Explore "On the Brink of a Chasm" by L.T. Meade on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was certified that Piers Pelham, baronet, aged seven, had come by his death owing to cardiac failure. The certificate to this effect was duly signed by the well-known Dr. Tarbot, one of the cleverest and most rising doctors in Harley Street. The great specialists who had been called in to see the child expressed no surprise when they heard of the death; only one of them remarked that he did not think the end would have come quite so soon.
In other quarters there was a certain amount of gossip. Dick Pelham was considered wonderfully lucky. Before the child's death he had been a mere nobody-a briefless barrister with the ordinary chances of a moderate success. Now he was a man of vast importance-the baronetcy was one of the oldest in England, and the acres which belonged to the title large, fair, and widely spread.