They did not starve. In fact, they prospered, till one sad day when Lorimer caught cold--and again and again caught cold--cough, pain, symptoms of consumption--a short, sad story; and then the great end, death. Mary was a widow three years after her wedding day, with a child of two years of age at her side, and an income from a life insurance made by her husband of one hundred a year. We have seen the child--grown to a beautiful girl of seventeen--we have seen her in the room with Mr. Erskine, at the inn at Hull. Mrs. Lorimer went back to live with her mother, Jenifer, and the great white cat. The year after this great change, Mrs. Brewer died, and Claudia at thirteen was a greater difficulty than ever. The first holidays after the departure of the good mother, the puzzled father had written to the two Miss Gainsboroughs to bring the child to Marston and stay at his house during the holidays. He entertained them for a week, and then went off on a tour through Holland. The next holidays he proposed that they should take a house at Brighton, and that he should pay all expenses. This, too, was done, and Mr. Brewer went to a hotel and there made friends with his precocious daughter in a way that surprised and pleased him. He visited the young lady, and she entertained him. He hired horses, and they rode together. He took boxes at the theatre, and they made parties and went together. He gave the girl jewelry and fine clothes, and they really got to know each other, and to enjoy life together as could never have been the case had they not been thus left to their own way. The child no longer felt herself of a different world from that of her parents--the father had a companion in the child who could grace his position, and keep her own. They parted with love and anxious lookings forward to the summer meeting. They were both in possession of a new happiness. When Mr. Brewer got back to Marston, he led a dull, dreamy life--a year and a half of widowhood passed--then he went to Mrs. Morier's, saw Mary, and asked her to be his wife. It is not easy to declare why Mary Lorimer said--after some weeks of wondering-mindedness--why she said "Yes." She knew all Mr. Brewer's goodness. She preferred, no doubt, not to wound a heart that had so often sympathized with the wounded. She never, in her life, could have borne to see him vexed without great vexation herself. She liked that he should be rewarded. She was interested in Claudia. She liked the thought of two hundred a year settled on her mother. She liked to feel that her own little Mary might be brought up as grandly as any of those little saucy "county family" damsels, her cousins, who already looked down on her, and scorned her pink spotted calico frock.