heart, and their baby eyes could not critically scan the unhappiness
that grew deeper month by month; and that steam-filled tent became my
world, and there, alone, I fought with Death for my child. The doctor
said that recovery was impossible, and that in one of the paroxysms of
coughing she must die; the most distressing thing was that, at last,
even a drop or two of milk would bring on the terrible convulsive
choking, and it seemed cruel to add to the pain of the apparently dying
child. At length, one morning the doctor said she could not last
through the day; I had sent for him hurriedly, for the body had
suddenly swollen up as a result of the perforation of one of the
pleurae, and the consequent escape of air into the cavity of the chest.
While he was there one of the fits of coughing came on, and it seemed
as though it must be the last. He took a small bottle of chloroform out
of his pocket, and putting a drop on a handkerchief held it near the
child's face, till the drug soothed the convulsive struggle. "It can't
do any harm at this stage," he said, "and it checks the suffering." He
went away, saying that he feared he would never see the child alive
again. One of the kindest friends I had in my married life was that
same doctor, Mr. Lauriston Winterbotham; he was as good as he was
clever, and, like so many of his noble profession, he had the merits of
discretion and silence. He never breathed a word as to my unhappiness,
until in 1878 he came up to town to give evidence as to cruelty
which--had the deed of separation not been held as condonation--would
have secured me a divorce _a mensa et thoro._

The child, however, recovered, and her recovery was due, I think, to
that chance thought of Mr. Winterbotham's about the chloroform, for I
used it whenever the first sign of a fit of coughing appeared, and so
warded off the convulsive attack and the profound exhaustion that
followed, in which a mere flicker of breath at the top of the throat