The Forlorn Hope: A Novel (Vol. 2 of 2)

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The Forlorn Hope a Novel, (Volume 878, Vol. II, in, Collection of
British Authors, Volume 878.

THE FORLORN HOPE.

A NOVEL.

BY

EDMUND YATES,

AUTHOR OF "LAND AT LAST," "BROKEN TO HARNESS," ETC.

COPYRIGHT EDITION.

IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I.

LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ.
1867.

The Right of Translation is reserved.

THE FORLORN HOPE.

[CHAPTER I].

Nothing like Wilmot.

Mr. Foljambe did not easily throw off the painful impression which his interview with Chudleigh Wilmot had made upon him. The old gentleman had always found Wilmot, though not an expansive, a singularly frank person; he had not indeed ever spoken much to him concerning his wife or his domestic affairs generally; but men do not do so habitually; and the men to whom their wives are most dear and important rarely mention them at all. The circumstance had therefore made no impression upon Mr. Foljambe, himself a confirmed old bachelor, who, though very kind and considerate to women and children, regarded them rather as ornamental trifles, with a tendency to degenerate into nuisances, than otherwise.

He began by wondering why Wilmot should have been so thoroughly upset by his wife's death, and went on to speculate how long that very unexpected and undesirable result might be likely to last. Becoming sanguine and comparatively cheerful at this point, he made up his mind that Chudleigh would get over it before long. Perhaps all had not gone very smooth with the Wilmots. Not that he had any particular reason to think so; but Wilmot was not a remarkably domestic man, and there might be perhaps a little spice of self-reproach in his sorrow. At all events, it would not last; that might be looked upon as certain. In the mean time, and in order that the world might not think Wilmot's conduct silly, sentimental, or mysterious, Mr. Foljambe would be beforehand with the gossips and the curious, and, by assigning to his absence from England a motive in which the interests of his profession and those of his health should be combined, prevent the risk of its being imputed to anything so rococo as deep feeling.

"Gad, I'll do it," said Mr. Foljambe, as he took his seat in his faultless brougham, having carefully completed an irreproachable afternoon toilette, in which every article of costume was integrally perfect and of the highest fashion, but as scrupulously adapted to his time of life as the dress of a Frenchwoman of middle or indeed of any age. "I'll go and inquire for that Kilsyth girl, and set the right story afloat there," he said, as he gave his coachman the necessary orders; "it will soon find its way about town, especially if that carrier-pigeon Caird is in the way."

And the old gentleman, chuckling over his own cleverness in hitting on so happy a device, felt almost reconciled already to the deprivation which he was doomed to suffer in the loss of Wilmot's society by the opportunity which it afforded him of exercising the small social talents, of which he really possessed a good many, and believed himself to be endowed with a good many more.

Lady Muriel Kilsyth was at home, likewise Miss Kilsyth; and her ladyship "received" that afternoon. So Mr. Foljambe, who, though an admittedly old man, long past the elderly stage, and no longer à pretention in any sense, was as welcome a visitor in a London drawing-room as the curliest of darlings and most irresistible of guardsmen, made his way nimbly upstairs, and was ushered into the presence of the two ladies, who formed an exceedingly pretty and effective domestic group.

Madeleine Kilsyth, who had recovered her beauty, though a little of her brilliance and her bloom was still wanting, was drawing, while her stepmother stood a little behind her chair, her dark graceful head bent over her shoulder, and directed her pencil. Mr. Foljambe's glance lighted on the two faces as he entered the room, and they inspired him with an instantaneous compliment, which he turned with grace, a little old-fashioned, but the more attractive. They answered him pleasantly; Lady Muriel gave him her hand; Madeleine suffered him to take both hers, and repaid the long look of interest with which he regarded her with her sweetest smile; then resumed her occupation, and listened, as she drew, to the conversation between Lady Muriel and Mr. Foljambe.

At first their talk was only of generalities: what the ladies had been doing since they came to London, the extent of Madeleine's drives, how many of their acquaintance had also arrived, the prospects of society for the winter, and cognate topics. They had seen a good deal of Ronald, Lady Muriel told Mr. Foljambe; and her brother's presence had been a great pleasure to Madeleine. A close observer might have thought that Madeleine's expression of countenance did not altogether confirm this statement; but her old friend was not a close observer of young ladies, and Lady Muriel did not look at her stepdaughter as she spoke. After a while Mr. Foljambe turned the conversation upon Madeleine's illness, and so, in the easiest and most natural way, introduced Wilmot's name. Lady Muriel's manner of meeting this topic was admirable. She never failed in the aplomb which is part of the armour of a woman of the world; and though she never again could hear Wilmot's name mentioned with real composure, she had the mock article always at hand; so skilful an imitation as successfully to defy detection.

"A fine fellow, is he not, Lady Muriel?" said Mr. Foljambe, in the tone of a father desirous of hearing the praises of his favourite son.

"Indeed he is," responded Lady Muriel heartily. "He has laid us under an obligation which we can never discharge or forget. I am sure Kilsyth and I reckon him among the most valued of our friends."

"He took the deepest interest in Miss Kilsyth's case, I know," said Mr. Foljambe; "and of course there was everything to excite such a feeling;" and the gallant old gentleman bowed in the direction of Madeleine, who acknowledged the compliment with a most becoming blush.

"It was a very anxious, a very trying time," said Lady Muriel, in the precise tone which suited the sentiment. "I don't know how Kilsyth would have borne it, had it not been for Dr. Wilmot. We were much distressed to hear that such bad news awaited him on his return. He found his wife dying, did he not?"

"He found her dead, Lady Muriel."

There was a pause, during which Madeleine laid aside her pencil, and shaded her face with her hand. The tears were standing in her blue eyes; and while Mr. Foljambe proceeded, they streamed unchecked down her face.

"Yes, he found her dead. It was a sudden termination to an illness which had nothing serious in it, to all appearance. But, as many another illness has done, it set all human calculations at naught; and when the bad symptoms set in, it was too late for him to reach her in time. I suppose he has not told you anything about it?"

"No," said Lady Muriel; "beyond a few words of condolence, to which he made a very brief reply, nothing has been said. I fancy Dr. Wilmot is a man but little given to talking of his own afnot fairs or his own feelings."

"Not given to talking of them at all, Lady Muriel. I never met a more reticent man, even with myself; and I flatter myself he has no closer friend, none with whom he is on more confidential terms; he is very reserved in some things. I did not know much of his wife."

"Did you not?" said Lady Muriel; "how was that?"

"When I say I did not know much of her," Mr. Foljambe explained, "I do not mean that it was from any fault of mine. I called once or twice, but there was something sullen and impenetrable and uninteresting about her, and I never felt any real intimacy with her."

"Indeed!" said Lady Muriel, "it is impossible to know Dr. Wilmot without feeling interested in all that concerns him; and I have often wished to know what sort of woman his wife was."

"Well, that is precisely what very few persons in the world could have told you; and I, for one, acknowledge myself astonished at the effect her death has had on Wilmot."

"He is dreadfully cut up by it certainly," said Lady Muriel; "but I hope, and suppose, he will recover it, as other people have to recover troubles of that and every other kind."

"He is taking the best means of getting over it," said Mr. Foljambe; "and I heartily enter into the notion, and have encouraged him in it. He thinks of going abroad for some time. I know he has been very anxious to study the foreign treatment of diseases in general, and of fever in particular; and he came to me yesterday and told me he meant to leave London for six months at least. He assigned sound reasons for such a determination, and I think it is the wisest at which he could possibly have arrived."

Lady Muriel rose and rang the bell. The fire required mending, and the brief afternoon twilight rendered the lamps a necessity earlier than usual. When these things had been attended to, she took up the dialogue where it had been broken off with all her accustomed grace and skill.

"I did not know we were about to lose Dr. Wilmot for a time," she said. "If all his friends and patients miss him as much as Madeleine Kilsyth and myself are likely to do, his absence is likely to create a sensation indeed. And so poor Mrs. Wilmot was not a very amiable, woman?"

Mr. Foljambe had not said anything about Mrs. Wilmot's amiability, or the opposite, but he let the observation pass in sheer bewilderment; and that Lady Muriel Kilsyth understood as well as he did. She went on. "A man like Dr. Wilmot must miss companionship at home very much. Of course he can always command the resources of society, but they would not be welcome to him yet awhile. How long does he speak of remaining away, Mr. Foljambe?"

"He did not mention any particular time in talking the matter over with me. His destination is Berlin, I believe. He is anxious to investigate some medical system carried on there, which I need not say neither you nor I know anything about. He was very eloquent upon it, I assure you; and I am glad to perceive that all his trouble has not decreased his interest in the one great object of his life."

"His professional advancement, I suppose?" said Lady Muriel.

"Well, not exactly that. I think he must retard that by any, and especially by an indefinite, absence. It is rather to his profession itself, to science in the abstract, I allude. He always had a perfect thirst for knowledge, and the greatest powers of application I have ever known any man possessed of. A 'case' was in his eyes the most important of human affairs. He would throw himself into the interest of his attendance upon a patient with preternatural energy. I am sure you discovered that while he was at Kilsyth."

"Yes indeed; his care of Madeleine was beyond all praise, or indeed description. No doubt, had any other opportunity offered, we should have found, as you say, that such devotion was not a solitary instance."

"O no, Wilmot is always the same. You know, I presume, that I required his services very urgently indeed just then; but he would not leave Miss Kilsyth's case for even so old and near a friend as I am."

Madeleine's colour deepened, and she listened to the conversation, in which she had taken no share, with increased eagerness.

"I know that some one telegraphed to him, but that he kindly said Madeleine's case being the more urgent of the two, he would remain with her. And you were none the worse, it seems, Mr. Foljambe?"

"No indeed, Lady Muriel," replied the old gentleman with a good-humoured smile. "Wilmot's deputy did quite as well for me as the mighty potentate of medicine himself. But I acknowledge I was a little annoyed; and if anyone but my old friend Kilsyth's daughter had been the detaining cause, I should have been tempted to play Wilmot a trick, by pretending that some extraordinary and entirely novel symptoms had appeared. He would have come fast enough then, I warrant you, for the chance of finding out something new about gout."

Lady Muriel laughed, but Madeleine apparently did not perceive the joke. Soon some other callers dropped in, and Mr. Foljambe took his leave. But the subject of Wilmot and his contemplated abandonment of London was not abandoned on his departure. He was well known to the "set" in which the Kilsyths moved, though their own acquaintance with him was so recent, and everyone had something to say about the rising man. The sentimental view of the subject was very general. It was so very charming to think of any man, especially one so talented, so popular, so altogether delightful as Wilmot, being "broken-hearted" by the death of his wife. Lady Muriel gently insinuated, once or twice, a doubt whether there was any ground for this very congenial but rather romantic supposition: her doubts, however, were by no means well received, and she found herself overwhelmed with evidence of the irremediably desolate condition of Wilmot's heart.

When the afternoon calls had come to an end, and Lady Muriel and her stepdaughter were in their respective rooms and about to dress for dinner, the mind of each was in accord with that of the other, inasmuch as the same subject of contemplation engrossed both. But the harmony went no farther. Nothing could be more opposite than the effect produced upon Madeleine and Lady Muriel by Mr. Foljambe's news, and by all the desultory discussion and speculation which had followed its announcement.

