When she gained her room, she sat down faint and trembling.

Here was a new element in the danger and disgrace that were digging her steps so closely.
As we have seen, Edith did not make her appearance at the mission sewing-school on the following Thursday, nor did she go there for many weeks afterward.

The wild hope that had taken her to Briar street, the nervous strain and agitation attendant on that visit, and the reaction occasioned by her father's failure to get possession of the baby, were too much for her strength, and an utter prostration of mind and body was the consequence.

There was no fever nor sign of any active disease--only weakness, Nature's enforced quietude, that life and reason might be saved..