"My sister in Liverpool said I must come to her till I got some sort of employment. Now romance steps in. In spite of my training, and discipline and poverty, I was a bright pretty girl then. I thoroughly believed in my father's steadfast creed that all things worked together for good to those who love God, and that belief served to keep my head above water. Whilst the contents of the Parsonage were being sold, our Squire's wife, Lady Mary Crosby, took pity on me, and insisted that I should come up to the Hall till things were settled. It was there I met my husband. He was Lady Mary's nephew and young and handsome: there were no other girls for him to take notice of, and we fell headlong in love with each other. Lady Mary treated it as a boy and girl flirtation; she never gave Alfred credit for anything serious. When I eventually went to my sister, I considered myself engaged to him. She was horrified. Everyone at the Hall had always been considered 'worldly'; and she tried to show me how impossible and wicked such a union would be. But they say a worm will turn at last. I had had enough of the hard penurious life of the godly. I was young, and felt the blood rising and beating in my veins. Before me was a life of pleasure and luxury. I looked at my sister with her thin cheeks and prematurely wrinkled face, I noted her children, seven in number, were all growing up, and requiring food and clothing which could not be given them. I saw her husband too weak in body to be strong in soul. His preaching was a failure: He was a dispirited disappointed man; an irritable husband and father, a gloomy narrow-minded parson. Oh, I know you think me hard, but looking back, I don't wonder that my youth rebelled against such a fate as my sister's! I felt secure of Alfred's affection, and determined to stick to him. To make a long story short, we wrote to each other and in spite of much opposition from both his family and mine, we finally married, and I have not regretted doing so!" There was something almost defiant in Mrs. Burke's tone. Rowena was deeply interested. "How well I seem to see it all!" she said. "But did you discard religion as an old glove when you married?" "I did. I was nothing, if not sincere in those days. I knew my husband was out to enjoy life, and I meant to enjoy it with him. It had to be one thing or the other with me. I felt that a certain part of me had always been starved, my sister assuring me that it was the worst part of me. But I meant to have my fill of what the world could give me. I threw my ultra-fastidious conscience to the winds. I determined to live as the greater part of the young world lives, for pleasure and amusement, and I have done so ever since. My motto is to have a good time and to help everyone else to have the same." "And when your husband died?"