While this important matter was settling, Mary was otherwise employed.
Ann's mother's resources were failing; and the ghastly phantom, poverty,
made hasty strides to catch them in his clutches. Ann had not fortitude
enough to brave such accumulated misery; besides, the canker-worm was
lodged in her heart, and preyed on her health. She denied herself every
little comfort; things that would be no sacrifice when a person is well,
are absolutely necessary to alleviate bodily pain, and support the
animal functions.
There were many elegant amusements, that she had acquired a relish for,
which might have taken her mind off from its most destructive bent; but
these her indigence would not allow her to enjoy: forced then, by way of
relaxation, to play the tunes her lover admired, and handle the pencil
he taught her to hold, no wonder his image floated on her imagination,
and that taste invigorated love.
Poverty, and all its inelegant attendants, were in her mother's abode;
and she, though a good sort of a woman, was not calculated to banish, by
her trivial, uninteresting chat, the delirium in which her daughter was
lost.
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