For the phlebotomist had been a
constant attendant at her Friday night whist-table; and as it was she
lost him, for he naturally was offended at her recovery under rival
hands.
What my mother _was_ I have already said enough to show, as far as
my imperfect words can show it, in divers passages of these
reminiscences. She was the happiest natured person I ever knew--happy
in the intense power of enjoyment, happier still in the conscious
exercise of the power of making others happy; and this continued to
be the case till nearly the end. During the last few years the bright
lamp began to grow dim and gradually sink into the socket. She
suffered but little physically, but she lost her memory, and then
gradually more and more the powers of her mind generally. I have often
thought that this perishing of the mind before the exceptionally
healthy and well-constituted physical frame, in which it was housed,
may have been due to the tremendous strain to which she was subjected
during those terrible months at Bruges, when she was watching the
dying bed of a much-loved son during the day, and, dieted on green tea
and laudanum, was writing fiction most part of the night. The cause,
if such were the case, would have preceded the effect by some forty
years; but whether it is on the cards to suppose that such an effect
may have been produced after such a length of time, I have not
physiological knowledge enough to tell.
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