Mrs. Walter's husband had been a schoolmaster. He was a brilliant scholar and would certainly have risen high in his profession. But he had died within two years of their marriage, leaving her almost unprovided for. She had the income from an insurance policy of a thousand pounds and he had left the manuscript of a schoolbook, which was to have been the first of many such. One of his colleagues had arranged for its publication on terms not as favourable as they should have been, but it had brought her in something every year, and its sales had increased until now they produced a respectable yearly sum. For twenty years she had acted as matron in one of the boarding-houses of the school at which her husband had been assistant master. It had been a hard life, and she was a delicate woman, always with the fear before her of losing her post before she could save enough to live on and keep Mollie with her. The work, for which she was not well suited, had tried her, and it was with a feeling of immense relief and thankfulness that she at last reached the point at which she could give it up, and live her own quiet life with her daughter. She could not, in fact, have gone on with it much longer, and kept what indifferent health she had; and looking back she was inclined to wonder how she had stood it for so long. Every morning that she woke up in her quiet little cottage brought a blissful sense of relief at being free from all the stress and worry of that uncongenial life, and no place she could have found to live in would have been too quiet and retired for her.