Synopsis

Once upon a timeonly once, observe, she did not do it twicea widow of the name of Maylands went, in a fit of moderate insanity, and took up her abode in a lonely, tumble-down cottage in the west of Ireland. Mrs Maylands was very poor. She was the widow of an English clergyman, who had left her with a small family and the smallest income that was compatible with that family’s maintenance. Hence the migration to Ireland, where she had been born, and where she hoped to live economically.