Lodore by Mary Shelley

The world had just begun to steal Each hope that led me lightly on. I felt not as I used to feel. And life grew dark and love was gone. --Thomas Moore.

While the young pair were thus struggling with the severe visitation of adversity, Lady Lodore was earnestly engaged in her endeavours to extricate them from their difficulties. The ardour of her zeal had made her take the first steps in this undertaking, with a resolution that would not look behind, and a courage not to be dismayed by the dreary prospect which the future afforded. The scheme which she had planned, and was now proceeding to execute, was unbounded in generosity and self-sacrifice. It was not in her nature to stop short at half-measures, nor to pause when once she had fixed her purpose. If she ever trembled on looking forward to the utter ruin she was about to encounter, her second emotion was to despise herself for such pusillanimity, and to be roused to renewed energy. She intended to devote as much as was necessary of the money arising from the sale of her jointure, as fixed by her marriage settlement, for the liquidation of her son-in-law's debts. The remaining six hundred a-year, bequeathed to her in Lord Lodore's will, under circumstances of cruel insult, she resolved to give up to her daughter's use, for her future subsistence. She hoped to save enough from the sum produced by the disposal of her jointure, to procure the necessaries of life for a few years, and she did not look beyond. She would quit London for ever.