She scorned Rose Grafton 's humble parentage and caused her son to break his faith , though , had she let him choose , he would have prized his Rosebud above the richest diamond . The lovers parted , and have seldom met again . Both may have visited the same mansions , but not at the same time , for one was bidden to the festal hall and the other to the sick-chamber ; he was the guest of Pleasure and Prosperity , and she of Anguish . Rose , after their separation , was long secluded within the dwelling of Mr. Toothaker , whom she married with the revengeful hope of breaking her false lover 's heart . She went to her bridegroom 's arms with bitterer tears , they say , than young girls ought to shed at the threshold of the bridal-chamber . Yet , though her husband 's head was getting gray and his heart had been chilled with an autumnal frost , Rose soon began to love him , and wondered at her own conjugal affection . He was all she had to love ; there were no children . In a year or two poor Mr. Toothaker was visited with a wearisome infirmity which settled in his joints and made him weaker than a child . He crept forth about his business , and came home at dinner-time and eventide , not with the manly tread that gladdens a wife 's heart , but slowly , feebly , jotting down each dull footstep with a melancholy dub of his staff . We must pardon his pretty wife if she sometimes blushed to own him . Her visitors , when they heard him coming , looked for the appearance of some old , old man , but he dragged his nerveless limbs into the parlor -- and there was Mr. Toothaker ! The disease increasing , he never went into the sunshine save with a staff in his right hand and his left on his wife 's shoulder , bearing heavily downward like a dead man 's hand . Thus , a slender woman still looking maiden-like , she supported his tall , broad-chested frame along the pathway of their little garden , and plucked the roses for her gray-haired husband , and spoke soothingly as to an infant . His mind was palsied with his body ; its utmost energy was peevishness . In a few months more she helped him up the staircase with a pause at every step , and a longer one upon the landing-place , and a heavy glance behind as he crossed the threshold of his chamber . He knew , poor man ! that the precincts of those four walls would thenceforth be his world -- his world , his home , his tomb , at once a dwelling-and a burial-place -- till he were borne to a darker and a narrower one . But Rose was with him in the tomb . He leaned upon her in his daily passage from the bed to the chair by the fireside , and back again from the weary chair to the joyless bed -- his bed and hers , their marriage-bed -- till even this short journey ceased and his head lay all day upon the pillow and hers all night beside it . How long poor Mr. Toothaker was kept in misery !
Death seemed to draw near the door , and often to lift the latch , and sometimes to thrust his ugly skull into the chamber , nodding to XXXXX and pointing at her husband , but still delayed to enter .
Grafton Rose Rosebud burial-place daily day disease eventide left months