To Madeleine the knowledge that she should see Wilmot no more for an indefinite period was like a sentence of death. The young girl was profoundly unconscious of the meaning of her own feelings. That the sentiment which she entertained towards Wilmot was love, she never for a moment dreamed. In him the ideal of an elevated and refined fancy had found its realisation; he was altogether different from the men she had hitherto met since her emancipation from the schoolroom; different from the hunting, shooting devotees of field-sports, or the heavy country gentlemen given to farming and local politics, who frequented Kilsyth; different from the associates of her brother, who, whether they were merely fashionable and empty, or formal and priggish like Ronald himself, were essentially distasteful to her. She was of a dreamy and romantic temperament, to which the delicacy of health and the not quite congenial conditions of her life at home contributed not a little; and she had seen in Wilmot the man of talent, action, and resolve, the realisation of the nineteenth-century heroic ideal. To admire and reverence him; to find the best and most valuable of resources in his friendship, the wisest and truest guidance in his intellect, the most exquisite of pleasures in his society; to triumph in his fame, and try to merit his approval,--such was the girl's scheme for the future. But it never occurred to her that there was one comprehensive and forbidden word in which the whole of this state of feeling might be accurately defined. She had grieved for Wilmot's grief when she heard of the death of his wife, but at the same time a subtle instinct, which she never questioned and could not have defined, told her that his marriage had not been a happy one, according to her enthusiastic girlish notion of a happy marriage. She did not know anything about it; she had no idea what sort of woman Chudleigh Wilmot's wife was, but she had felt, by the nameless sense which, had she been an elder woman with ever so little experience, would have enlightened her as to the nature of her own feelings, that he was not really attached to her to the extent which alone seemed to her to imply happiness in the conjugal relation. So, when Madeleine heard that Wilmot was going abroad, and heard her stepmother's visitors talk about his being "broken-hearted," she felt equally wretched and incredulous. Sentimental reason for this resolution she did not, she could not accept; the other was exquisitely painful to her. Had he, indeed, so absorbing a love for his professional studies? Was he really occupied by them to the exclusion of all else; had her "case," and not herself, been his attraction at Kilsyth? If Mr. Foljambe had really resorted to the device he had spoken of, would Wilmot have left her? To none of these questions could Madeleine find an answer inside her own breast, or without it; so they tortured her. Her vision of seeing him frequently, of making him her friend--the vision which had so strangely beautified the prospect of her stay in London,--faded suddenly; and unconscious of all the idea meant and implied, the girl said to herself, "If he had cared for me--not as I care for him, of course that could not be--but ever so little, he would not go away."

Very different were Lady Muriel's meditations. To her this resolve on the part of Wilmot was peculiarly welcome. In the first place, she was a thorough woman of the world, and free from the impetuosity of youth. She was quite willing to be deprived of Wilmot's society for the present, if, as she calculated would be the case, he should return under circumstances which would enable her to reckon with increased security upon gaining the influence over him to which she ardently aspired, to which she aspired more and more ardently as each day proved to her how strong an impulse her life had taken from this new source. She cared little from what motive Wilmot's resolve had sprung. If indeed he had deeply loved, and if indeed he did desperately mourn his wife, the very power and violence of the feeling would react upon itself, and force him to accept consolation all the sooner that he had proved the greatness of his need of it. He would be absent during the dark time when grief forms an eclipse, and he would emerge from its shadow into the brightness which she would cause to shine upon his life. She did not anticipate that his absence would be greatly prolonged, but she did not shrink, even supposing it should be, from the interval. She had enough to do within its duration. Lady Muriel was as thoroughly acquainted with Madeleine's love for Wilmot as the girl was ignorant that she loved him. There was not a corner of her innocent heart which the keen experienced eye of her stepmother had not scanned and examined narrowly.

In Madeleine's perfect ignorance of the real nature of her own feelings Lady Muriel's best security for the success of her wishes and designs lay. As she had no notion that her love was aught but liking, she would be the more easily persuaded that her liking was love. She had a liking for Ramsay Caird. The gay, careless, superficial good-nature of the young man, his easy gentlemanly manners, and the familiarity with which his intercourse with the Kilsyth family was invested in consequence of his relationship to Lady Muriel, were all pleasing to the young girl; and probably, "next to Ronald," she preferred Ramsay Caird to any man of her acquaintance. Of late, too, an unexplained something had come between Madeleine and her brother--a certain restraint, a subtle sense of estrangement--which Lady Muriel thoroughly understood, but for which Madeleine could not have accounted, and shrunk from acknowledging to herself. This unexplained something, which made her look forward to Ronald's visits with greatly decreased pleasure, and made her involuntarily silent and depressed in his presence, told considerably in Ramsay Caird's favour; for it led to Madeleine's according him an increased share of her attention. The young man was a constant visitor at the Kilsyths'; and there was so much decision in Madeleine's liking for him, that she missed him if by any chance he was absent of an evening, and occasionally was heard to wonder what could have kept Mr. Caird away.

Madeleine's delicate health furnished Lady Muriel with a sufficient and reasonable pretext for keeping her at home in the evenings; and she contrived to make it evident that Ramsay Caird's presence constituted a material difference in the dulness or the pleasantness of the little party which assembled with tolerable regularity in the drawing-room. Ronald would come in for an hour or so, and then Madeleine would be particularly prévenante towards Ramsay Caird; an innocent and unconscious hypocrisy, poor child, which her stepmother perfectly understood, and which she saw with deep though concealed satisfaction.

On the evening of the day when Mr. Foljambe had discussed Wilmot's departure with Lady Muriel and Madeleine, the elder lady was a little embarrassed by the manifest effect on the looks and the spirits of the younger which the intelligence had produced. At dinner Kilsyth perversely chose to descant on the two themes with all a single-minded man's amiable pertinacity, and, of course, without the smallest conception that any connection existed between them. He was quite aggrieved at Wilmot's departure, and called on everyone to take notice of Madeleine's looks in confirmation of the loss he and his in particular must sustain by his absence. Ronald was of the party; and he preserved so marked and ungracious a silence, that at length even Kilsyth could not avoid noticing it, and said:

"I suppose you are the only man who knows him, Ronald, who underrates Wilmot; and I really believe you think we make quite an unnecessary fuss about him."

"I by no Means underrate the abilities of your medical attendant, sir," Ronald answered in his coldest and driest tone, and, as Madeleine felt in all her shrinking nerves, though she dared not look up to meet it, with a moody searching glance at her; "but, admirable as he may be in his proper capacity and his proper place, I cannot quite appreciate his social importance."

"Just listen to him, Muriel," said Kilsyth in a provoked but yet good-humoured tone. "What wonderful fellows these young men are! He actually talks of a man like Wilmot as if he were a general practitioner or an apothecary's apprentice!"

Lady Muriel interposed, and turned off this somewhat perilous and peace-breaking remark with one of the graceful, skilful generalities of which she always had a supply ready for emergencies. Ronald contented himself with a half smile of contempt at his father's enthusiastic misrepresentation; Madeleine talked energetically to Ramsay Caird; and the matter dropped.

To be resumed in the drawing-room, however. Madeleines looks were not improved when her father and the two young men joined her and Lady Muriel. She was dreaming over a book which she was pretending to read, when Kilsyth came up to her, took her chin in his hand, and turned up her face to his and to the light.

Tears were trembling in her blue eyes.

"Hallo, Maddy," said her father, "what's this? You're nervous, my darling! I knew you were not well. Has anything fretted you?--Has anything vexed her, Muriel?"

"No, papa, nothing; nothing at all," said Madeleine, making a strong effort to recover herself. "I have got hold of a sorrowful book, that's all."

"Have you, my dear? then put it away. Let's look at it. Why, it's Pickwick, I declare! Maddy, what can all you? How could you possibly cry over anything in Pickwick?"

"I don't know that, sir," said Ramsay, jauntily and jovially coming to Madeleine's assistance, without the faintest notion of anything beyond her being "badgered by the governor." "There's the dying clown, you know, and the queer client. I've cried over them myself; or at least I've been very near it," And he sat down beside Madeleine, and applied himself with success to rousing and amusing her. Ronald said nothing, and very soon went away.

"I'm determined on one thing, Muriel," said Kilsyth to his wife when they were alone; "I'll have a long talk with Wilmot before he goes, and get the fullest instructions from him about Madeleine. I have no confidence in anyone else in her case, and I'll write to Wilmot about it, and ask him to come here professionally, as soon as he can, the first thing to-morrow morning."

[CHAPTER II.]

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Another Turn of the Screw.

If the interview which had taken place between Chudleigh Wilmot and Henrietta Prendergast had had unfortunate results for the one, it had been proportionably, if not equally, unpleasant to the other. It was impossible that Henrietta could have sustained a more complete discouragement, a more telling and unmistakable defeat, than she felt had befallen her when, after Wilmot had left her, she went over every point of their conversation, and considered the interview in every possible aspect. She had at once, or at least at a very early stage, discerned that some fresh disturbing cause existed in Wilmot's mind. She had seen him, on the memorable occasion of their first interview after his wife's death, horrified, confounded, and unfeignedly distressed. However little he had loved his wife, however passing and shallow the impression made upon him by the sudden and untimely event might prove--and Mrs. Prendergast was prepared to find it prove shallow and passing--it had been real, single, intelligible. He had received the painful communication which she had been charged to make to him with surprise, with sorrow--no doubt, in his secret soul, with bitter, regretful, vain remorse. She could only surmise this part of his feelings. He had not departed from the manly reticence which she had expected from him, and for which she admired him; but she never doubted that he had experienced such remorse,--vain, bitter, and regretful.

All the information which had drifted to her knowledge since--and though she was not a distinctly curious or mean-natured woman, Mrs. Prendergast was not above cultivating and maintaining friendly relations with Dr. Wilmot's household, to all of whom she was as well known, and had been nearly as important, as their late mistress--confirmed her in the belief that the conduct of the suddenly-bereaved husband had been all that propriety, good feeling, good taste, and good sense could possibly require. She bad not precisely defined in her imagination what it was that she looked for and expected in the interview which Wilmot had requested, with a little too much formality, certainly, to be reassuring with regard to any notions she might possibly have entertained with respect to the freedom and intimacy of their future relations. But she did not suffer herself to dwell on that matter of the formality. It was not unnatural; there are persons, she knew, to whom that sort of thing seems proper when a death--what may be called an intimate death, that is to say--has taken place, who change all their ways and manners for a time, just as they put on mourning and use lugubrious stationery. It was not very like what she would have expected of Wilmot, to enrol himself in the number of these formalists; but she did not allow the circumstance to impress her disagreeably. She possessed patience in as marked a degree as she possessed intelligence--patience, a much rarer and nearly as valuable a quality--and she was satisfied to wait until time should enable her to arrive at the free and frequent association with Wilmot, which was the first step to the end she had in view, and meant to keep in view. She was perfectly clear upon that point; none the leas clear that she did not discuss it in her own thoughts, or ponder over it; but she laid it quietly aside, to be produced and acted on when it should be required.

Therefore Henrietta Prendergast was disquieted and disconcerted by the tone and manner which Wilmot had assumed during their interview. Disquieted, because there was something in and under them which she could not fathom; disconcerted, because everything in the interview betrayed and disappointed the expectations she had formed, and because her intention of conveying to Wilmot, by a frank and friendly manner, that it was within his power to continue in his own person the intimacy which had subsisted between herself and his wife, had been utterly routed and nullified.

"There was something in his mind with regard to Mabel," she said to herself, as she sat at her tea in her snug drawing-room on the same afternoon; "there certainly was something in his mind about her which was not in it when I saw him last. I wonder what it is. I wonder whether he has found anything? I am sure she never kept a journal; I shouldn't think so; I fancy no one ever does in real life, except they are so important as to be wanted for public purposes, or so vain as to think such demand likely. Besides, Mabel's trouble was not tragical; it was only monotonous and uneventful. No; I am sure she did not keep a journal. So he has not found one; and he has not found any letters either. Mabel had very few to keep, and she burnt the scanty collection just as her illness began. I remember coming suddenly into the room, and fluttering the ashes all over her bed and toilet-table by opening the door. Yes, to be sure, the window was open; and she had had a fire kindled on purpose."

Mrs. Prendergast leaned her face upon her hand, struck her teaspoon thoughtfully against the edge of the tea-tray, and pondered deeply. She was trying to recall every little incident connected with the dead woman, in the endeavour to discover the secret of Wilmot's demeanour that day.

"Yes, she was sitting by the fire; a sandal-wood box was on the floor, and a heap of ashes in the grate. I remember looking rather surprised, and she said, 'You know, Hettie, one never can tell what may happen. You nor I either cannot tell whether I shall ever recover; and it is well to have all things in readiness.' I thought the observation rather absurd particularly, however true it might be generally, and told her so, for she was by no means seriously ill then. She still persisted, however. What a remarkable feature of poor Mabel's illness, by the bye, was her persistent and unalterable belief that she should die! The wish to die, no doubt, assisted it much at the end; but the conviction laid hold on her from the first."

Then Mrs. Prendergast remembered how Mrs. Wilmot had left everything in readiness; every article of household property, all her own private possessions, everything which had claimed her care, provided for; and though she knew that instances of such a morbid state of mind were not altogether wanting in the case of women in Mrs. Wilmot's state of health, she did not feel that such an hypothesis accounted for this particular case satisfactorily. In all other respects there had been such equality of disposition, common sense, and absence of fancifulness about her friend, that she could not accept the explanation which suggested itself. This was not the first time that she had thought over this circumstance. It had been brought before her very forcibly when a packet was sent to her, with a kind but formal note from Wilmot, a day or two after his wife's funeral; which packet contained a few articles of jewelry and general ornament, and a strip of paper, bearing merely the words: "I wish these to be given to Mrs. Prendergast.--M. W."

