He went to her side and looked at Gareth-Lawless.
"Have you sent for a doctor?" he inquired.
"He's--only just done it!" she exclaimed. "It's more than I can
bear. You said the Prince would be at the supper after the opera
and--"
"Were you thinking of going?" he put it to her quietly.
"I shall have to send for a nurse of course--" she began. He went
so far as to interrupt her.
"You had better not go--if you'll pardon my saying so," he suggested.
"Not go? Not go at all?" she wailed.
"Not go at all," was his answer. And there was such entire lack
of encouragement in it that Feather sat down and burst into sobs.
In few than two weeks Robert was dead and she was left a lovely
penniless widow with a child.
CHAPTER III
Two or three decades earlier the prevailing sentiment would have
been that "poor little Mrs. Gareth-Lawless" and her situation were
pathetic. Her acquaintances would sympathetically have discussed
her helplessness and absolute lack of all resource. So very pretty,
so young, the mother of a dear little girl--left with no income!
How very sad! What COULD she do? The elect would have paid her visits
and sitting in her darkened drawing-room earnestly besought her
to trust to her Maker and suggested "the Scriptures" as suitable
reading. Some of them--rare and strange souls even in their
time--would have known what they meant and meant what they said in
a way they had as yet only the power to express through the medium
of a certain shibboleth, the rest would have used the same forms
merely because shibboleth is easy and always safe and creditable.
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