The nurses and doctors depended on her for
all those lesser aids that intelligence and love can bring to
hospital service. The servants of the house would have worked all
night and all day for her and Mr. Desmond. Yet all this was scarcely
seen--it was only felt--'a life, a presence like the air.' Most of
us have known the same experience--how, when human beings come to
the testing, the values of a house change, and how men and women,
who have been in it as those who serve, become naturally and
noiselessly its rulers, and those who once ruled, their dependents.
It was so at Mannering. A tender, unconscious sovereignty
established itself; and both the weak and the strong grouped
themselves round it.
Especially did Elizabeth seem to understand the tragic fact that as
death drew nearer the boy struggled more painfully to live, that he
might know what was happening on the battlefield. He would have the
telegrams read to him night and morning. And he would lie brooding
over them for long afterwards. The Rector came to see him, and
Desmond accepted gratefully his readings and his prayers.
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