the subject of some verses on which her relatives set a high value.

He acknowledges his little poem to be the tribute of one who had been a stranger to her whom it was written to commemorate: "And yet methinks we are not strange: so many claims there be Which seem to weave a viewless band between my soul and thee.
Sweet sister of my early friend, the kind, the singlehearted, Than whose remembrance none more bright still gilds the days departed! Beloved, with more than sister's love, by some whose love to me Is now almost my brightest gem in this world's treasury."] When the melancholy news arrived in India, the young couple were spending their honeymoon in a lodge in the Governor-General's park at Barrackpore.

They immediately returned to Calcutta, and, under the shadow of a great sorrow, began their sojourn in their brother's house, who, for his part, did what he might to drown his grief in floods of official work.

["April 8.Lichfield.Easter Sunday.