To challenge from the scornful sphinx.
D. G. Rossetti.
The doctor's verdict was unhesitating enough. Phyllis's doom, as more than one who knew her foresaw, was sealed. The shock and the exposure had only hastened an end which for long had been inevitable. Consumption, complicated with heart disease, both in advanced stages, held her in their grasp; added to these, a severe bronchial attack had set in since the night of the snowstorm, and her life might be said to hang by a thread. It might be a matter of days, said the cautious physician, of weeks, or even months.
"Would a journey to the south, at an earlier stage of her illness, have availed to save her?" Gertrude asked, with white, mechanical lips.
It was possible, was the answer, that it would have prolonged her life. But almost from the first, it seemed, the shadow of the grave must have rested on this beautiful human blossom.
"Death in her face," muttered Mrs. Maryon, grimly; "I saw it there, I have always seen it."
Meanwhile, people came and went in Upper Baker Street; sympathetic, inquisitive, bustling.
Fanny, dismayed and tearful, appeared daily at the invalid's bedside, laden with grapes and other delicacies.
"Poor old Fan," said Phyllis; "how shocked she would be if she knew everything. Don't you think it is your duty, Gerty, to Mr. Marsh, to let him know?"
Aunt Caroline drove across from Lancaster Gate, rebuke implied in every fold of her handsome dress.