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ETHEL CHURCHILL.
269

breathlessly to the room from whence they came. It was Lady Marchmont's dressing-room; and there she found her surrounded by physicians, two of whom held her, while the surgeon made a vain attempt to bleed her: it was impossible in her present state.

Ethel stood—pity, anxiety—alike merged in astonishment at the change which a single night had wrought. Henrietta's long hair flowed unbound, but it was white as the shoulders over which it swept. Age and youth seemed to have met together: there was the skin, fair and smooth, but the mouth was fallen, and the features thin and contracted. The large black eyes seemed to have gone back into the head, and a dark hollow circle was round them; while the change in the colour of the hair, once so glossily black, now turned to silver, gave her countenance something that seemed to Ethel almost supernatural. As soon as Henrietta saw her, with a sudden spring she released herself from restraint; and, flinging her arms round her