All that a tender nurse could do, Grace did; and the power to
express her solicitude in action, unconscious though the sufferer
was, brought her mournful satisfaction. She bathed his hot head,
wiped his perspiring hands, moistened his lips, cooled his fiery
eyelids, sponged his heated skin, and administered whatever she
could find in the house that the imagination could conceive as
likely to be in any way alleviating. That she might have been the
cause, or partially the cause, of all this, interfused misery with
her sorrow.
Six months before this date a scene, almost similar in its
mechanical parts, had been enacted at Hintock House. It was
between a pair of persons most intimately connected in their lives
with these. Outwardly like as it had been, it was yet infinite in
spiritual difference, though a woman's devotion had been common to
both.
Grace rose from her attitude of affection, and, bracing her
energies, saw that something practical must immediately be done.
Much as she would have liked, in the emotion of the moment, to
keep him entirely to herself, medical assistance was necessary
while there remained a possibility of preserving him alive.
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