Whether from the agitation of this perception or not, he was seized
with a spasm; he gasped, rose, and in moving towards the window for
air he uttered in a short thick whisper, 'Oh, my heart!'
With his hand upon his chest he sank down to the floor before he had
gone another step. By the time that she had relighted the candle,
which had been extinguished in case any eye in the opposite grounds
should witness his egress, she found that his poor heart had ceased
to beat; and there rushed upon her mind what his cottage-friends had
once told her, that he was liable to attacks of heart-disease, one
of which, the doctor had informed them, might some day carry him
off.
Accustomed as she was to doctoring the other parishioners, nothing
that she could effect upon him in that kind made any difference
whatever; and his stillness, and the increasing coldness of his feet
and hands, disclosed too surely to the affrighted young woman that
her husband was dead indeed. For more than an hour, however, she
did not abandon her efforts to restore him; when she fully realized
the fact that he was a corpse she bent over his body, distracted and
bewildered as to what step she next should take.
Her first feelings had undoubtedly been those of passionate grief at
the loss of him; her second thoughts were concern at her own
position as the daughter of an earl. 'Oh, why, why, my unfortunate
husband, did you die in my chamber at this hour!' she said piteously
to the corpse.
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