But now it assumed a more puzzling importance and deeper interest. Had Wilmot found anything among all her orderly possessions which had thrown any new light upon her life? Had he had a misunderstanding with Dr. Whittaker? Did he think his wife's life had been sacrificed by want of care, or want of attention or of skill? Had remorse seized him on this account, when he had succeeded in defeating its attack, in consequence of the revelation which she had made to him? Had he regained incredulity or indifference as regarded the years which had passed in miscomprehension, to be roused into inquietude and stern self-reproach by an appeal to his master passion, his professional knowledge and attainments? If this were so, there would at least be some measure of punishment allotted to Chudleigh Wilmot; for he was a proud man, and sensitive on that point, if not on any other.

Henrietta Prendergast was well disposed towards Wilmot now, in the new aspect of affairs, and contemplating as she did certain dim future possibilities very grateful to her pertinacious disposition. But she was not sorry to think that he had something to suffer; and that something of a nature to oppress his spirits considerably, and render him indifferent to the attractions of society. Before this desirable effect should have worn off, she would have contrived to make herself necessary to him. She had but little doubt of her power to accomplish this, if only the opportunity were afforded her. She knew she had plenty of ability, not of a kind which Wilmot would dislike, and certainly of a quality for which he did not give her credit. She had less attraction than Mabel, so far as good looks would go, but that would not be very far, she thought, with Dr. Wilmot. He might never care for her even so much as he had cared for Mabel; but his feelings towards her, if evoked at all, would be different, much more satisfactory, and to her mind, which was properly organised, quite sufficient.

If Henrietta's daydreams were of a more sober colour, they were no less unreal than the rosiest and most extravagant vision ever woven by youthful fancy. She had not seen Madeleine Kilsyth. She had indeed understood and witnessed Mabel's jealousy, aroused by the devotion of her husband to the young Scotch girl. But she thought little of danger from this quarter. She had always understood--having a larger intellect and a wider perception, and above all, being an unconcerned spectator, uninjured by it in her affections or her rights--Wilmot's absorption in his profession much better than his wife had understood it. Something in her own nature, dim and undeveloped, answered to this absorption.

"If I had had any pursuit in life, I should have followed it just as eagerly; if I had had a career, I should have devoted myself to it just as entirely," had been her frequent mental comment upon Wilmot's conduct. She quite understood the effect it produced on a woman of Mabel's temperament, was perfectly convinced that it could not produce a similar effect on a woman of her own; but also believed that no such conduct would ever have been pursued towards her. The very something which enabled her to sympathise with him would have secured her from exclusion from the reality and the meaning of his life. "At least I should interest him," she had often said to herself, when she had seen how entirely Mabel failed to inspire him with interest; and in her lengthened cogitations on the evening of the day which had been marked by Wilmot's visit, she repeated the assurance with renewed conviction.

It was not that the remembrance of Miss Kilsyth did not occur to her very strongly; on the contrary, it occupied its fall share of her mind and attention. But she disposed of the subject very comfortably and finally by dwelling on the following points:

First, the distinction of rank and the difference in age between Miss Kilsyth and Dr. Wilmot were both considerable, important, and likely to form very efficient barriers against any extravagant notions on his part. Supposing--an unlikely supposition in the case of a man who added remarkable good sense to exceptional talent--he were to overlook this distinction of rank and difference of age, it was not probable that the young lady's relatives would accommodate themselves to any such blindness; while it was extremely probable they would regard any project on his part with respect to her as unmitigated presumption.

So far she had pursued her cogitations without regard to the young girl herself--to this brilliant young beauty, upon whom, endowed with youth, beauty, rank, the prestige of one of the most fashionable and popular women in London (for Henrietta Prendergast had her relations with the great world, though she was not of it), life was just opening in the fulness of joy and splendour. But when she turned her attention in that direction, she found nothing to discourage her, nothing to fear. What could be more wildly improbable than that Chudleigh Wilmot should have made any impression on Miss Kilsyth of a nature to lead to the realisation of any hope which might suggest itself to the new-made widower? Henrietta Prendergast was not a woman of much delicacy of mind or refinement of sentiment--if she had been, such self-communing as that of this evening would have been impossible within three weeks of her friend's death--but she was not so coarse, or indeed so ignorant of the nature and training of women like Madeleine Kilsyth, as to conceive the possibility of the girl's having fallen in love with a married man, even had that married man been of a far more captivating type than that presented by Chudleigh Wilmot. Madeleine's stepmother had not been restrained from such a suspicion by any superfluous delicacy; but Lady Muriel had an incentive to clear-sightedness which was wanting in Henrietta's case; and it must be said in justification of the acute woman of the world, that she was satisfied of the girl's perfect unconsciousness of the real nature of the sentiment which her jealous quick-sightedness had detected almost in the first hours of its existence.

The disqualification of his marriage removed, Henrietta still thought there could be nothing to dread. The reminiscences attached to the doctor who had attended her through a long illness, was said to have saved her life, and had made himself very agreeable to his patient, were no doubt frankly kind and grateful; but they were very unlikely to be sentimental, and the opportunities which might come in his way for rendering the tie already established stronger would be probably limited. "If anything were to be feared in that quarter," thought Henrietta, "and one could only manage to get a hint conveyed to Lady Muriel, the thing would be done at once."

Henrietta pronounced this opinion in her own mind with perfect confidence. And she was right. If Lady Muriel Kilsyth had had no more interest in Wilmot than that which during his sojourn at Kilsyth he might have inspired in the least important inmate of the house, she would have acted precisely as she had done. This was her strong tower of defence, her excuse, her justification. If Wilmot's admiration of her stepdaughter had not had in it the least element of offence to herself, she would at once have opposed it, have endeavoured to prevent its growth and manifestation, just as assiduously as she had done. Herein was her safety. So, though Henrietta Prendergast was entirely unaware of anything that had taken place; though she had never spoken to Lady Muriel in her life, she had, as it happened, speculated upon her quite correctly. So her self-conference came to a close, without any misgiving, discouragement, or hesitation.

"Mabel knew some people who knew the Kilsyths," Henrietta Prendergast had said to Wilmot in their first interview; but she had not mentioned that the people who knew the Kilsyths were acquaintances of hers, and that she had been present on the occasion when Mabel had acquired all the information which she had taken to heart so keenly. Such was, however, the case; and Henrietta made up her mind, when she had reasoned herself out of the first feeling of discouragement which her interview with Wilmot had caused, though not out of the conviction that there was something in his mind which she had not been able to come at, that she would call on Mrs. and Miss Charlwood without delay. She might not learn anything about Wilmot by so doing, but she could easily introduce the Kilsyths into the conversation; and it could not fail to be useful to her to gain a clear insight, into what sort of people they were, and especially to know whether Miss Kilsyth had any declared or supposed admirers as yet. So she went to bed that night with her mind tolerably easy on the whole, though her last waking thought was of the strange something in Chudleigh Wilmot's manner which she had not been able to penetrate.

It chanced, however, that Mrs. Prendergast did not fulfil her intention so soon as she had purposed. On awaking the following morning, she found that she had taken cold, a rather severe cold. She was habitually careful of her health, and as the business on which she had intended to go out was not pressing, she thought it wiser to remain at home. The next day she was no better; the day after a little worse. On the fourth day she thought she should be justified in asking Wilmot to give her a call. On the very rare occasions when she had required medical attendance she had had recourse to her friend's husband; and it occurred to her that the present opportunity was favourable for impressing him with a sense that she desired to maintain the former relation unbroken. To increase and intensify it would be her business later.

So Mrs. Prendergast sent for Dr. Wilmot; but in answer to the summons Dr. Whittaker presented himself.

They had not met since they had stood together by Mabel's deathbed, and the recollection softened Henrietta, though she felt at once surprised and angry at the substitution.

"I am doing Wilmot's work, except in the very particular cases," Dr. Whittaker explained.

"Indeed! Then Dr. Wilmot knew, in some strange way, that mine was not a particular case!" Henrietta answered, with an exhibition of pique as unusual in her as it was unflattering to Dr. Whittaker.

"My dear Mrs. Prendergast," expostulated the doctor mildly, "your note--I saw it in the regular way of business--said 'merely a cold;' and Wilmot and I both know you always say what you mean--no more and no less."

Henrietta smiled rather grimly as she replied, "I must say, you are adroit in turning a slight into a compliment. And now we will talk about my cold."

They did talk about her cold, and Dr. Whittaker duly prescribed for it, emphatically forbidding exposure to the weather. Just as he rose to take leave, Henrietta asked him what sort of spirits Wilmot appeared to be in.

"Very low indeed," said Dr. Whittaker; "but I think the change of air will do him good."

The change was likely to be sufficiently profitable to Dr. Whittaker to make it only natural that he should regard it with warm approbation, without reflecting very severely upon his sincerity either; he was but human, and not particularly prosperous.

"What change?" asked Henrietta in a tone which had not all the indifference which she had desired to lend it. (Dr. Whittaker had seen and guessed enough to make it just that he should not look for much warmth from Mabel's friend in speaking of Mabel's husband; and Mrs. Prendergast never overlooked the relative positions in any situation.)

"What! don't you know, then? He is going abroad--going to Paris, and then to Berlin, partly to recruit, and partly to inquire into some new theory about fever they've got there. I don't generally think much of their theories myself, especially in Berlin."

But Dr. Whittaker's opinions had no interest for Henrietta. His news occupied her. She did not altogether like this move. She did not believe in either of the reasons assigned; she felt certain there was something behind them both, and that that something had been in Wilmot's mind when she last saw him. What was it? Was he flying from a memory or a presence? If the former, then something more than she was in possession of had come to his knowledge concerning Mabel; for much as he had been shocked, and intensely as he had felt all she had told him, Henrietta knew Wilmot too well to believe for a moment that the present resolution was to be traced to that source. If the latter, the presence must be that of Miss Kilsyth; and there must be dangers in her way, complications in this matter, she did not understand, some grave error in her calculation. True, he might be flying away in despair; but that could hardly be. In so short an interval of time it was impossible he could have dared or even tried his fate. It was the unexpectedness of this occurrence that gave it so much power to trouble Henrietta. She had made a careful calculation; but this was outside it, and it puzzled her. She took leave of Dr. Whittaker, while these and many more equally distracting thoughts passed through her mind, in a sufficiently absent manner, and listened to his expression of a sanguine hope of finding her much better on the morrow through a sedulous observance of his advice, with as much indifference as though he had been talking about somebody else's cold. When he had left her, she sat still for a while; then put on her warmest attire, sent for a cab, and, utterly regardless of Dr. Whittaker's prohibition, drove straight to Mrs. Charlton's house in South-street, Park-lane.

Mrs. Prendergast's cab drew up behind a carriage which had just stopped before Mrs. Charlton's door, at that moment opened in reply to the defiant summons of the footman, who was none other than one of the ambrosial Mercuries in attendance on Lady Muriel Kilsyth. An elderly lady, rather oddly dressed, descended from the equipage, bestowed a familiar nod upon its remaining occupant from the steps, and walked into the house. Mrs. Prendergast was then admitted; and as the carriage which made way for her was displaced, she recognised in the face of the lady who sat in it Lady Muriel Kilsyth.

"That is very odd," she thought; "I wonder who she has set down here, and why she has not come in herself."

Immediately afterwards she was exchanging the customary fadeurs with Mrs. Charlton, and had been presented by that lady to Mrs. M'Diarmid.

Wonderfully voluble was Mrs. M'Diarmid, to be sure, and communicative to a degree which, if her audience did not happen to be vehemently interested in the matter of her discourse, must have been occasionally a little overpowering and wearisome. Mrs. M'Diarmid, being at present staying with the Kilsyths, could not talk of anything but the Kilsyths; a state of things rather distressing to Mrs. Charlton, who was an eminently well-bred person, and perfectly aware that Mrs. Prendergast was not acquainted with the people under discussion. But to arrest Mrs. M'Diarmid in the full tide of her discourse was a feat which a few adventurous spirits had indeed attempted, but in which no one had ever succeeded. Mrs. Charlton's was not an adventurous spirit; she merely suffered, and was not strong, but derived sensible consolation after a while from observing that Mrs. Prendergast either had the tact and the manners to assume an aspect of perfect contentment, or really did feel an interest in the affairs of strangers, which to her, Mrs. Charlton, was inexplicable. She had much regard for Henrietta, and considerable respect for her intellect; so she preferred the former hypothesis, and adopted it.

