She received a moral, in addition to a physical shock,
utterly confounding in its crudity, its primitive violence.
The ravage of pain can be, in great measure, surmounted and concealed;
but that baser thing, functional disturbance--in this case present as
heart spasm, threatening suffocation, with consequent agonized and
uncontrollable struggle for breath--defies concealment. This
manifestation horrified Damaris. The more so that, being unacquainted
with the sorry spectacle of disease, her father, under the deforming
stress of it, appeared to her as a stranger almost--inaccessible to
affection, hideously removed from her and remote. His person and
character, to her distracted observation, were altered beyond recognition
except during intervals, poignant to the verge of heart-break, when
passing ease restored his habitual dignity and grace.
Thus, while Miss Felicia and Carteret--with Hordle and Mary Fisher as
assistants--ministered to his needs in as far as ministration was
possible, she stood aside, consumed by misery, voluntarily effacing
herself.
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