After that evening she saw and heard nothing of him for a great while.  Her fortnightly journeys to the sergeant-major’s grave were continued, whenever weather did not hinder them; and Mr. must have known, she thought, of this custom of hers.  But though the churchyard was not nearly so far from his homestead as was her shop at Chalk-Newton, he never appeared in the accidental way that lovers use.  
An explanation was forthcoming in the shape of a letter from her mother, who mentioned that Mr. Bartholomew Miller had gone away to the other side of Shottsford-Forum to be married to a thriving dairyman’s daughter that he knew there.  His chief , it was reported, had been less one of love than a wish to provide a companion for his mother.
 
Selina was practical enough to know that she had lost a good and possibly the only opportunity of settling in life after what had happened, and for a moment she regretted her independence.  But she became calm on reflection, and to herself in her course started that afternoon to tend the sergeant-major’s grave, in which she took the same sober pleasure as at first.
 
On reaching the churchyard and turning the corner towards the spot as usual, she was surprised to perceive another woman, also a respectable widow, and with a tiny boy by her side, bending over Clark’s turf, and spudding up with the point of her umbrella some -roots that Selina had planted there to form an over the .
 
‘What are you digging up my ivy for!’ cried Selina, rushing forward so excitedly that Johnny tumbled over a grave with the force of the she gave his hand in her sudden start.
 
‘Your ivy?’ said the respectable woman.
 
‘Why yes!  I planted it there—on my husband&rsquo............