ther strength, and yet in lending lose
none; but to the women of whom I now speak some kind of marriage is
quite indispensable, and by them some kind of marriage is always
made, though the union is often unnatural. A woman in want of a wall
against which to nail herself will swear conjugal obedience sometimes
to her cook, sometimes to her grandchild, sometimes to her lawyer.
Any standing corner, post, or stump, strong enough to bear her weight
will suffice; but to some standing corner, post, or stump, she will
find her way and attach herself, and there will she be married.
Such a woman was our Mrs. Ray. As her name imports, she had been
married in the way most popular among ladies, with bell, book, and
parson. She had been like a young peach tree that, in its early days,
is carefully taught to grow against a propitious southern wall. Her
natural prop had been found for her, and all had been well. But her
heaven had been made black with storms; the heavy winds had come,
and the warm sheltering covert against which she had felt herself
so safe had been torn away from her branches as they were spreading
themselves forth to the fulness of life. She had been married at
eighteen, and then, after ten years of wedded security, she had
become a widow.
Her husband had been some years older than herself,--a steady, sober,
hardworking, earnest man, well fitted to act as a protecting screen
to such a woman as he had chosen. They had lived in Exeter, both
of them having belonged to Devonshire from their birth; and Mr.
Ray, though not a clergyman himself, had been employed in matters
ecclesiastical. He was a lawyer,--but a lawyer of that sort that is
so nearly akin to the sacerdotal profession, as to make him quite
clerical and almost a clergyman. He managed the property of the dean
and chapter, and knew what were the rights, and also what were the
wrongs, of prebendaries and minor canons,--of vicars choral, and
even of choristers. But he had been dead many years before our story
commences, and so much as this is now said of him simply to explain
under what circumstances Mrs. Ray had received the first tinge of
that colouring which was given to her life by church matters.
They had been married somewhat over ten years when he died, and she
was left with two surviving daughters, the eldest and the youngest of
the children she had borne. The eldest, Dorothea, was then more than
nine years old, and as she took much after her father,
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