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Several weeks elapsed before Sarah Bond recovered sufficiently from / the shock, ay, and genuine grief, occasioned by her father's death, / so as to investigate her affairs; the hardness and the tyranny she / had borne for so many years had become habitual, and her own will was / absolutely paralysed by inaction. Jacob Bond had always treated his / daughter as if she were a baby, and it was some time before she could / collect herself sufficiently to calculate upon her future plans. She / had no friends; and the sister to whom, despite her father's cruel / words, her heart clung so fondly, was far from her, she knew not / where. The mourning for herself and her servant was ordered from a / neighbouring shop, with a carelessness as to expense which made people / say that Sarah was of habits different from her father.
The rector and curate of the parish both called, but she shrunk / from strangers. The very first act, however, of her liberty, was to / take a pew at church, a whole pew, to herself, which she ordered to / be curtained all round. Some said this indicated pride, some said / ostentation; but it was simply shyness. And soon after she placed in / the aisle a white marble tablet, "To the memory of Jacob Bond, who / died in the seventy-eighth year of his age, deeply lamented by his / sorrowing daughter."