The House of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 1 Page 50

be extant were, first, the Judge himself, and a single surviving son, who was now travelling in Europe; next, the thirty years’ prisoner, already alluded to, and a sister of the latter, who occupied, in an extremely retired manner, the House of the Seven Gables, in which she had a life-estate by the will of the old bachelor. She was understood to be wretchedly poor, and seemed to make it her choice to remain so; inasmuch as her affluent cousin, the Judge, had repeatedly offered her all the comforts of life, either in the old mansion or his own modern residence. The last and youngest Pyncheon was a little country-girl of seventeen, the daughter of another of the Judge’s cousins, who had married a young woman of no family or property, and died early and in poor circumstances.

His widow had recently taken another husband.