Some years after Mrs. Boxall removed to London, Mr. Burton, the music-master, died. They had lived from hand to mouth, as so many families of uncertain income are compelled to do, and his unexpected death left his wife and child without the means of procuring immediate necessities. Inheriting the narrowness and prejudices of his descent and of his social position to a considerable degree, Mr. Boxall had never come to regard his sister's match with a music-master as other than a degradation to the family, and had, in his best humors, never got further in the humanities of the kingdom of heaven, than to patronize his brother-in-law; though if size and quality go for anything in existence itself, as they do in all its accidents, Richard Boxall was scarcely comparable, honest and just man as he was, to Cecil Burton; who, however, except that he was the father of Lucy, and so in some measure accounts for her, is below the western horizon of our story, and therefore need scarcely be alluded to again. This behavior of her brother was more galling to Mrs. Burton than to her husband, who smiled down any allusion to it; and when she was compelled to accept Richard's kindness in the shape of money, upon the death of Mr. Burton, it was with a bitterness of feeling which showed itself plainly enough to wound the self-love of the consciously benevolent man of business. But from the first there had been the friendliest relations between the mother and daughter, and as it was only from her determination to avoid all ground of misunderstanding, that Mrs. Boxall had not consented to take up her abode with the Burtons. Consequently, after the death of Mr. Burton, the mother drew yet closer to the daughter, while the breach between brother and sister was widened.