Gerard (Volume 2); Or, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil a Novel (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1891. Excerpt: ... GERARD; Or, THE WOKLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL. CHAPTER I. "OUT WENT MY HEART'S NEW FIRE, AND LEFT IT COLD." Gerard Hillersdon and Mrs. Champion met but rarely during the month of May. Doomed men are apt to linger beyond the anticipations of their medical attendants, and the famous physician from Cavendish Square continued his bi-weekly visits through all the bright long sunny days which society's calendar has devoted to the pursuit of pleasure--a chase from which Mrs. Champion's handsome face and form were missing. Other figures there were as perfect, other faces as famous for beauty; and it was only Vol. n. B once in a way that one of the butterflies noted the absence of that Queen butterfly; it was only once in a way that friendship murmured with a sigh, " Poor Mrs. Champion, mewed up with an invalid husband all through this lovely season " Edith Champion gave the fading life her uttermost devotion. She had a keen sense of honour, after all--this wife who had gone on loving her first lover all through her married life. She had a more sensitive conscience than her world would have readily believed. She wanted to do her duty to the dying husband, so that she might surrender herself heart and mind to a new life of gladness when he should be at peace, and yet feel no sting of remorse, and yet have no dark memory to fling its shadow across her sunlight. With this laudable desire, she spent the greater part of her life at Finchley, where she had taken a villa near the doctor's house, so as to be within call by day or night. She withdrew herself from all friends and acquaintances except Gerard Hillersdon, and even him she saw only two or three times a week, driving into London and taking tea in the cool Hertford Street drawingroom, with her nerves always strained by the dread of some u...