"And she told me to tell you how sorry she was that she could not possibly come in to-day; but she had to fetch Kilsyth at his club, and then go home and dress for a ride with him, and send the carriage for me. I must run away the moment it comes, and get back to Maddy." This, after Mrs. M'Diarmid had run on uninterruptedly for about a quarter of an hour, with details of every kind concerning the house and the servants, the health, spirits, employments and engagements of the family.

"Miss Kilsyth is still delicate, I think you said?" Mrs. Chariton at length contrived to say.

"Yes, indeed, very delicate. My dear, the child mopes--she really mopes; and I can't bear to see young people moping, though it seems the fashion nowadays for all the young people to think themselves not only wiser but sadder than their elders. Just to see Ronald beside his father, my dear! The difference! And to think he'll be Kilsyth of Kilsyth some day; and what will the poor people do then? He'll make them go to school, and have 'em drilled, I'm sure he will; not that he is not a fine young man, my dear, and a good one--must all admit that; but he is not like his father, and never will be--never. And, for my part, I don't wonder Maddy's afraid of him, for I am sure I am."

"But I thought Miss Kilsyth and her brother were so particularly attached to each other," said Mrs. Charlton, yielding at length to the temptation to gossip.

"So they are, so they are.--I'm sure, Mrs. Prendergast," said Mrs. M'Diarmid, turning to Henrietta, "a better brother than Ronald Kilsyth never lived; but then he is dictatorial, I must say that; and he never will believe or remember that Madeleine is not a child now, and that it is absurd and useless to treat a woman just as one would treat a child. He makes such a fuss about everyone Maddy sees, and everywhere she goes to, and is positively disagreeable about anyone she seems to fancy."

"Well," said Mrs. Charlton, "but I'm not sure that he is wrong to be particular about his sister's fancies. The fancies of a young lady of Miss Kilsyth's beauty and pretensions are not trifling matters. Has she any very strongly pronounced?"

"Bless your heart, no!" exclaimed Mrs. M'Diarmid, her vulgarity evoked by her earnestness. "The girl is fonder of himself and her father than of anyone in the world, and I really don't think she ever had a thought hid from them. But Ronald will interfere so; he bothered about the silliness of young ladies' correspondence until he worried her into giving up writing to Bessy Ravenshaw; and he lectured for ten minutes because she wrote to poor Dr. Wilmot on her own account."

"How very absurd!" said Mrs. Charlton; "he had better take care he does not worry her by excess of brotherly love and authority into finding her home so unbearable, that she may make a wretched hurried marriage in order to get away from it. Such things have been;" and Mrs. Charlton sighed, as if she spoke from some close experience of "such things."

"Very true, very true--I am sure I often wish the poor dear child was well married. I must say for Lady Muriel, I think she is an admirable stepmother. It is such a difficult position, Mrs. Prendergast, so invidious; still, you know, it never can be exactly the same thing; and then, you know, there are the little girls to grow up, and there will be the natural jealousy--about Maddy's fortune, you know; and altogether I do think it would be very nice."

"I should think a good many others think it would be very nice also," said Mrs. Charlton.

"Well, I don't know--it is hard to say--young men are so different nowadays from what they were in my time; they seem to be afraid of marrying. I really don't think Maddy has ever had an offer."

"Depend on it that story will soon be changed. She is, to my knowledge, immensely admired. Her illness made quite a sensation, and the romantic story of the famous Dr. Wilmot's devotion to the patient."

"I think you should say to the case," struck in Henrietta. "I know Dr. Wilmot very well, and I can fancy any amount of devotion to the fever and its cure; but Wilmot devoted to a patient I cannot understand."

Something in her voice and manner conveyed an unpleasant impression to both her hearers. Mrs. Charlton looked calmly surprised; Mrs. M'Diarmid looked distressed and rather angry. She wished she had been more cautious in telling of the Kilsyths before this lady, who did not know them, but who did know Dr. Wilmot. She felt that Mrs. Prendergast had put a meaning into what Mrs. Charlton had said, in which there was something at least indirectly slighting and derogatory to Madeleine; and the feeling made her hot and angry. Mrs. Charlton's suavity extricated them from the difficulty, which all felt, and one intended.

"I. didn't quite understand the distinction," she said; "of course I understand it as you put it, but mine was merely a façon de parler. Dr. Wilmot's devotion to his profession has long been known, and he has succeeded as such devotion deserves."

"Yes, indeed, Mrs. Charlton," said Henrietta heartily, and slipping with infinite ease into the peculiar manner which implies such intimacy with the person complimented as to make the praise almost a personal favour. "He has paid dearly indeed for his devotion, in the very instance you mention, Mrs. M'Diarmid."

"How so?" said Mrs. M'Diarmid, off her guard, and rather huffily.

"Ah, poor fellow! I can hardly bear to talk of it; but as I was his poor wife's closest friend, and with her when she died, I think it is only fair and just to him to tell the truth. Of course he had no notion of his wife's danger--no one could have had; but he never can or will forgive himself for his absence from her. You will not wonder that he should feel it dreadfully, and that his self-reproach is intolerable. 'I suppose,' he said, in one of his worst fits of grief, 'people will think I stayed at Kilsyth because Kilsyth is a great man; but you, Henrietta, you know me better. If she had been his dairymaid, instead of his daughter, it would have been all one to me.' And that was perfectly true; he knows no distinction in the pursuit of his duties. It was a terrible coincidence; but nothing can persuade him to regard it merely as a coincidence. It is fortunate your young friend is restored to health, Mrs. M'Diarmid."

"Yes," said that lady, now pale, and looking the image of disconcerted distress.

"Fortunate for her, of course; but also fortunate for him. You will exctuse my telling you, of course; nothing in the whole matter reflects in the least on the Kilsyth family--and I cannot forbear from saying what must exalt him still more in your esteem, but you cannot conceive how painful to him any reference to that fatal time is. He has wonderful self-control and firmness; but they were severely taxed, I assure you, when he had to make a call on Lady Muriel and Miss Kilsyth. I daresay he didn't show it."

"Not in the least," said Mrs. M'Diarmid.

"O no; he is essentially a strong man. But he suffered. You would know how much, if you had seen him when he had finally made up his mind to go abroad, and get out of the remembrance of it all, so far as he could. Poor Miss Kilsyth! one pities a young girl to have been even the perfectly innocent cause of such a calamity to any man, and especially to one who rendered her such a service. However, people who talk about it now will have forgotten it all long before he comes back."

At this juncture Miss Charlton entered the room and warmly greeted Henrietta. Mrs. Prendergast was an authority in the art of illuminating, to which Miss Charlton devoted her harmless life.

Presently Lady Muriel's carriage came for Mrs. M'Diarmid, and that good woman went away, and might have been heard to say many times during the silent drive:

"My poor Maddy! my poor dear child!"

Chudleigh Wilmot had entertained, it has been seen, vague fears that Mrs. Prendergast might talk about him; but of all possible shapes they had never taken this one.

[CHAPTER III.]

A Coup Manqué.

It has been said that Mrs. M'Diarmid took an earnest motherly interest in Madeleine Kilsyth; but the bare statement is by no means sufficient to explain the real feelings entertained towards the somewhat forlorn motherless girl by the brisk energetic vulgar little woman of the world, who was her connection by marriage. Such affections spring up in many female breasts which, to all outward appearance, are most unpromising soil; they need no cultivation, no looking after, no watering with the tears of sympathy or gratitude, no raking or hoeing or binding up. They are ruthlessly lopped off in their tenderest shoots; but they grow again, and twine away round the "object" as parasitically as ever. Mrs. M'Diarmid's regard for Madeleine was quite of the parasitical type, in its best sense, be it always understood. She loved the young girl with all her heart and soul, and would as soon have dreamed of inspiring as of "carneying" her, as she expressed it. Her love for Madeleine was pure and simple and unaffected, deep-seated, and capable of producing great results; but it was of the "poor-dear" school, after all.

Nothing, for instance, could persuade Mrs. M'Diarmid that Madeleine was not very much to be pitied in every act and circumstance of her life. The fact of having a stepmother was in itself a burden sufficient to break the spirit of any ordinarily-constituted young woman, according to Mrs. Mac's idea. Not but that Mrs. Mac and Lady Muriel "got on very well together," according to the former lady's phraseology; not but that Lady M. (whom she was usually accustomed to speak of, when extra emphasis was required, as Lady Hem) did her duty by Madeleine perfectly and thoroughly; but still, as Mrs. Mac would confess, "she was not one of them; she was of a different family; and what could you expect out of your own blood and bone?" "One of them" meant of the Kilsyth family, of which Mrs. M'Diarmid to a certain portion of her acquaintance, described herself as a component part. In the late summer and the early autumn, when the Kilsyths and all their friends had left town, dear old Mrs. M'Diarmid would revel in the light with which, though her suns of fashion had set, her horizon was still illumined. When the grandees of Belgravia and Tyburnia have sped northward in the long preëngaged seat of the limited mail; when they are coasting round the ever-verdant Island, or lounging in all the glory of pseudo-naval get-up on the pier at Ryde, there is yet corn in Egypt, balm in Gilead, and fine weather in the suburbs of London. Many of Mrs. M'Diarmid's acquaintance, formed in the earlier and ante-married portion of her life, were found in London during those months. Some had been away to Ramsgate and Margate with their children in June; others, unable to "get away from business," had compromised the matter with their wives by taking a cottage at Richmond or Staines, and running backwards and forwards from town for a month, and staying at home on the Saturday. To these worthy people Mrs. M'Diarmid was the connecting link between them and that fashionable world, of whose doings they read so religiously every Saturday in the fashionable journal. For her news, her talk, her appearance, they loved this old lady, and paid her the greatest court. From some of them she received brevet rank, and was spoken of as the Honourable Mrs. M'Diarmid; from all she received kindness and--what she never gave herself--toadyism. Pleasant dinners at the furnished cottages at Richmond and Staines, Star-an-Garter reflections, picnics on the river, what was even more delicious, a croquet-party on the lawn, tea, and an early supper, with some singing afterwards--all these delights were provided by her acquaintances for Mrs. M'Diarmid, who had nothing to do but to sit still, and be taken about; to recall a few of the scenes of her past season's gaiety; to drop occasionally the names of a few of her grand acquaintance, and to have it thoroughly understood that she was "one of them."

Use is second nature; and by dint of perpetually repeating that she was "one of them," Mrs. M'Diarmid had almost begun to forget the lodging-house and its associations, and to believe that she was a blood-relation of the old house of Kilsyth. It did the old lady no harm, this innocent self-deception; it did not render her insolent, arrogant, or stuck-up; it did not for an instant tend to render her forgetful of her position in the household, and it did perhaps increase the fond maternal affection which she entertained for Madeleine. How could Lady Muriel feel for that girl like one of her own blood? Besides, had she not now children of her own, about whose future she was naturally anxious, and whose future might clash with that of her stepdaughter? Whose future? Ay, it was about Madeleine's future that she was so anxious; and just about this stage in our history Mrs. M'Diarmid, revolving all these things in her mind, set herself seriously to consider what Madeleine's future should be.

To a woman of Mrs. M'Diarmid's stamp the future of a young girl, it is almost needless to say, meant her marriage. Notwithstanding all the shams which, to use Mr. Carlyle's phrases, have been exploded, all the Babeldoms which have been talked out, all the mockeries, delusions, and snares which have been exposed, it yet remains that marriage is the be-all and end-all of the British maiden's existence. That accomplished, life shuts up; or is of no account, with the orange-flowers and the tinkling bells, the ring, the oath, and the blessing; all that childhood has played at, and maidenhood has dreamed of, is at an end. The husband is secured, and so long as he is in the requisite position and possesses the requisite means--vogue la galère in its most respectable translation, be it understood--all that is requisite on friends' part has been done. We laugh when we hear that a charwoman offers to produce her "marriage-lines" in proof of her respectability; but we slur over the fact that in our own social status we are content to aim at the dignity achieved by the charwoman's certificate, and not to look beyond into the future thereby opened.

