Where is he! I shall die! He must pray!
I can't die!'

Miss Fennimore bade Robert compose his voice to pray aloud, and what he
read tranquillized all except Mervyn, who understood this to mean the
worst, and burst away to sit cowering in suspense over his fire. Miss
Fennimore then offered Bertha a morsel of roll dipped in port wine, but
fasting and agitation had really produced a contraction of the muscles of
the throat, and the attempt failed. Bertha was dreadfully terrified, and
Phoebe could hardly control herself, but she was the only person
unbanished by Miss Fennimore. Even Robert's distress became too visible
for the absolute calm by which the governess hoped to exhaust the
hysteria while keeping up vitality by outward applications of warmth and
stimulants, and from time to time renewing the endeavour to administer
nourishment.

It was not till two terrible hours had passed that Phoebe came to the
school-room, and announced to her brothers that after ten minutes' doze,
Bertha had waked, and swallowed a spoonful of arrowroot and wine without
choking. She could not restrain her sobs, and wept uncontrollably as
Mervyn put his arm round her. He was the most composed of the three, for
her powers had been sorely strained, and Robert had suffered most of all.

He had on this day suspected that Bertha was burning the provisions
forced on her, but he had kept silence, believing that she would thus
reduce herself to a more amenable state than if she were angered by
compulsion, and long before serious harm could ensue. Used to the sight
of famine, he thought inanition would break the spirit without injuring
the health. Many a time had he beheld those who professed to have tasted
nothing for two days, trudge off tottering but cheerful, with a
soup-ticket, and he had not calculated on the difference between the
children of want and the delicately nurtured girl, full of overwrought
feeling. Though he had been watching in loving intercession for the
unhappy child, and had resolved on forcing his way to her in the morning,
he felt as if he had played the part of the Archbishop of Pisa, and that,
had she perished in her fearful determination, her blood would have been
on himself. He was quite overcome, and forced to hurry to his own room
to compose himself, ere he could return to inquire further; but there was
little more to hear. Miss Fennimore desired to be alone with the
patient; Phoebe allowed herself to be laid