recovery, I accompanied a friend in the morning in several calls, one of
them as far as Kensington, and did not return till dinner-time. On my
return I found a degree of anxiety in every face, and was told that she
had had a sort of shivering fit, and had expressed some anxiety at the
length of my absence. My sister and a friend of hers, had been engaged
to dine below stairs, but a message was sent to put them off, and Mary
ordered that the cloth should not be laid, as usual, in the room
immediately under her on the first floor, but in the ground-floor
parlour. I felt a pang at having been so long and so unseasonably
absent, and determined that I would not repeat the fault.

In the evening she had a second shivering fit, the symptoms of which
were in the highest degree alarming. Every muscle of the body trembled,
the teeth chattered, and the bed shook under her. This continued
probably for five minutes. She told me, after it was over, that it had
been a struggle between life and death, and that she had been more than
once, in the course of it, at the point of expiring. I now apprehend
these to have been the symptoms of a decided mortification, occasioned
by the part of the placenta that remained in the womb. At the time
however I was far from considering it in that light. When I went for Dr.
Poignand, between two and three o'clock on the morning of Thursday,
despair was in my heart. The fact of the adhesion of the placenta was
stated to me; and, ignorant as I was of obstetrical science, I felt as
if the death of Mary was in a manner decided. But hope had re-visited my
bosom; and her chearings were so delightful, that I hugged her
obstinately to my heart. I was only mortified at what appeared to me a
new delay in the recovery I so earnestly longed for. I immediately sent
for Dr. Fordyce, who had been with her in the morning, as well as on
the three preceding days. Dr. Poignand had also called this morning but
declined paying any further visits, as we had thought proper to call in