"I think I have killed her," said Gertrude, before he went, looking up at him from over the prostrate figure of her sister; "and if it were all to be done again--I would do it." Mrs. Maryon asked no questions; her genuine kindness and helpfulness were called forth by this crisis; and her suspicions of Gertrude had vanished for ever. [Illustration: Decoration] [Illustration: Decoration] CHAPTER XX. IN THE SICK-ROOM. _A riddle that one shrinks To challenge from the scornful sphinx._ D. G. ROSSETTI. The doctor's verdict was unhesitating enough. Phyllis's doom, as more than one who knew her foresaw, was sealed. The shock and the exposure had only hastened an end which for long had been inevitable. Consumption, complicated with heart disease, both in advanced stages, held her in their grasp; added to these, a severe bronchial attack had set in since the night of the snowstorm, and her life might be said to hang by a thread. It might be a matter of days, said the cautious physician, of weeks, or even months. "Would a journey to the south, at an earlier stage of her illness, have availed to save her?" Gertrude asked, with white, mechanical lips. It was possible, was the answer, that it would have prolonged her life. But almost from the first, it seemed, the shadow of the grave must have rested on this beautiful human blossom. "Death in her face," muttered Mrs. Maryon, grimly; "I saw it there, I have always seen it." Meanwhile, people came and went in Upper Baker Street; sympathetic, inquisitive, bustling. Fanny, dismayed and tearful, appeared daily at the invalid's bedside, laden with grapes and other delicacies. "Poor old Fan," said Phyllis; "how shocked she would be if she knew everything. Don't you think it is your duty, Gerty, to Mr. Marsh, to let him know?" Aunt Caroline drove across from Lancaster Gate, rebuke implied in every fold of her handsome dress. "I cannot think," she remarked to her friends, "how Gertrude could have reconciled such culpable neglect of that poor child's health to her conscience." Gertrude avoided her aunt, saying to herself, in the bitterness of her humiliation: "It is the Aunt Carolines of this world who are right. I ought to have listened to her. She understood human nature better than I." The Devonshires, who had not long returned from Germany, were unremitting in their kindness, the slackened bonds between the two families growing tight once more in this hour of need. Lord Watergate made regular inquiries in Baker Street. Gertrude found his presence more endurable than that of the people with whom she had to dissemble; he knew her secret; it was safe with him and she was almost glad that he knew it. Gertrude had written a brief note to Lucy, telling her that Phyllis was very ill, but urging her to remain a week, at least, in Cornwall.