The Widowed Bride — page 138: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE WIDOWED BRIDE. 129 failed to produce the desired effect upon the health of Lady Blanche Arden. She grew daily paler and thinner; her strength, never very Herculean, waxed daily less and less, until Lady Glen- hampton grew alarmed, and sent for Sir Morford Delville, the Hsculapius of all the most aristocratic circles. Sir Morford, a tall, handsome gentleman, with Roman features, a voice like a brooding dove, and a manner of ex- treme interest, came accordingly, felt Lady Blanche’s pulse with a finger as light as a thistle-down, asked her one or two insinuatingly spoken questions, and ‘‘hoped that this was nothing more than a trifling indisposition.” «There, mamma,” said Lady Blanche, ‘‘I told you so.” But when the fashionable physician saw the countess separately, he assumed quite a different tone. ‘‘¥ don’t wish to alarm you, Lady Glenhampton,” he said, courteously; ‘‘but Lady Blanche must leave London di- rectly for the sea air.” “But she is to be presented at court on Tuesday,” cried ~ Lady Glenhampton, aghast. Sir Morford shook his head positively. ‘“Impossible!” he said. ‘‘She must be removed from this foggy atmosphere at once. I can’t call it any special dis- ease. It is rather a general failing and giving way of all the springs of life. ‘Take her to the sea-side at once— Brighton—Gravesend—I don’t care where—and if a few days there do not build her up in some degree she must go abroad.” And Sir Morford penciled a prescription on one of the perfumed leaves of his memorandum-book, and departed to the next aristocratic threshold which the vulgar presence of sickness had presumed to invade, leaving Lady Glenhamp- ton sorely bewildered. Of one thing she was quite certain—the drawing-room must be postponed indefinitely—and, in order that no time might be lost, she sat down at once and wrote a tele- gram to Captain Evelyn, requesting him to meet her at Brighton. “T will have it as near like home as possible for my poor child,” she said within herself, ‘‘and I will no¢ have this Miss Percival in our train. I can easily invent some excuse for leaving her here, and the spell her presence seems to ex-. ert over Blanche once broken, it will not be difficult to get a) GComicbooks:co mn