"Than usual, my dear! What do you mean? Have you been feeling ill lately?"
"Yes, Henrietta, very ill."
"And have you been doing nothing for yourself? Have you not had advice?"
"You know I have not. You have seen me very nearly every day, and you know I have done nothing without your knowledge."
"But Wilmot?" said Mrs. Prendergast.
"O Wilmot! Much he knows and much he cares about me! Don't talk nonsense, Henrietta. If I were dying, he would not see it while I could keep on my feet, which, I certainly should do as long as I could."
"My dear Mabel," remonstrated Henrietta, "do you mean to tell me that, feeling very ill, you have actually suffered your husband to leave you? Is that right, Mabel? Is it right to yourself or fair to him?"
"Fair to him!" returned Mrs. Wilmot with a scornful emphasis. "The idea of anything I do being fair or unfair to him. I am so important to him, am I not? His life is so largely influenced by me? Really, Henrietta, I don't understand you."
"O yes, you do," said her friend; and she seated herself beside her, and took her feverish hands firmly in hers; "you understand me perfectly. What is the illness, Mabel? How do you suffer, and why are you concealing it?"
"I suffer always, and in all ways," said Mabel, twitching her hands impatiently from her friend's grasp, and averting her face, down which tears began slowly to trickle. "I have not been well for a long time; and would not one think that he might have seen it? He can be full of skill and perception in everyone's case but mine."