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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: conscience-stricken. We had been so engrossed that I had
left this poor creature to die without even a word of sympathy.
The nurse gave her a stimulant, and in a little while she was
able to talk. So broken and half-coherent, however, was her
story that I shall tell it in my own way. In an hour from the
time I entered the Charity Hospital, I had heard a sad and
pitiful narrative, and had seen a woman slip into the
unconsciousness that is only a step from death.
Briefly, then, the housekeeper's story was this:
She was almost forty years old, and had been the sister-mother of
a large family of children. One by one they had died, and been
The Circular Staircase |
