nd had never spoken more.

No one tried to comfort Clarice. Pitifully they all felt that comfort
was not wanted now. The death of Rosie had been a crushing blow; but
Vivian's, however sudden, could hardly be otherwise than a relief. The
only compassion that any one could feel was for him, for whom there
was--

"No reckoning made, but sent to his account
With all his imperfections on his head."

The very fact that she could not regret him on her own account lay a
weight on Clarice's conscience, though it was purely his own fault.
Severely as she tried to judge herself, she could recall no instance in
which, so far as such a thing can be said of any human sinner, she had
not done her duty by that dead man. She had obeyed him in letter and
spirit, however distasteful it had often been to herself; she had
consulted his wishes before her own; she had even honestly tried to love
him, and he had made it impossible. Now, she could not resist the
overwhelming consciousness that his death was to her a release from her
fetters--a coming out of prison. She was free from the perpetual drag
of apprehension on the one hand, and of constantly endeavouring on the
other to please a man who was determined not to be pleased. The spirit
of the uncaged bird awoke within her--a sense of freedom, and light, and
rest, such as she had not known for those eight weary years of her
married slavery.

Yet the future was no path of roses to the eyes of Clarice. She was not
free in the thirteenth century, in the sense in which she would have
been free in the nineteenth, for she had no power to choose her own lot.
All widows were wards of the Crown; and it was not at all usual for the
Crown to concern its august self respecting their wishes, unless they
bought leave to comply with them at a very costly price. By a singular
perversion of justice, the tax upon a widow who purchased permission to
remarry or not, at her pleasure, was far heavier than the fine exacted
from a man who married a ward of the Crown without royal licence. The
natural result of this arrangement was that the ladies who were either
dowered widows or spinster heiresses very often contracted clandestine
marriages, and their husbands quietly endured the subsequent fine and
imprisonment, as unavoidable evils which were soon over, and well worth
the advantage which they purchased.

It seemed, however, as if blessings, no less than misfortunes, were not
to come single t