Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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The sick woman has been dozing for an hour or more. Presently she opens her eyes, and murmurs the name of her husband.

He is by her bedside in a moment, and bends fondly over her.

“You are better, Jane—​say you are better,” he says, in an anxious tone.

“Better, because nearer home,” was the response.

An expression of anguish passed over the features of the farmer.

He sits himself down in a chair by the bedside of the sufferer, and remains silent and thoughtful.

Maude creeps up to the sick couch, kisses her sister-in-law fondly, and in a minute or so after this leaves, in company with her brother James.

Richard is left alone with his side wife.

He is a strong, powerful man, full of robust health, but feels now so borne down as to be almost prostrate.

For weeks his wife had been thus—​a mere shadow of her former self. Her malady appeared to be incurable.

Dr. Bourne, her medical attendant, had been unremitting in his attention; but he confessed himself quite unable to define the nature of the complaint—​it appeared to him to be more mental than physical, and for that reason it was beyond the reach of medicaments.