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Rh and devotion, the issue of life or death, her station was alternately at the couch of her husband and son.

Meanwhile Dr. Beckford was punctual in his attendance, and failed not also to bring her information respecting her children, whom he visited at Mrs. Herbert's. She had the satisfaction of hearing their convalescence confirmed. The good lady had watched over them with unremitting attention; often during the long dull interval of night had she stolen to their pillows, had placed her ear near them, striving to catch the sound of their soft respiration, so still, so faint, and almost expiring, that she was sometimes left in doubt whether or not her sweet charges were really in existence. Her cares, however, being crowned with success, she had the gratification of seeing them gradually recovered from convalescence to the enjoyment of perfect health.

But although the anxieties of Mrs. De Brooke were thus from time to time agreeably relieved by intelligence from Mrs. Herbert's, it was far otherwise with respect to those dear sufferers who, besides being the theme of her thoughts, were the objects of her immediate personal attention. Her husband, from the nature of his slow and lingering malady, indifferent to all things passing around