At length, one morning the doctor said she could not last through the day; I had sent for him hurriedly, for the body had suddenly swollen up as a result of the perforation of one of the pleurae, and the consequent escape of air into the cavity of the chest.
While he was there one of the fits of coughing came on, and it seemed as though it must be the last.

He took a small bottle of chloroform out of his pocket, and putting a drop on a handkerchief held it near the child's face, till the drug soothed the convulsive struggle.

"It can't do any harm at this stage," he said, "and it checks the suffering." He went away, saying that he feared he would never see the child alive again.

One of the kindest friends I had in my married life was that same doctor, Mr.Lauriston Winterbotham; he was as good as he was clever, and, like so many of his noble profession, he had the merits of discretion and silence.

He never breathed a word as to my unhappiness, until in 1878 he came up to town to give evidence as to cruelty which--had the deed of separation not been held as condonation--would have secured me a divorce _a mensa et thoro._ The child, however, recovered, and her recovery was due, I think, to that chance thought of Mr.Winterbotham's about the chloroform, for I used it whenever the first sign of a fit of coughing appeared, and so warded off the convulsive attack and the profound exhaustion that followed, in which a mere flicker of breath at the top of the throat was the only sign of life, and sometimes even that disappeared, and I thought her gone.