Sentence:  Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his <WSD>poor</WSD> wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  "Used to express pity."