Madeleine's marriage? Yes; Mrs. M'Diarmid had turned that subject over in her mind a hundred thousand times; had chewed the cud of it until all taste therein had been exhausted; had had all sorts of preposterous visions connected therewith, none of which had the smallest waking foundation. Madeleine's marriage? It was by her own marriage that Mrs. M'Diarmid had made her one grand coup in life, and consequently she attached the greatest value to it. She was always picturing to herself Madeleine married to each or one of the different visitors in Brook-street; seeing her walking up the aisle with one, standing at the altar-rails with another, muttering "I will" to a third, and shyly looking up after signing the register with a fourth. The old lady had the good sense to keep these mental pictures in her own mental portfolio, but still she was perpetually drawing them forth for her own mental delectation. None of the young men who were in the habit of dropping in in Brook-street for a cup of afternoon tea and a social chat had any notion of the wondrous scenes passing through the brain of the quiet elderly lady, whom they all liked and all laughed at. None of them knew that in Mrs. Mac's mind's eye, as they sat there placidly sipping their tea and talking their nonsense, they were transfigured; that their ordinary raiment was changed into the blue coat and yellow waistcoat dear to this valentine artist; that from their coat-collar grew the attenuated spire of a village church, and that sounds of chiming bells drowned their voices. Madeleine as a countess presented at a drawing-room "on her marriage;" Madeleine receiving a brilliant circle as the wife of a brilliant member of the House of Commons; Madeleine doing the honours of the British embassy at the best and most distinguished legation which happened at the time to be vacant. All these pictures had presented themselves to Mrs. M'Diarmid, and been filled up by her mentally in outline and detail. Other supplementary pictures were there in the same gallery. Madeleine presenting new colours to the gallant 140th as the wife of their colonel; Madeleine landing from the Amphitrite, amidst the cheers of her crew, as the wife of their admiral; Madeleine graciously receiving the million pounds' worth of pearls and diamonds which the native Indian princes offered to the wife of their governor-general. All these different shiftings of the glasses of the magic lantern appeared to Mrs. M'Diarmid as she noticed the attention paid to Madeleine by the different visitors in Brook-street.

But these, after all, were mere daydreams, and it was time Mrs. M'Diarmid thought that some real and satisfactory match should be arranged for her dear child. Since the return of the family from Scotland, after Madeleine's illness, Mrs. M'Diarmid either had noticed, or fancied she had noticed, that Lady Muriel was less interested in her stepdaughter than ever, more inclined to let her have her own way, less particular as to who sought her society. Under these circumstances, not merely did Mrs. M'Diarmid's dragon watchfulness increase tenfold, but the necessity of speedily taking her darling into a different atmosphere, and surrounding her with other cares and hopes in life, made itself doubly apparent. For hours and hours the old lady sat in her own little room, cosy little room,--neat, tidy, clean, and wholesome-looking as the old lady herself,--revolving different matrimonial schemes in her mind, guessing at incomes, weighing dispositions, thinking over the traits and characteristics, the health and position of every marriageable man of her acquaintance. And all to no purpose; for the old lady, though a tolerably shrewd and worldly-wise old lady, was a good woman: in the early days of the lodging-house she had had a spirit of religion properly instilled into her; and this, aided by her genuine and unselfish love for Madeleine, would have prevented her from wishing to see the girl married to any one, no matter what were his wealth, position, and general eligibility, unless there was the prospect of her darling's life being a happy one with him. "I don't see my way clear, my dear," she would say to Mrs. Tonkley, the most intimate of her early life acquaintances, and the only one whom the old lady admitted into her confidence (Mrs. Tonkley had been Sarah Simmons, daughter of Simmons's private hotel, and had married Tonkley, London representative of Blades and Buckhorn of Sheffield),--"I don't see my way clear in this business, my dear, and that's the truth. Powers forbid my Madeleine should marry an old man, though among our people it's considered to be about the best thing that could happen to a girl, provided he's old enough, and rich into the bargain. Why, there are old fellows, tottering old wretches, that crawl about with mineral teeth in their mouths and other people's hair on their heads, and they'd only have to say, 'Will you?' to some of the prettiest and the best-born girls in England, and they'd get the answer 'Yes' directly minute! No, no; I've seen too much of that. Not to name names, there's one old fellow, a lord and a general, all stars and garters and crosses and ribbons, and two seasons ago he carried off a lovely girl. I won't put a name to her, my dear, but you've seen her photographic likeness in the portrait-shops; and what is it now? Divorced? Lord, no, my dear; that sort of thing's never done amongst US, nor even separation, so far as the world knows. O no; they live very happily together, to all outward show, and she has her opera-box, and jewels as much as she can wear; but, Lor' bless you, I hear what the young fellows say who come to our house about the way she goes on, and the men who are always about her, and who was meant by the stars and blanks in last week's Dustman. No, no; no old wretch for Madeleine; nor any of your fast boys either, with their drags and their yachts, and their hunters and their Market Harboroughs, and their Queen's Benches, I tell'em; for that's what it'll come to. You can't build a house of paper, specially of stamped paper, to last very long; and though you touch it up every three months or so, at about the end of a year down it goes with a run, and you and your wife and the lot of you go with it! That would be a pleasant ending for my child, to have to live at Bolong on what her husband got by winning at cards from the foreigners; and that's not likely to be much, I should think. No; that would never do. I declare to you, my dear Sarah, when I think about that dear girl's future, I am that driven as to be at my wits' end."

There was another reason for the old lady's feeling "driven" when thinking over her dear girl's future which she never imparted to her dear Sarah, nor indeed to anyone else, but which she crooned over constantly, and relished less and less after each spell of consideration, and that was the evident intention of Lady Muriel with regard to Ramsay Caird. Mrs. M'Diarmid, though a woman of strong feelings, rarely, if ever, took antipathies; but certainly her strong aversion to Ramsay Caird could be called by no other name. She hated him cordially, and took very little pains to conceal her dislike, though, if she had been called upon, she would have found it difficult to define the reasons for her prejudice. It was probably the obvious purpose for which he had been introduced into the family which the old lady immediately divined and as immediately execrated, that made her his enemy; but she could not put forward this reason, and she had no other to offer. She used to say to herself that he was a "down-looking fellow," which was metaphorical, inasmuch as Ramsay Caird had rather a frank and free expression, though, to one more versed in physiognomy than Mrs. M'Diarmid, there certainly was a shifty expression in his eyes. She hated to see him paying attention to Madeleine, bending over her, hovering near her--in her self-communion the old lady declared that it gave her "the creeps"--and it was with great difficulty that she refrained when present from actually shuddering. It was lucky that she did so refrain; for Lady Muriel, who brooked no interference with her plans, would have ruthlessly given Mrs. Mac her congé, and closed the doors of Brook-street against her for ever.

To find someone so eligible that Kilsyth would take a fancy to him--a fancy which Lady Muriel could not, in common honesty, combat--and thus to get rid of Ramsay Caird and his pretensions to Madeleine's hand,--this was Mrs. M'Diarmid's great object in life. But she had pottered hopelessly about it; and it is probable that she would never have succeeded in getting the smallest clue to what, if properly carried through, might really have led to the accomplishment of her hopes, had it not been for her own kindness of heart, which led her to spend many of her leisure half-hours in the nursery with Lady Muriel's little girls. Sitting one day with these little ladies, but in truth not attending much to their prattle, being occupied in her favourite daydream, Mrs. M'Diarmid was startled by hearing an observation which at once interested her, and caused her to attend to the little ladies' conversation.

"When you grow up, Maud, will you be like Maddy?" asked little Ethel.

"I don't know," replied her sister. "I think I shall be quite as pretty as Maddy; and I'm sure I sha'n't be half so dull."

"You don't know that! People are only dull because they can't help it. They're not dull on purpose; only because they can't help it."

"Well, then, I shall help it," said Maud in an imperious way. "Besides, it's not always that Maddy's dull; she's only dull since we've been back in London; she wasn't dull at Kilsyth."

"Ah, no one was dull at Kilsyth," said little Ethel with a sigh.

"O, we all know what you mean by that, Ethel," said Maud. "You silly sentimental child, you were happy at Kilsyth because you had someone with you."

"Well, it's no use talking to you, Maud; because you're a dreadful flirt, and care for no one in particular, and like to have a heap of men always round you. But wasn't Madeleine happy at Kilsyth because she had someone with her?"

"Why, you don't mean that Lord Roderick?"

"Lord Roderick, indeed! I should think not," said little Ethel, flushing scarlet. "Madeleine's 'someone' was much older and graver and wiser and sterner, and nothing like so good-looking."

"Ethel dear, you talk like a child!" said Maud, who, by virtue of her twelvemonth's seniority, gave herself quite maternal airs towards her sister. "Of course I see you're alluding to Dr. Wilmot; but you can't imagine that Maddy cared for him in any way but that of a--a friend who was grateful to him--for--"

"O yes! 'Your grateful patient,' we know! Maddy did not know how to end her note to him the other morning, and I kept suggesting all kinds of things: 'yours lovingly,' and 'yours eternally,' and 'your own devoted;' and made Madge blush awfully; and at last she put that. 'Grateful patient'! grateful rubbish! You hadn't half such opportunities as I had of seeing them together at Kilsyth, Maud."

"I'm not half so romantic and sentimental, Ethel; and I can see a doctor talking to a girl about her illness without fancying he's madly in love with her. And now I am going to my music." And Maud pranced out of the room.

And then Mrs. M'Diarmid who had greedily swallowed every word of this conversation between the children, laid down the book over which she had been nodding; and going up to little Ethel, gave herself over to the task of learning from the child her impressions of the state of Madeleine's feelings towards Dr. Wilmot, and of gleaning as much as she could of all that passed between them at Kilsyth; the result being that little Ethel, who was, as her sister had said, sentimentally and romantically inclined, led her old friend to believe, first, that Madeleine was deeply attached to the doctor, and, secondly, that the doctor was inclined to respond promptly to the young lady's sentiments.

That night Mrs. M'Diarmid remained at home, for the purpose of "putting on her considering cap," as she phrased it, and steadily looking at the question of Madeleine's future in the new light now surrounding it. Like all other old ladies, she had a tendresse for the medical profession; and though she had never met Dr. Wilmot, she had often heard of him, and had taken great interest in his rise and progress. And this was the man who was to fulfil her expectations, and to prevent Madeleine's being sacrificed to a sordid or disagreeable match? It really seemed like it. Dr. Wilmot was in the prime of life, was highly thought of and esteemed by all who knew him, was essentially a man of mark in the world, and must be in the enjoyment of a very lucrative practice. Practice? ay, that was rather awkward! Kilsyth would not care much about having a son-in-law who was in practice, and at the beck and call of every hypochondriacal old woman; and Lady Muriel would, Mrs. Mac was certain, refuse to entertain such a notion. And yet Dr. Wilmot was in every other respect so eligible; it was a thousand pities! Dr. Wilmot! Yes, there it was; that "Doctor" would stick to him through life; and he, from all she had heard of him, was just the man to be proud of the title, and refuse to be addressed by any other. Unless, indeed, they could get him knighted; that would be something indeed. Sir--Sir--whatever his name was--Wilmot would sound very well; and nobody need ever know that he had felt pulses and written prescriptions. That is, of course, if he retired from his professsion, as he would do on his marriage into "our" family; because if the unpleasantness with Lady Muriel and--but then how were they to live? Dr. Wilmot could not possibly have saved enough money to retire upon; and though Madeleine had her own little fortune, neither Kilsyth nor Lady Muriel would feel inclined to accept for a son-in-law a penniless man, unless he had some old alliance with the family. The old lady was very much puzzled by all these thoughts. She sat for hour after hour revolving plans and projects in her head, without arriving at any definite result. The want of adequate fortune without continuing in practice--that was what worried Mrs. M'Diarmid. She had already perfectly settled in her own mind that Madeleine and Wilmot adored each other. She had pictured them both at the altar, and settled upon the new dress to which she should treat herself on the occasion of their marriage--a nice brown moire; none of your cheap rubbish--a splendid silk, stiff as a board, that would stand upright by itself, as one might say; and she knew just the pew which she would be shown into. All the arrangements were completed in Mrs. Mac's mind--all, with the exception of the income for the happy pair.

