Eight years before the commencement of this story, I was on the eve of marriage with Philip Dallas, and we were to set out on a voyage to Jamaica immediately afterwards. Certain plantations there, belonging to his elder brother, were going to ruin for want of an interested overlooker on the spot. Edward Dallas did not wholly depend upon the property, and was not inclined to exile himself; but as he appeared still less inclined to advance his brother's fortunes in England, Philip and I agreed to go out and reside in Jamaica until he had made a competency, which we had every reason to believe might be done in the course of a few years. We were young (both one-and-twenty), and strong, and energetic; and hoped, by careful living, to be able to return in time to enjoy the best part of our lives in Old England. The one and only thing which caused us to hesitate was the dread of leaving my dear mother. But she would not hear of Philip sacrificing his prospects, or of my remaining with her. Unselfish as she was clear-sighted, she cheerfully assured us she would be more happy in the reflection that her child was the wife of a good man, and well cared for, than in keeping me by her side. She was so unmistakably in earnest, that we felt we were really doing what would most conduce to her happiness in obeying her. She had her small pension, which quite sufficed for her needs; and as she pointed out to us, she was altogether better situated than many mothers. There seemed every reason for hoping that she would live to a good old age, and we persuaded ourselves that we should be in England again in time to be a comfort to her declining years. We had few friends, mother and I. Her limited means, and perhaps a little of the morbid sensitiveness which the refined poor are apt to acquire, prevented her moving in the society she was so well fitted for; and as years went by, she gradually drifted away from old associations without making new ones. By my father's family (in which my father was the only son) she had never been much noticed; and after his death, which took place when I was a child, they entirely ignored her. She had accepted the position--which now entailed straitened circumstances--and proudly kept aloof from them. It was perhaps natural enough that the Haddons of Haddon should not approve the marriage of their only son with the vicar's penniless daughter; the match was perhaps not a very prudent one, but they ought not to have forgotten that she was a gentlewoman. So little, however, did the loss of their favour trouble us, that it had come to be a jest between my mother and me to threaten each other with the Haddons of Haddon when any little financial difficulty arose; a jest which made us more inclined to be satisfied with things as they were. We could imagine nothing more humiliating than being obliged to apply to the Haddons of Haddon for aid of any kind.