it."

"You did very wrong in getting it, Eliza."

"What could I do, miss, when she axed me?"

"There is no use in crying over it now. It would have been kinder to
have kept it from her."

"Sure I know. Many's the time I tould her so. But she could talk the
birds off the bushes, and it wint to me heart to refuse her. God send
her well out of her throuble!"

Here the doctor returned. "How are you now?" he said.

"I think I am better. Pray dont think of me. How is she?"

"It's all over. Hallo! Come, Miss Biddy! you go and cry in the kitchen,"
he added, pushing Eliza, who had set up an intolerable lamentation, out
of the room.

"How awful!" said Marian, stunned. "Are you quite sure? She seemed
better this morning."

"Quite sure," said the doctor, smiling grimly at the question. "She was
practically dead when they carried her upstairs, poor girl. It's easier
to kill a person than you think, Mrs. Forster, although she tried so
long and so hard without succeeding. But she'd have done it. She'd have
been starved into health only to drink herself back into starvation, and
the end would have been a very bad one. Better as it is, by far!"

"Doctor: I must go out and telegraph the news to London. I know one of
her relatives there."

The doctor shook his head. "I will telegraph if you like, but you must
stay here. Youre not yet fit to go out."

"I am afraid I have not been well lately," said Marian. "I want to
consult you about myself--not now, of course, after what has happened,
but some day when you have leisure to call."

"You can put off consulting me just as long as you please; but this
accident is no reason why you shouldnt do it at once. If there is
anything wrong, the sooner you have advice--you neednt have it from me
if you prefer some other doctor--the better."

Upon this encouragement Marian described to him her state of health. He
seemed a little amused, asked her a few questions, and finally told her
coolly that she might expect to become a mother next fall. She was so
utterly dismayed that he began to look stern in anticipation of an
appeal to him to avert this; an appeal which he had often had to refuse
without ever having succeeded in persuading a woman that it was futile,
or convincing her that it was immoral. But Marian spared him this: she
was overwhelmed by the new certainty that a reconciliation with her
husband was no longer possible. Her despair at the discovery shewed her
for the first time