"Ay, boy: I should. God forgive me: 'tis no use deceiving ourselves;
when a woman loves a man she despises, never you come between them;
there's no reason in her love, so it is incurable. One comfort, it can't
go on forever; it must kill me, before my time and so best. If I was
only a mother, and had a little Reginald to dandle on my knee and gloat
upon, till he spent his money, and came back to me. That's why I said I
wished I was his wife. Oh! why does God fill a poor woman's bosom with
love, and nothing to spend it on but a stone; for sure his heart must be
one. If I had only something that would let me always love it, a little
toddling thing at my knee, that would always let me look at it, and love
it, something too young to be false to me, too weak to run away from my
long--ing--arms--and--year--ning heart!" Then came a burst of agony,
and moans of desolation, till poor puzzled Dick blubbered loudly at her
grief; and then her tears flowed in streams.

Trouble on trouble. Dick himself got strangely out of sorts, and
complained of shivers. Phoebe sent him to bed early, and made him some
white wine whey very hot. In the morning he got up, and said he was
better; but after breakfast he was violently sick, and suffered several
returns of nausea before noon. "One would think I was poisoned," said
he.

At one o'clock he was seized with a kind of spasm in the throat that
lasted so long it nearly choked him.

Then Phoebe got frightened, and sent to the nearest surgeon. He did not
hurry, and poor Dick had another frightful spasm just as he came in.

"It is hysterical," said the surgeon. "No disease of the heart, is
there? Give him a little sal-volatile every half hour."

In spite of the sal-volatile these terrible spasms seized him every half
hour; and now he used to spring off the bed with a cry of terror when
they came; and each one left him weaker and weaker; he had to be carried
back by the women.

A sad, sickening fear seized on Phoebe. She left Dick with the maid, and
tying on her bonnet in a moment, rushed wildly down the street, asking
the neighbors for a great doctor, the best that could be had for money.
One sent her east a mile, another west, and she was almost distracted,
when who should drive up but Dr. and Mrs. Staines, to make purchases.
She did not know his name, but she knew he was a doctor. She ran to the
window, and cried, "Oh, doctor, my brother! Oh, pray come to him. Oh!
oh!"

Dr. Staines got q