How could that be managed? What could be done? Were there not appointments, government things, where people were very well paid, and which were always to be had, if asked for by people of influence? Straightway the indefatigable old lady began questioning everybody able to give her information about consulships, secretaryships, and commissionerships; and received an amount of news that quite bewildered her. Two or three men in the Whitehall offices, who were in the habit of coming to Brook-street, from whom she had endeavoured to glean information, amused themselves by telling her the wildest nonsense of the necessary qualifications for such appointments; so that the old lady was in despair, and almost at her wits' end, when she suddenly bethought her of Mr. Foljambe. The very man! Wealthy and childless, with the highest opinion of Wilmot, and with a great regard for Madeleine. Mrs. Mac remembered hearing it said in Brook-street, long before Madeleine's illness, that Mr. Foljambe would in all probability leave his fortune to Dr. Wilmot. And his fortune was a very large one--quite enough to keep up the dignity of a knight upon; though indeed, as there would be no lack of money, Mrs. Mac did not see why a baronetcy should not be substituted. Lady Wilmot, and green-and-gold liveries, and hair-powder, of course; that would be the very thing, if that dear old man would only settle it, and not care to live too long after he had settled it--his attacks of gout were dreadful now, she had heard Lady Muriel say--all would be well. Would it be possible to ascertain whether there was any real foundation for the gossip whether Mr. Foljambe had really made Wilmot his heir? Would it not be possible to give him such hints respecting his power of benefiting the future of two persons in whom he had the greatest interest as to settle him finally in his amiable determination? Mrs. M'Diarmid was a woman of impulse, and believed much in the expediency of "clinching the nail," and "striking the iron while it was hot," as she expressed it. "In such matters as these," she was accustomed to say, "nothing is ever done by third parties, or by writing; if you want a thing done, go and see about it at once, and go and see about it yourself, Lord love you!" Acting on which wise maxims, Mrs. M'Diarmid determined to call in person upon Mr. Foljambe, and then and there "have it out with him."

At ten o'clock on the following morning, Mr. Foljambe, seated at breakfast, was disturbed by a sharp rap at his street-door. Mrs. M'Diarmid was right in saying that the old gentleman's gout had been extra troublesome lately, and his temper had deteriorated in proportion to the sharpness and the frequency of the attacks. He had had some very sharp twinges the previous evening, and was in anything but a good temper; and as the clanging knock resounded through the hall, and penetrated to the snug little room where the old gentleman, in a long shawl dressing-gown, such as were fashionable five-and-twenty years ago, but are now seldom seen out of farces, was dallying with his toast and glancing at the Times, he broke out into a very naughty exclamation. A thorough type of the 'old English gentleman of his class, Mr. Foljambe, as witness his well-bred hands and feet,--the former surrounded by long and beautifully white wristbands, one of the latter incased in the nattiest of morocco-leather slippers, though the other was in a large list shoe,--his high cross-barred muslin cravat, his carefully trimmed gray whiskers, and his polished head.

"Visitors' bell!" muttered the old gentleman to himself, after giving vent to the naughty exclamation. "What the deuce brings people calling here at this hour? Just ten!" with a glance at the clock. "'Pon my word, it's too bad; as though one were a doctor, or a dentist, and on view from now till five. Who can it be? Collector of some local charity, probably, or someone to ask if somebody else doesn't live here, and to be quite astonished and rather indignant when he finds he's come to the wrong house."

"Well, Sergeant," to the servant who had just entered, "what is it?"

"Lady, sir, to speak with you," said Sergeant, grim and inflexible. He objected to women anywhere in general, but at that house in particular. Like his master, he passed for a misogynist; but unlike his master, he was one.

"A lady! God bless my soul, what an extraordinary thing for a lady to come here to see me, and at this hour, Sargeant!"

The tone of Mr. Foljambe's voice invited response; but from Sargeant no response came. His master had uttered his sentiments, and there was nothing more to say.

"Why don't you answer, man?" said the old gentleman peevishly. "What sort of a lady is she? Young or old, tall or short? What do you think she has come about, Sargeant?"

"About middle 'ithe; but 'ave her veil down. Wouldn't give a message; but wanted to speak to you partickler, sir."

"Confounded fellow! no getting anything out of him!" mattered the old gentleman beneath his breath. Then aloud, "Where is she?"

"I put the lady in the droring-room, sir; but no fire, as the chimlies was swept this morning."

"I know that; I heard 'em, the scoundrels! No fire! the woman will be perished! Here, bring me down a coat, and take this dressing-gown, and just put these things aside, and poke the fire, and brighten up the place, will you?"

As soon as the old gentleman had put on his coat, and cast a hasty glance at himself in the glass, he hobbled to the drawing-room, and there found a lady seated, who, when she raised her veil, partly to his relief, partly to his disappointment, revealed the well-known features of Mrs. M'Diarmid.

"God bless my soul, my dear Mrs. Mac, who ever would have thought of seeing you here! I mean to say this is what one might call an unexpected pleasure. Come out of this confoundedly cold room, my dear madam. Now I know who is my visitor, I will, with your permission, waive all formality and receive you in my sanctum. This way, my dear madam. You must excuse my hobbling slowly; but my old enemy the gout has been trying me rather severely during the last few days."

Chattering on in this fashion, the old gentleman gallantly offered Mrs. M'Diarmid his arm, and led her from the cold and formally-arranged drawing-room, where everything was set and stiff, to his own cheerful little room, the perfection of bachelor comfort and elegance.

"Wheel a chair round for the lady, Sargeant, there, with its back to the light, and push that footstool nearer.--There, my dear madam, that's more comfortable. You have breakfasted? Sorry for it. I've some orange pekoe that is unrivalled in London, and there's a little ham that is perfectly de-licious. You won't? Then all I can say is, that yours is the loss. And now, my dear madam, you have not told me what has procured me the honour of this visit."

Had the old lady been viciously disposed, she might easily have pleaded that her host had not given her the chance; but as it was her policy to be most amiable, she merely smiled sweetly upon him, and said that her visit was actuated by important business.

Outside the bank-parlour, Mr. Foljambe detested business visits of all kinds; and even there he only tolerated them. Female visitors were his special aversion; and the leaden-buttoned porter in Lombard-street had special directions as to their admission. The junior partner, a buck of forty-five, who dressed according to the fashion of ten years since, and who was supposed still to cause a flutter in the virgin breasts of Balham, where his residence, "The Pineries," was situate, was generally told off to reply to the questions of such ladies as required consultation with Burkinyoung, Foljambe, and Co.

So that when Mrs. M'Diarmid mentioned business as the cause of her visit, the old gentleman was scarcely reassured, and begged for a farther explanation.

"Well, when I say business, Mr. Foljambe," said the old lady, again resuming her smile, "I scarcely know whether I'm doing justice to what lies in my own--my own bosom. Business, Mr. Foljambe, is a hard word, as I know well enough, connected with my early life--of which you know, no doubt, from our friends in Brook-street--connected with boot-cleaning, and errand-sending, and generally poor George's carryings-on in--no matter. And indeed there is but little business connected with what rules the court, the camp, the grove, and is like the red red rose, which is newly sprung in June, sir. You will perceive, Mr. Foljambe, that I am alluding to Love."

"To Love, madam!" exclaimed the old gentleman with a jerk, thinking at the same time, "Good God! can it be possible that I have ever said anything to this old vulgarian that can have induced her to imagine that I'm in love with her?"

"To Love, Mr. Foljambe; though to you and me, at our time of life, such ideas are generally non compos. Yet there are hearts that feel for another; and yours is one, I am certain sure."

"You must be a little clearer, madam, if you want me to follow you," said the old gentleman gruffly.

"Well, then, to have no perspicuity or odontification, and to do our duty in that state into which heaven has called us," pursued Mrs. Mac, with a lingering recollection of the Church Catechism, "am I not right in thinking that you take an interest in our Maddy?"

"In Miss Kilsyth?" said Foljambe. "The very greatest interest that a man at--at my time of life could possibly take in a girl of her age. But surely you don't think, Mrs. M'Diarmid, that--that I'm in love with her?"

"Powers above!" exclaimed Mrs. Mac, "do you think that I've lost my reason; or that if you were, it would be any good? Do you think that I for one would stand by and see my child sacrificed? No, of course I don't mean that! But what I do mean is, that you're fond of our Maddy, ain't you?"

"Yes," said the old gentleman with a burst; "yes, I am; there, will that content you? I think Madeleine Kilsyth a very charming girl!"

"And worthy of a very charming husband, Mr. Foljambe?"

"And worthy of a very charming husband. But where is he? I have been tolerably intimate with the family for years--not, of course, as intimate as you, my dear Mrs. M'Diarmid, but still I may say an intimate and trusted friend--and I have never seen anyone whom I could think in the least likely to be a prétendu--not in the least."

"N-no; not before they left for Scotland, certainly."

"No; and then in Scotland, you know, of course there would have been a chance--country house full of company, thrown together and all that kind of thing--best adjuncts for love-making, importunity and opportunity, as I daresay you know well enough, my dear madam; but then Maddy was taken ill, and that spoilt the whole chance."

"Spoilt the whole chance! Maddy's illness spoilt the whole chance, did it? Are you quite sure of that, Mr. Foljambe? Are you quite sure that that illness did not decide Maddy's future?"

"That illness!"

"That illness. 'Importunity and opportunity,' to quote your own words, Mr. Foljambe, the last if hot the worst--have it how you will."

"My dear Mrs. M'Diarmid, you are speaking in riddles; you are a perfect Sphinx, and I am, alas, no OEdipus. Will you tell me shortly what you mean?"

"Yes, Mr. Foljambe, I will tell you; I came to tell you, and to ask you, as an old friend of the family, what you thought. More than that, I came to ask you, as an old friend of one whom I think most interested, what you thought. You know well and intimately Dr. Wilmot?"

"Know Wilmot? Thoroughly and most intimately, and--why, good God, my dear madam, you don't think that Wilmot is in love with Miss Kilsyth?"

"I confess that I have thought--"

"Rubbish, my dear madam! Simple nonsense! You have been confounding the attention which a man wrapped up in his own profession, in the study of science, pays to a case, with attentions paid to an individual. Why, my dear madam, if--not to be offensive--if you had had Miss Kilsyth's illness, and Wilmot had attended you, he would have bestowed on you exactly the same interest."

"Perhaps while the case lasted, Mr. Foljambe, while his professional duty obliged him to do so; but not afterwards."

"Not afterwards? Does Dr. Wilmot still pay attention to Miss Kilsyth?"

"The last time I was in Brook-street I saw him there," said the old lady, bridling, "paying Miss Kilsyth great 'attention.'"

"Then it was a farewell visit, Mrs. M'Diarmid," replied Mr. Foljambe. "Dr. Wilmot quits town--and England--at once, for a lengthened sojourn on the Continent."

"Leaves town--and England?" said Mrs. Mac blankly.

"For several months. Devoted to his profession, as he always has been, without the smallest variation in his devotion, he goes to Berlin to study in the hospitals there. Does that look like the act of an ardent soupirant, Mrs. M'Diarmid?"

"Not unless he has reasons for feeling that it is better that he should so absent himself," said the old lady.

"Of that you will probably be the best judge," said Mr. Foljambe. "My knowledge of Chudleigh Wilmot is not such as to lead me to believe that he would 'set his fortunes on a die' without calculating the result."

In the "off season," when her fashionable friends were away from town, Mrs. M'Diarmid was in the habit of receiving some few acquaintances who constituted a whist-club, and met from week to week at each other's houses. Amongst this worthy sisterhood Mrs. Mac passed for a very shrewd and clever woman; a "deep" woman, who never "showed her hand." But on turning into Portland-place after her interview with Mr. Foljambe, the old lady felt that she had forfeited that title to admiration, and that too without the slightest adequate result.

[CHAPTER IV.]

Madeleine awakes.

