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In the early spring of the ensuing year she sustained another painful bereavement through the death of her mother. This event imparted an additional element of sadness to her already cloudy existence; but it was not without certain attendant compensations, as it rendered necessary a more active course of life on her part, and so left her less time to brood over her earlier sorrow. No Benvolio was needed to tell us that

“One fire burns out another’s burning: One pain is lessened by another’s anguish.”

Most of us have at one time or another been forced to learn that hard truth for ourselves. This forlorn woman had probably never read the passage, but her experience brought abundant confirmation of it home to her at this time. She was driven to assume the internal management of the household, and found grateful solace in the occupations which the position involved. She once more began to take an interest in the prosaic affairs of everyday life, and became less addicted to looking forward to a solitary, joyless old age. So that, all things considered, this second bereavement was not to be regarded in the light of an affliction absolutely without mitigation.

It might well have been supposed that the place she was now called upon to fill would have been the means of drawing closer the ties between her surviving parent and herself. For a time it certainly had that effect. Her presence in his house must have done much to soften the blow to her father, and her practical usefulness was made manifest every hour of the day. She carefully ministered to his domestic needs, and did what she could to alleviate the burden which had been laid upon him. But the old, old story was once more repeated. In little more than a year from the time her mother had been laid in her grave, she was made aware of the fact that the household was to receive a new mistress. In other words, she was to be introduced to a stepmother. The event followed hard upon the announcement. As a necessary consequence she was compelled to assume a secondary place in her father’s house.

It may be true that first marriages are sometimes made in Heaven. It is even possible that second marriages may now and then be forged in the same workshop. But it was soon brought home to Mrs. Savareen that this particular marriage was not among the number. Her stepmother, who was not much older than herself, proved a veritable thorn in her side. She was made to perceive that she and her little boy were regarded in the light of encumbrances, to be tolerated until they could be got rid of. But not passively tolerated. The stepmother was a rather coarse-grained piece of clay–an unsympathetic, unfeeling woman, who knew how to say and to do unpleasant things without any apparent temper or ill-will. The immortal clockmaker, when he was in a more quaintly sententious humor than common, once propounded the doctrine that the direct road to a mother’s heart is through her child. He might have added the equally incontestable proposition that the most effectual method of torturing a mother’s heart is through the same medium. The mother who has an only child, who is all the world to her, is actually susceptible to anything in the shape of interference with her maternal prerogatives. Such interference, by whomsoever exercised, is wholly intolerable to her. This susceptibility may perhaps be a feminine weakness, but it is a veritable maternal instinct, and one with which few who have observed it will have the heart to find fault. In Mrs. Savareen’s bosom this foible existed in a high state of development, and her stepmother so played upon it as to make life under the same roof with her a cross too hard to be borne. After a few months’ trial, the younger of the two women resolved that a new home must be found for herself and her little boy. The carrying out of this resolve rendered some consideration necessary, for her own unaided means were inadequate for her support. Her father, though not what could be called a poor man, was far from rich, and he had neither the means nor the will to maintain two establishments, however humble. But she was expert with her needle, and did not despair of being able to provide for the slender wants of herself and child. She rented and furnished a small house in the town, where she found that there was no ground for present anxiety as to her livelihood. There was plenty of needlework to be had to keep her nimble fingers busy from morn till night, and her income from the first was in excess of her expenditure. She was constrained to lead a humdrum sort of existence, but it was brightened by the presence and companionship of her boy, who was a constant source of pride and delight to her. Whenever she caught herself indulging in a despondent mood, she took herself severely to task for repining at a lot which might have lacked this element of brightness, and which lacking that, would, it seemed to her, have been too dreary for human endurance.