Miriam Monfort - A Novel by Catherine A. Warfield
page 97 of 567 (17%)
page 97 of 567 (17%)
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inauspiciously on our betrothal, which, owing to our youth, it was
understood, should continue a year. In the interval I was to travel with my father to the different large cities of the Union which I had never seen, and abide awhile in Washington. His health, Dr. Pemberton thought, required this change, but a darker one was in store for him. On Christmas-day, of that year, he was smitten with paralysis, and his decline was sure and rapid from that hour. Let me pass over the agony of that period of six weeks, lengthened into years by the dread tension of anxiety, most relentless of the furies. But for the confidence I felt in Claude's affection, and the vista of hope it opened for me, I think I should have succumbed under the unequal struggle. During this period, his attentions to me and to my helpless father were most kind and assiduous. Mr. Bainrothe and Evelyn, too, between whom some unexplained alienation had existed for some time, met in apparent harmony above his bed of death. In addition to the services of our own dear and valued physician, we had others of eminence coming and going daily, with the knowledge in their own breasts that all was vain. Still I never ceased entirely to hope until the very last. "He is not old, he is still vigorous," I would say to myself. "There may be--there _must_ be--reaction. I have so often heard him boast of his English constitution, I cannot, oh, I cannot think that the end is yet!" I wondered then at the inattention of the Stanburys, in whose |
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