t was the impression produced on her when she
advanced to the second half, and when she had read it to the end.

The second part of the letter was devoted to the subject of the journey
to London.

Mrs. Vanstone began by referring to the long and intimate friendship
which had existed between Miss Garth and herself. She now felt it due to
that friendship to explain confidentially the motive which had induced
her to leave home with her husband. Miss Garth had delicately refrained
from showing it, but she must naturally have felt, and must still be
feeling, great surprise at the mystery in which their departure had been
involved; and she must doubtless have asked herself why Mrs. Vanstone
should have been associated with family affairs which (in her
independent position as to relatives) must necessarily concern Mr.
Vanstone alone.

Without touching on those affairs, which it was neither desirable nor
necessary to do, Mrs. Vanstone then proceeded to say that she would
at once set all Miss Garth's doubts at rest, so far as they related to
herself, by one plain acknowledgment. Her object in accompanying her
husband to London was to see a certain celebrated physician, and to
consult him privately on a very delicate and anxious matter connected
with the state of her health. In plainer terms still, this anxious
matter meant nothing less than the possibility that she might again
become a mother.

When the doubt had first suggested itself she had treated it as a mere
delusion. The long interval that had elapsed since the birth of her last
child; the serious illness which had afflicted her after the death
of that child in infancy; the time of life at which she had now
arrived--all inclined her to dismiss the idea as soon as it arose in her
mind. It had returned again and again in spite of her. She had felt the
necessity of consulting the highest medical authority; and had shrunk,
at the same time, from alarming her daughters by summoning a London
physician to the house. The medical opinion, sought under the
circumstances already mentioned, had now been obtained. Her doubt was
confirmed as a certainty; and the result, which might be expected to
take place toward the end of the summer, was, at her age and with her
constitutional peculiarities, a subject for serious future anxiety, to
say the least of it. The physician had done his best to encourage her;
but she had understood the drift of his questions more clearly than
he suppos