'I know now,' he said softly, what will kill your mother if she dies. It will shock you to hear it, and you must not think me cruel for telling you. When your mother, in the night she was taken ill, cried to you that her heart was almost broken, it was no mere phrase that she uttered--it was a cry from her soul, and the words exactly represented her condition. If she dies, it will be because her heart _is_ broken. And you will have broken it. Ay,' he continued gently, as I started in horror from him, 'and so would your mother start from me if she had strength and sense to hear and understand. She would think me the cruelest monster. But what I have said is true nevertheless. Your mother's life has been bound up in yours. No woman, unsustained by most perfect and most unselfish love, could have held up against such trials as hers; where she has had doubts she has thrust them from her, and her deep affection has given her strength to bear her sufferings. For a long time there has been raging within her a mental conflict, the torture of which only those can understand who love as she loves, and only those can feel whose natures are as delicately sensitive as hers. Even I, until now a stranger to her and to you, can see the fire which has been consuming her gentle spirit. And when the final blow came, and she was made to feel by your words that she had wrecked your happiness and had lost your love (for she _must_ have felt then what she had long feared), she sank beneath it. I have, thank God, through all my life reverenced woman's character, but I never reverenced it so thoroughly as I do now, after hearing your story. You ask me if all hope is really gone, and if nothing can be done? Well, I see a way. What can kill can cure. I warn you that the chance is a slight one, but it must be tried. Can you afford to go away from London for a time?' 'Yes, I have money saved; and I think I could arrange to take work with me, and do it in the country.' 'That is well. If you will take your mother away from London, say to the scenes with which you were familiar when you were a child, and attend to her yourself, and make her feel and understand that you love her as she deserves and yearns to be loved, she may recover. That is the only chance. She is almost certain to have conscious intervals. If you have tact enough to be alone with her, as you were in the old days, when her consciousness first returns, it may prove the turning-point towards convalescence. I cannot explain myself more fully; I will give you a simple strengthening medicine with you, and all necessary directions as to diet. When will you go?' I arranged to go on the following day, and Josey West said that, notwithstanding what the doctor had said, it was impossible that I should go alone. Her sister Florry, who was nearly sixteen years of age, should accompany us. 'If your mother asks who she is,' said Josey, 'you can say she is the maid.'