It is probable that if Chudleigh Wilmot had remained in London, fulfilling his professional duties and leading his ordinary life, the declaration of love and the offer of his hand which in due course he would have made to Miss Kilsyth would have, for the first time, caused that young lady to avow the real state of her feelings towards him to herself. These feelings, beginning in gratitude, had passed into hero-worship, which is perhaps about as dangerous a phase both for adorer and adored as any in the whole category; showing as it does that the former must be considerably "far gone" before she could consent to exalt any man into an object of idolatry, and proving very perilous to the latter from the impossibility of his separating himself from the peculiar attributes which are supposed to call forth the devotion. And Wilmot was just such an idol as a girl like Madeleine ould place upon a pedestal and worship with constancy and fervour. The very fact that he possessed none of those qualifications so esteemed by and in the men by whom she was ordinarily surrounded was in her eyes a point in his favour. He did not hunt; he was an indifferent shot; he professed himself worse than a child at billiards, and his whist-playing was something atrocious. But then, for the best man across country, the straightest rider to hounds whom they knew, was Captain Severn, a slangy wretch only tolerated in society for his wife's sake. George Pitcairn was a splendid shot; but he had never heard of Tennyson, and would probably think that Browning was the name of a setter. Major Delapoche was the billiard champion at Kilsyth, where he was never seen out of the billiard-room, except at meal-times; and as for whist there could not be much in that when her father declared that there were not three men at Brookes's who could play so good a rubber as old Dr. M'Johns, the Presbyterian clergyman in the village. Ever since she had been emancipated from her governess, she had longed to meet some man of name and renown, who would take an interest in her, and whom she could reverence, admire, and look up to. She never pined for the heroes of the novels which she read, probably because she saw plenty of them in her ordinary life, and she was used to them and their ways. The big heavy dragoons of the Guy-Livingstone type--by his portrayal of whom Mr. Lawrence establishes for himself such a reputation amongst the young ladies of the middle classes, who pine after the beaux sabreurs and the "cool captains," principally because they have never met anyone in real life like them--are by no means such sources of raving among the girls accustomed to country-house and London-season society, who are familiar with something like the prototype of each character. Ronald's brother officers, Kilsyth's sporting friends, and Lady Muriel's connections, had made this kind of type too common for Madeleine, even if her temperament had not been very different, to elevate it into a hero; but she had never met anyone fulfilling herideas until Chudleigh Wilmot crossed her path. From the earliest period of her convalescence, from the time when slowly-returning strength gave her an interest again in life, until the time that Wilmot left London, she had indulged in this happy dream. She was something in that man's life, something to which his thoughts occasionally turned, as she hoped, as she believed, with pleasure. As to "being in love" as it is phrased, Madeleine believed that such a state as little applied to Wilmot as to herself, and of her own entire innocence in the existence of such a feeling she was confident. But there was established a curious relation between them which she could not explain, but which she thoroughly understood, and which made her very happy. Hour after hour she would sit thinking over this acquaintance, so singularly begun, so different from anything which she had ever previously experienced, and wondering within herself what a bright clever man like Dr. Wilmot could see to like in a silly girl like herself. If Wilmot had been differently constituted she could have understood it well enough; for though very free from vanity, Madeleine was of course conscious that she had a pretty face, and she could perfectly understand the admiration which she received from Ramsay Caird and the men of whom he was a type. But she imagined Wilmot to be far too staid and serious, far too much absorbed in his studies and his "cases," to notice anything so unimportant.

What could he see in her? She asked herself this question a thousand times without arriving at any satisfactory result. She thought that Wilmot, whom she had exalted into her hero, would naturally not bestow his thoughts on any but a heroine; and she knew that there was very little of the heroine in her. Indeed I, writing this veracious history, am often surprised at my own daring in having, in these highly-spiced times, ventured to submit so very tame a specimen of womanhood to public notice. Madeleine Kilsyth was neither tawny and leopard-like, nor hideous and quaintly-fascinating. She was merely an ordinary English girl, with about as much cleverness as girls have at her age, when they have had no occasion to use their brains; And she thought and argued in a girlish manner. She could not tell that the difference in each from their ordinary acquaintance pleased them equally. If Madeleine had been bright, clever, witty, fast, flirting, or blasée, she would never have seen her physician after her recovery. Wilmot was too thoroughly acquainted with women of all these varieties to find any pleasure in an additional specimen. It was the young girl's freshness and innocence, her frankness and trusting confidence, her bright looks and happy thoughts, that touched the heart of the worn and solitary man, and made him feel that there were in life joys which he had never experienced, and which were yet worth living for.

To admire and reverence him; to find the best and most valuable of resources in his friendship, the wisest and truest guidance in his intellect, the most exquisite of pleasures in his society; to triumph in his fame, and to try to merit his approval--such, as we have seen, had been Madeleine's scheme. Now this was all changed: he was gone; the greatest enjoyment of her life, his society, was taken from her. He was gone; he would be absent for a long time; she should not see him, would not hear his voice, for weeks--it might be for months: it took her a long time to realise this fact, and with its realisation flashed across her the knowledge that she loved Chudleigh Wilmot.

Loved him! The indefinite inexplicable sentiments so long brooded over were gone now, and she looked into her own heart and acknowledged its condition. So long as he remained in London, so long as there was a chance of seeing him, even though she knew that his departure had been decided on, and was almost inevitable, she yet remained unconscious of the state of her feelings. It was only when he was actually gone, when she knew that the long-dreaded step had been taken, that all chance of seeing him again for months was at an end, that the truth flashed upon her. She loved him!--loved him with the whole warmth, truth, and earnestness of her sweet simple nature; loved him as such a man should be loved--deeply, fervently, and confidingly. In the first recognition of the existence of this feeling, she was scarcely likely to inquire psychologically into it; but she felt that her love for Wilmot had many component parts. The admiration and reverence with which he had originally inspired her still remained; but with them was now blended a passion which had never before been evoked in her. She longed to see him again, longed to throw her arms round his neck and whisper to him how she loved him. How miserably blind she had been! What childish folly had been hers not sooner to have comprehended the meaning of her feelings towards this man! She loved him, and--a fearful thought flashed across her. Had it come too late, the discovery of this passion? Had she been dreaming when the golden chance of her life came by, and had she let it pass unheeded? And again, what were Wilmot's feelings with regard to her? Was he under such a delusion as had long oppressed her? He was a man, strong-minded, clear-brained, and of subtle intellect; he would know at once whether his liking for her arose from professional interest, from the friendly feeling which, situated as they had been together at Kilsyth, would naturally spring up between them, or whether it had a deeper foundation and was of a warmer character. His manner to her--save perhaps on that one morning in Brook-street, when Ronald interrupted them so brusquely--had never been marked by anything approaching to warmth; and yet--That morning in Brook-street! there had been a difference then; she had noticed it at the time, and, now regarded in the new light which had dawned upon her, the thought was strengthened and confirmed. She remembered the way in which he held her hand, and looked down at her with a soft earnest gaze out of those wonderful eyes; such a look as she had never had before or since. If ever love was conveyed by looks, if ever eyes spoke, it was surely then. Ah, did he feel for her as she now knew she felt for him, or was it merely warm friendship, fraternal affection, that actuated him? He had gone away; would he have done that if he had loved her? She had asked herself this question before the state of her own real feelings had dawned upon her, only then substituting the word "like" for love, and had decided that, if he had cared for her ever so little, he would have remained. But her recent discovery led her now to think very differently, and she hoped that this ardour in the cause of science, which prompted this professional visit to Berlin, and necessitated this lengthened absence, might be assumed, and that the real motive of Wilmot's departure might be his desire to avoid her, ignorant as he was of the state of her feelings towards him. Heaven grant that it might be so! for now that she knew herself, it would be easy to recall him. Some pretext could be found for bringing him back to England, back to her; and once together again they would never separate. As this thought passed through her mind her glance fell upon her hands, which were clasped before her, and upon a ring which had been given her by Ramsay Caird. By Ramsay Caird! The curtain dropped as swiftly as it had risen, and Madeleine shivered from head to foot.

It was a pretty ring, a broad hoop of gold set with three turquoises, and the word "AEI" engraved upon it. Madeleine remembered that Ramsay Caird had presented it to her on her last birthday, and while presenting it had said a few words of compliment and kindness with an earnestness and an empressement such as he had never before shown. He was not a brilliant man, but he had the society air and the society talk; and he imported just enough seriousness into the latter when he said something about wishing he had dared to have had the ring perfectly plain--just enough to convey his intended hint without making a fool of himself. Ramsay Caird! There, then, was her fate, her future! Knowing all that had been prearranged, she had been mad enough to dream for a few minutes of loving and being loved by Chudleigh Wilmot, when she knew, as well as if it had been expressly stated instead of merely implied, that Ramsay Caird was looked upon by her family and by most of their intimate friends, as her future husband.

Ramsay Caird her future husband! She herself had occasionally thought of him in that position, not with dissatisfaction. Knowing nothing better, she imagined that the liking which she undoubtedly entertained for the pleasant young man was love. She had not been brought up in a very gushing school. She had no intimate friend, no one with whom to exchange confidences; and her acquaintances seemed to make liking do very well for love, at least as far as their fiancés or their husbands were concerned. Madeleine, when she had thought about the matter, had quite convinced herself that she liked Ramsay very much indeed; and it was only after she discovered that she loved Wilmot that she was undeceived. She thought that she had liked him well enough to marry him, but now she hated herself for ever having entertained such an idea. She knew now that she had never felt love for Ramsay Caird; and she would not marry where she did not love.

A hundred diverse and distracting thoughts and influences were at work within the young girl's mind. Doubt as to whether she was really loved by Wilmot, doubt as to how far she was pledged to Ramsay Caird, comprehension of the urgent necessity at once to take some steps towards a solution of the difficulty, inability to decide on the fittest course to pursue, disinclination to appeal to her father through bashfulness and timidity, to Lady Muriel through distrust, to Ronald through absolute fear: all these feelings alternated in Madeleine's breast; and as she experienced each and all, there hung over her a sense of an impending dreadful something which she could not explain, could not understand, but which seemed to crush her to the earth.

The cause of the feeling which for some time past had induced her to shrink from Ronald, to be silent and depressed when he was present, and to be rather glad when he stayed away from Brook-street, was now perfectly understood by her. In her new appreciation of herself she saw plainly that the fact of her brother's having always been Ramsay Caird's friend and Chudleigh Wilmot's enemy would, insensibly to herself, have caused an estrangement between them in these later days. And why was Ronald so hostile to Wilmot, so bitter in his depreciation of him, so grudging in his praise even of Wilmot's professional qualifications? Was this hostility merely a result of Ronald's normal "oddness" and sternness, or did it spring from the fact that Ronald had observed his sister narrowly, and had discovered, before she herself knew of it, the state of her feelings towards Wilmot? Thinking over this, the remembrance of her brother's manner that morning in Brook-street, when he broke in upon her interview with Wilmot, flashed across Madeleine's mind, and she felt convinced that her dread suspicions were right, and that Ronald had guessed the truth.

The reason of his hatred to Wilmot was then at once apparent to Madeleine. Ronald had always supported Ramsay's unacknowledged position in the family very strongly, not demonstratively, but tacitly, as was his custom in most things. He was essentially "thorough;" and Madeleine imagined that nothing would probably annoy him so much as the lack of thoroughness in those whom he loved and trusted. She saw that, actuated by these feelings, her brother would regard, had regarded what she had previously imagined to be her admiration and reverence, but what she now knew, and what Ronald had probably from the first recognised, to be her love for Chudleigh Wilmot as base treachery; and he hated Wilmot for having, however innocently, called these feelings into play. However innocently? There was a drop of comfort even in this bitter cup for poor Madeleine. However innocently? Ronald was a man of the world, eminently clear-headed and far-seeing--might not his hatred of Wilmot arise from his having perceived that Wilmot himself was aware of Madeleine's feelings, and reciprocated them? He had never said so--never hinted at it; but then that soft fond look into her eyes when they were alone together in the drawing-room in Brook-street rose in the girl's memory, and almost bade her hope.

These mental anxieties, these vacillations between hope and fear, doubt and despair, which furnished Madeleine with constant food for reflection, were not without their due effect on her bodily health. Her fond father, watching her ever with jealous care, noticed the hectic flush upon her cheek more frequent, her spirits lower, her strength daily decreasing: he became alarmed, and confessed his alarm to Lady Muriel.

"Madeleine is far from well," he said; "very far from well. I notice an astonishing difference in her within the last few months. After her first recovery from the fever, I thought she would take a new lease of life. But Wilmot was right throughout; she is very delicate; the last few weeks have made a perceptible difference in her; and Wilmot is not here to come in and cheer us after seeing her."

"I think you are over-anxious about Madeleine," said Lady Muriel. "I must confess, Alick, she is not strong; she never was before her illness; and I do not believe that she ever recovered even her previous strength; but I do not think so badly of her as you do. As you say, we have not Dr. Wilmot to send for. For reasons best known to himself, but which I confess I have been unable, so far as I have troubled myself, to fathom, Dr. Wilmot has chosen to absent himself, and to put himself thoroughly out of any chance of his being sent for. But so far as advice goes, I suppose Sir Saville Rowe is still unequalled; and Dr. Wilmot must have full confidence in him, or he would never have begged him to break through his retirement and attend upon Madeleine."

