Page:The perverse widow by Sir Richard Steele and The Widow by Washington Irving (1909).djvu/35

 THE WIDOW neck in a fox-chase and left her free, rich, and disconsolate. She has remained on her estate in the country ever since, and has never shown any desire to return to town and revisit the scene of her early triumphs and fatal malady. All her favourite recollections, however, revert to that short period of her youthful beauty. She has no idea of town but as it was at that time, and continually forgets that the place and people must have changed materially in the course of nearly half a century. She will often speak of the toasts of those days as if still reigning; and, until very recently, used to talk with delight of the royal family and the beauty of the young princes and princesses. She cannot be brought to think of the present 25