Lady Monkton had her share of sorrows, too. Her first three children died in infancy. They were all bright, blooming, beautiful. Health and long life seemed written on their fair faces; but the battle is not to the strong, nor the race to the swift; and one or other of those maladies of childhood which often make a cheerful household desolate, had swept away the whole successively. Isabella, gay, happy, strong-minded as she was, quailed under these repeated blows. She was too firm and sensible to yield entirely; but a shade of sadness came over her once clear brow, and when a fourth child appeared, it was with some awe she watched its infancy. This child was a daughter, more delicate to all appearance than the others; but when illness fell upon her it was comparatively light, and with years health and strength seemed to increase. The fair, fragile form developed itself with a thousand graces; the bloom came upon the cheek, the soft, languid eyes grew bright and gay, and hour by hour hope and confidence returned. There was still a terrible shock in store, however. One day Sir Edward Monkton returned from a ride, very wet, was detained by a person he found waiting for him on business, was seized with shivering during the night, and inflammation of the lungs succeeded. Five days of watching and terror left her a widow, with a heart, the very firmness of which rendered its affections the more enduring. Mr. Scriven's character had not fully displayed itself to the eyes of Sir Edward Monkton. He knew him to be a good man of business, and believed him to be an honourable and upright man. Even Lady Monkton did not know her brother thoroughly; and she was glad to have him joined with herself as the executor of her husband's will and the guardian of her daughter. She soon found cause for some regret that it was so; for his arrangements did not altogether please her; but still there was not much to complain of; and at the end of the ten years which followed her father's death, she was living peacefully at her house in Hertfordshire, about fifteen miles from London, occupied with the education of her daughter Maria, seeing very little society, dwelling calmly, though gravely, upon the past, and looking forward with hope and consolation to the future.