Was May to believe in so radical a reformation thus easily worked? The experience of her past life convinced her to the contrary; and yet the attempt must be made. She would shut out all those recollections of insult suffered and misery undergone, which came thronging upon her at the mere idea of renewing her life with her husband; she would forget the more recent horror with which the revelations in his ravings had inspired her; it was her duty to accept his proposition, and she would do it. Lord Forestfield was exhausted by the fatigue which he had undergone in speaking to her at such length, and May, telling him that she had been warned against allowing him to excite himself, promised to talk to him on the subject to-morrow.
The next morning at an early hour, while Dr. Whitaker was sleeping the sleep of the just, his bell was rung furiously by a messenger from Seamore-place, who brought a request from the nurse that the doctor would come there at once, as Lady Forestfield was very ill. Dr. Whitaker shook his head when he received this message, and told his wife he had been all along afraid that her ladyship might contract typhus from her husband, and that, as in nursing and attendance she had exhausted the stock of health which she had brought with her from the country, it was not improbable that it might go hard with her.
After Dr. Whitaker had visited May he shook his head more dolefully still; and the nurse, who had been relieved of her attendance on Lord Forestfield owing to his convalescence, and had transferred her care to the new patient, was observed, after a hurried and whispered talk with the physician, to have tears in her eyes. That night it became known throughout the household that her ladyship was in a very bad way. The attack was a desperate and a malignant one, and, as Dr. Whitaker had said, such health and strength as she had acquired during her sojourn at Woodburn were already exhausted by her close confinement to the sick-room, and she could not make headway against it.
She had but little delirium, and even when the fever was at its worst her head was tolerably clear; so that, as she lay during the long day, and still longer night, she would muse over all that had been, over what was so shortly to be. For May felt that she was dying; she had an intuitive perception that for her all was nearly over; that she should never rise from that couch, to take even so small a part in the world's affairs as she had hitherto played, again. That thought brought no sadness with it. There was a time, only a few weeks since, when in the first flush of her enjoyment of the beauties of nature, of the freedom from care and calmness of spirits which came upon her after her arrival at Woodburn, she felt that life had yet a hitherto unknown charm in store for her; but since her return to Seamore-place that notion had been entirely put aside. She had remembered once more that she was Lord Forestfield's wife, and she had heard him express with his own lips his desire that they should pass the remainder of their lives together. That desire May had determined should be fulfilled. She had made up her mind to do her duty, and she would have done it at any cost; but there were passages in her husband's conduct during the earlier portions of their married life which she had found it impossible to forget, and the remembrance of which had been aroused by his ravings during his delirium. O, how much better 'dark death and dreamful ease' than a prolongation of the life of sin and shame, of constant fear of discovery, of frantic search after so-called pleasure, and sickening disgust so soon as the momentary recklessness was over! Better, far better, that her name, now almost forgotten, should never be heard of again, and that her husband--whose contrition for the part he had played towards her was, May could not help feeling, a spasmodic result of his recent illness, to be forgotten when his strength returned--should be freed from the incumbrance which her presence must necessarily be to him.