What is "portionless"

Usage examples of "portionless".

In the day of the Manifestation of Christ, many souls became portionless and deprived because they were members of the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem.

He had proudly married an almost portionless girl of a very ancient aristocratic race, the last of the Vaugelades, whose blood was poor and whose mind was narrow.

This big fellow had lately left college, and although he had only completed his nineteenth year, he was on the point of marrying a portionless young girl, Charlotte Desvignes, for whom he had conceived a romantic attachment ever since childhood.

Knowing that they would be almost portionless, she had brought them up extremely well, in the hope that this might help to find them husbands, and it so chanced that she proved successful.

This took him several nights, and when it was finished, he was yet more choice in his selection of turf, taking it from the natural grass growing along the roads and on the earthen dykes, or walls, the outer sides of which feed the portionless cows of that country.

He never spoke of anything but of his duties, either at the office, or at home--he had married the portionless daughter of one of his colleagues.

He was generous enough for it, or for marrying the portionless girl himself.

For if he were the cold, calculating man her father had believed him to be, and had represented him as being to her, would he care for a portionless widow in humble circumstances like Mrs.

Her own heart had not strayed that way because she thought but little of herself, knowing herself to be portionless, and believing from long thought on the subject that it was not her destiny to the wife of any man.

Had he not everything which fathers want for portionless daughters, and uncles for dependant nieces?

She saw with sorrow, and sometimes with exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment between her son and the portionless Sonya.

When they inquired if he was willing to do his duty in this respect, and he replied that he was, the father of the most beautiful girl in the city bestowed her on him, and that she might not be portionless, the chief men of the place vied one with another in heaping riches upon him.

Whereas, from henceforth, he will have to endure battles and conflicts, and his knights will perish, and wives will be widowed, and maidens will be left portionless, and all this is because of thee.