Margot Asquith, an Autobiography - Two Volumes in One by Margot Asquith
page 68 of 409 (16%)
page 68 of 409 (16%)
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wooden bed and gazed at what was left of Laura.
"Her face had shrunk to the size of a child's; her lashes lay a black wall on the whitest of cheeks; her hair was hanging dragged up from her square brow in heavy folds upon the pillow. Her mouth was tightly shut and a dark blood-stain marked her chin. After a long silence, she moved and muttered and opened her eyes. She fixed them on me, and my heart stopped. I stretched my hands out towards her, and said, 'Laura!'... But the sound died; she did not know me. I knew after that she could not live. "People went away for the Easter Holidays: Papa to North Berwick, Arthur Balfour to Westward Ho! and every day Godfrey Webb rode a patient cob up to the front door, to hear that she was no better. I sat on the stairs listening to the roar of London and the clock in the library. The doctor--Matthews Duncan--patted my head whenever he passed me on the stair and said, in his gentle Scotch accent: "'Poor little girl! Poor, poor little girl!' "I was glad he did not say that 'while there was life there was hope,' or any of the medical platitudes, or I would have replied that he LIED. There was no hope--none! ... "One afternoon I went with Lucy to St. George's, Hanover Square. The old man was sweeping out the church; and we knelt and prayed. Laura and I have often knelt side by side at that altar and I never feel alone when I am in front of the mysterious Christ- picture, with its bars of violet and bunches of grapes. |
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