"Who should know better than I? He wrote from London, explaining."
"I did what I could--I believed in it!" said Mrs Tregent. "He was
charming, for a while."
"But he broke down. She's too short, eh?" Maurice asked.
"Don't laugh; she's ill."
"What's the matter with her?"
Mrs. Tregent gave the visitor a look in which there was almost a
reproach for the question. "She has had a chill; she's in bed. You must
see her."
She took him upstairs and he saw his child. He remembered what his
mother had told him of the grievous illness of Fanny Knocker. Poor
little Vera lay there in the flush of a feverish cold which had come on
the evening before. She grew worse from the effect of a complication,
and for three days he was anxious about her; but even more than with his
alarm he held his breath before the distress, the disappointment, the
humility of his old friend. Up to this hour he had not fully measured
the strength of her desire to do something for him, or the intensity of
passion with which she had wished to do it in the particular way that
had now broken down. She had counted on her influence with her son, on
his affection and on the maternal art, and there was anguish in her
compunction for her failure, for her false estimate of the possible.
Maurice Glanvil reminded her in vain of the consoling fact that Vera had
known nothing of any plan, and he guessed indeed the reason why this
theory had no comfort. No one could be better aware than Fanny Tregent
of how much girls knew who knew nothing. It was doubtless this same sad
wisdom that kept her sombre when he expressed a confidence that his
child would promptly recover. She herself had had a terrible fight--and
yet with the physical victory, had she recovered? Her apprehension for
Vera was justified, for the poor girl was destined finally to forfeit
even the physical victory. She got better, she got up, she quitted
Blankley, she quitted England with her father, but her health had failed
and a year later it gave way. Overtaken in Rome by a second illness, she
succumbed; unlike Fanny Knocker she was never to have her revenge.