I took her to the wash-stand, and poured out some cold water for her, and saw her bathe her eyes and face, and dry them, and braid her thin grey hair.  While with a powder puff I was trying deftly to conceal the ravages of the night’s crying, the dear lady turned to me, and whispered in a trembling voice, “Mrs. Abbott, you really don’t mean that dreadful thing you said just now?”

“Which dreadful thing, Mrs. Tuis?”

“That you would tell Sylvia it could possibly be right for her to leave her husband?”

18.  In the course of the day we received word that Dr. Gibson, the specialist for whom we had telegraphed, was on his way.  The boat which brought his message took back a letter from Dr. Perrin to Douglas van Tuiver, acquainting him with the calamity which had befallen.  We had talked it over and agreed that there was nothing to be gained by telegraphing the information.  We did not wish any hint of the child’s illness to leak into the newspapers.

I did not envy the great man the hour when he read that letter; although I knew that the doctor had not failed to assure him that the victim of his misdeeds should be kept in ignorance.  Already the little man had begun to drop hints to me on this subject.  Unfortunate accidents happened, which were not always to be blamed upon the husband, nor was it a thing to contemplate lightly, the breaking up of a family.  I gave a non-committal answer, and changed the subject by asking the doctor not to mention my presence in the household.  If by any chance van Tuiver were to carry his sorrows to Claire, I did not want my name brought up.

We managed to prevent Sylvia’s seeing the child that day and night, and the next morning came the specialist.  He held out no hope of saving any remnant of the sight, but the child might be so fortunate as to escape disfigurement—­it did not appear that the eyeballs were destroyed, as happens generally in these cases.  This bit of consolation I still have:  that little Elaine, who sits by me as I write, has left in her pupils a faint trace of the soft red-brown—­just enough to remind us of what we have lost, and keep fresh in our minds the memory of these sorrows.  If I wish to see what her eyes might have been, I look above my head to the portrait of Sylvia’s noble ancestress, a copy made by a “tramp artist” in Castleman County, and left with me by Sylvia.

There was the question of the care of the mother—­the efforts to stay the ravages of the germ in the tissues broken and weakened by the strain of child-birth.  We had to invent excuses for the presence of the new doctor—­and yet others for the presence of Dr. Overton, who came a day later.  And then the problem of the nourishing of the child.  It would be a calamity to have to put it upon the bottle, but on the other hand, there were many precautions necessary to keep the infection from spreading.