, became serious
and then dangerous. The cold became pneumonia, the pneumonia became
double pneumonia, and now there was a hard fight for life. Nurses were
summoned, doctors were requisitioned, everything that wealth could do
was employed for the relief and the recovery of the sick woman. But
there are times when Death laughs at wealth, with all its contrivances
and all its hopes: when Death takes very little heed of what friends say
or what doctors do. Death has his own duty to perform, and Mrs. Aylmer's
time had come. Notwithstanding the most recent remedies for the fell
disease, notwithstanding the care of the best nurses London could supply
and the skill of the cleverest doctors, Death entered that sick-chamber
and stood by that woman's pillow and whispered to her that her hour had
come.

Mrs. Aylmer, propped up in her bed so that she might breathe better, her
face ghastly with the terrible exertion, called Bertha to her side. She
could scarcely speak, but she managed to convey her meaning to the girl.

"I am very bad; I know I shall not recover."

"You have to make your will over again," said Bertha, who was as cool
as cool could be in this emergency. Not one of the nurses could be more
collected or calm than Bertha. She herself would have made a splendid
nurse, for she had tact and sympathy, and the sort of voice which never
grated on the ear. The doctors were almost in love with her: they
thought they had never seen so capable a girl, so grave, so quiet, so
suitably dressed, so invaluable in all emergencies.

Mrs. Aylmer could scarcely bear Bertha out of her sight, and the doctors
said to themselves: "Small wonder!"

On the afternoon of the day when Mrs. Aylmer the less went to see
Florence in London, Mrs. Aylmer the great went down another step in the
dark valley. The doctor said that she might live for two or three days
more, but that he did not think it likely. The disease was spreading,
and soon it would be impossible for her to breathe. She was frightened.
She had not spent a specially good life. She had given, it is true,
large sums in charity, but she had not really ever helped the poor, and
had not brought a smile to the lip or a tear of thankfulness to the eye.
She had lived a hard life; she had thought far more of herself than of
her neighbour, and now that she was about to die it seemed to her that
she was not ready. For the first time, all the importance of money faded
from her mind. No matter ho