"Yes; that is all very well. Of course Sir Saville Rowe's opinion is excellent and all that, but he comes here but seldom; and one can't talk to him as one could to Wilmot; and he does not stop and talk and all that sort of thing, don't you know? Maddy's is a case where particular interest should be taken, it strikes me; and I think Wilmot did take special interest in her."

"I don't think there can be any doubt of that," said Lady Muriel, with the slightest touch of dryness in her accent. "Dr. Wilmot's devotion to his patient was undeniable; but Dr. Wilmot's away, and not available, and we must do our best to help ourselves during his absence. My own feeling is that the girl wants thoroughly rousing; she gets moped sitting here day after day with you and me and Mrs. M'Diarmid; and Ronald, when he comes, does not tend much to enliven her. Ramsay Caird is the only one with any life and spirits in the whole party."

"He's a good fellow, Ramsay," said Kilsyth; "a genial, pleasant, brisk fellow."

"He is; and he's a true-hearted fellow, Alick, which is better still. By the way, Alick, he spoke to me again the other day upon that subject which I mentioned to you before--about Madeleine, you recollect?"

"I recollect perfectly, Muriel," said Kilsyth slowly.

"You said then, if you remember, that there was no reason for pressing the matter then--no reason for hurrying it on; that Madeleine was full young, and that it would be better to wait and let us see more of Ramsay. You were perfectly right in what you said. I agreed with you thoroughly, and what you suggested has been done. We have waited now for several months; Madeleine has gone through a crisis in her life." (Lady Muriel looked steadily at her husband as she said these words to see if he detected any double meaning in them; but Kilsyth only nodded his head gravely.) "We have seen more, a great deal more, of Ramsay Caird; and from what you just said, I conclude you like him?"

"I was not thinking of him in that light when I spoke, my dear Muriel," said Kilsyth; "but indeed I see no reason to alter my opinion. He's a pleasant, bright, good-tempered fellow, and I think would make a good husband. He has seen plenty of life, and will be all the better for it when he settles down."

"Exactly. Well, then, having settled that point, I think you will agree with me that now the matter does press, and there is reason for hurrying it on. Not the marriage,--there is no necessity for hastening with that; but it is both necessary and proper that it should be understood that Madeleine and Ramsay Caird are regularly engaged. As I said before, Madeleine wants rousing. She is fade and weary and a little lackadaisical. You remember how she burst out crying about that book the other night. She wants employment for her thoughts and her mind; and if she is engaged, and we then find her occupation in searching for a house, then in furnishing it, choosing trousseau, brougham, jewels, the thousand-and-one little things that we can find for her to do, you may depend upon it you will soon see her a different being."

Kilsyth said he hoped so; but his tone had little buoyancy in it, and was almost despondent as he added:

"What about Maddy herself? Has she any notion of--of what you have just said to me, Muriel?"

"Any notion, my dear Alick? Madeleine, though backward in some things, has plenty of common sense; and she must be perfectly aware what Ramsay's intentions mean and point to. Indeed my own observation leads me to believe that she not merely understands them, but is favourably disposed towards their object."

"Yes; but what I mean to say is, Maddy has never been plainly spoken to on the subject."

"No, no; not that I know of."

"But, she should be, eh?"

"Of course she should be--and at once. It is not fair to Mr. Caird to keep him longer in suspense; and there are other reasons which render such a course highly desirable."

Again Lady Muriel looked steadfastly at her husband, and again he evaded her glance, and contented himself with nodding acquiescence at her suggestion.

"This should be done," continued Lady Muriel, "by some one who has influence with dear Madeleine, whom she regards with great affection, and whose opinion she is likely to respect. I have never said as much to you, my dear Alick, because I did not want to worry you, in the first place; and in the second, because the thing sits very lightly on me, and the feeling is one which is natural, and which I can perfectly understand; but the fact is that I am Madeleine's stepmother only, and she regards me exactly in that light."

"Muriel!" cried Kilsyth.

"My dear Alick, it is perfectly natural and intelligible, and I make no complaint. I should not have alluded to the subject if it were not necessary, you may depend upon it. But I thought perhaps that you might expect me to broach the matter which we have been recently discussing to Madeleine; and for the reasons I have given, I think that would be wholly unadvisable. You did think so, did you not?"

"Well," said Kilsyth, who felt himself becoming rapidly 'cornered,' "I confess I was going to ask you to do it; but of course if you--and I feel--of course--that you're right. But then the question comes--as it must be done--who is to do it? I'm sure I could not."

Lady Muriel's brow darkened for a few moments as she heard this, but it cleared again ere she spoke. "There is only one person left then," said she; "and I am not sure that, after all, he is not the most fitting in such a case as this. I mean, of course, Ronald. He is perfectly straightforward and independent; he will see the matter in its right light; and, above all, he has great influence with Madeleine."

"Ronald's a little rough; isn't he?" said Kilsyth doubtfully; "he don't mean it, I know; but still in a matter like this he might--what do you think?"

"I think, as I have said, that he is the exact person. His manner may be a little cold, somewhat brusque to most people; but he has Madeleine's interest entirely at heart, and he has always shown her, as you know, the most unswerving affection. He has a liking for Ramsay Caird; he appreciates the young man's worth; and he will be able to place affairs in their proper position."

So Kilsyth, with an inexpressible feeling that all was not quite right, but with the impossibility of being able to better it, vividly before him, agreed to his wife's proposition; and the next day Ronald had a long interview with Lady Muriel, when they discussed the whole subject, and settled upon their plan of action. Ronald undertook the mission cheerfully; he and his stepmother fully understood each other, and appreciated the necessity of immediate steps. Neither entered into any detail, so far as Chudleigh Wilmot was concerned; but each knew that the other was aware of the existence of that stumbling-block, and was impressed with the expediency of its removal.

Two days afterwards Ronald knocked at the door of Lady Muriel's boudoir at a very much earlier hour than he was usually to be found in Brook-street. When he entered the room he looked a thought more flushed and a thought less calm and serene than was his wont. Lady Muriel also was a little agitated as she rose hastily from her chair and advanced to greet him.

"Have you seen her?" she asked; "is it over? what did she say?"

"She is the best girl in the world!" said Ronald; "she took it quite calmly, and acquiesced perfectly in the arrangement. I think we must have been wrong with regard to that other person--at least so far as Madeleine's caring for him is concerned."

O, of course: Madeleine cared nothing for "that other person," the loss of whose love she was at that moment bewailing, stretched across her bed, and weeping bitterly.

[CHAPTER V.]

At our Minister's.

Meanwhile Chudleigh Wilmot, bearing the secret of his great sorrow about with him, bearing with him also the dread horror and gnawing remorse which the fear that his wife had committed self-destruction had engendered in his breast, had sought safety in flight from the scene of his temptation, and oblivion in absence from his daily haunts, and to a certain extent had found both. How many of us are there who have experienced the benefit of that blessed change of climate, language, habit of life? I declare I believe that the continental boats rarely leave the Dover or the Folkestone pier without carrying away amongst their motley load some one or two passengers who are going, not for pleasure or profit, not with the idea of visiting foreign cities or observing foreign manners, not with the intention of gaining bodily health, or for the vain-glory of being able to say on their return that they have been abroad (which actuates not a few of them), but simply in the hope that the entire change will bring to them surcease of brain-worry and heart-despondency, calm instead of anxiety, peace in place of feverish longing, rest--no matter how dull, how stupid, how torpid--instead of brilliant, baleful, soul-harrowing excitement. After having pursued the beauty of Brompton through the London season; after having spent a little fortune in anonymous bouquets for her and choice camellias for his own adornment; after having duly attended at every fête offered by the Zoological and Botanical Societies, danced himself weary at balls, maimed his feet at croquet-parties, and ricked his neck with staring up at her box from the opera-stalls,--Jones, finding all his petits soins unavailing, and learning that the rich stock-broker from Surbiton has distanced him in the race, and is about to carry off the prize, flings himself and his portmanteau on board the Ostend boat, and finds relief and a renewal of his former devotion to himself among the quaint old Belgian cities. By the time he arrives at the Rhinebord he is calmer; he has lapsed into the sentimental stage, and is enabled to appreciate and, if anybody gives him the chance, to quote all the lachrymose and all the morbid passages. He relapses dreadfully when he gets to Homburg, because he then thinks it necessary to--as he phrases it in his diary--"seek the Lethe of the gaming-table;" but having lost his five pounds' worth of florins, he is generally content; and when he arrives in Switzerland finds himself in a proper-tempered state of mind, quite fitted to commune with Nature, and to convey to the Jungfrau his very low opinion of the state of humanity in general, and of the female being who has blighted his young affections in particular. And by the time that his holiday is over, and he returns to his office or his chambers, he has forgotten all the nonsense that enthralled him, and is prepared to commence a new course of idiotcy, da capo, with another enchantress.

And to Chudleigh Wilmot, though a sensible and thoughtful man, the change was no less serviceable. The set character of his daily duties, the absorbing nature of his studies, the devotion to his profession, which had narrowed his ideas and cramped his aspirations, once cast off and put aside, his mind became almost childishly impressionable by the new ideas which dawned upon it, the new scenes which opened upon his view. In his wonder at and admiration of the various beauties of nature and art which came before him there was something akin to the feeling which his acquaintance with Madeleine Kilsyth had first awakened within him. As then, he began to feel now that for the first time he lived; that his life hitherto had been a great prosaic mistake; that he had worshipped false gods, and only just arrived at the truth. To be sure, he had now the additional feeling of a lost love and an unappeasable remorse; but the sting even of these was tempered and modified by his enjoyment of the loveliness of nature by which he was surrounded.

His time was his own; and to kill it pleasantly was his greatest object. He crossed from Dover to Ostend, and lingered some days on the Belgian seaboard. Thence he pursued his way by the easiest stages through the flat low-lying country, so rich in cathedrals and pictures, in Gothic architecture and sweet-toned carillons, in portly burghers and shovel-hatted priests and plump female peasants. To Bruges, to Ghent, and Antwerp; to Brussels, and thence, through the lovely country that lies round Verviers and Liège, to Cologne and the Rhine, Chudleigh Wilmot journeyed, stopping sometimes for days wherever he felt inclined, and almost insensibly acquiring bodily and mental strength.

There is a favourite story of the practical hardheaded school of philosophers, showing how that one of their number, when overwhelmed with grief at the loss of his only son, managed to master his extreme agony, and to derive very great consolation from the study of mathematics--a branch of science with which he had not previously been familiar. It probably required a peculiar temperament to accept of and benefit by so peculiar a remedy; but undoubtedly great grief, arising from whatsoever source, is susceptible of being alleviated by mental employment. And thus, though Chudleigh Wilmot bore about with him the great sorrow of his life; though the sweet sad face of Madeleine Kilsyth was constantly before him; and though the dread suspicion regarding the manner of his wife's death haunted him perpetually, as time passed over his head, and as his mind, naturally clever, opened and expanded under the new training it was unconsciously receiving, he found the bitterness of the memory of his short love-dream fading into a settled fond regret, and the horror which he had undergone at the discovery of the seal-ring becoming less and less poignant.

Not that the nature of his love far Madeleine had changed in the least. He saw her sweet face in the blue eyes and fair hair of big blonde Madonnas in altar-pieces in Flemish cathedrals; he imagined her as the never-failing heroine of such works of poetry and fiction as now, for the first time for many years, he found leisure and inclination to read. He would sit for hours, his eyes fixed on some lovely landscape before him, but his thoughts busy with the events of the past few months--those few months into which all the important circumstances of his life were gathered. One by one he would pass in review the details of his meetings, interviews, and conversations with Madeleine, from the period of his visit to Kilsyth to his last sad parting from her in Brook-street. And then he would go critically into an examination of his own conduct; he was calm enough to do that now; and he had the satisfaction of thinking that he had pursued the only course open to him as a gentleman and a man of honour. He had fled from the sweetest, the purest, the most unconscious temptation; and by his flight he hoped he was expiating the wrong which he had ignorantly committed by his neglect of his late wife. That must be the keynote of his future conduct--expiation. So far as the love of women or the praise of men was concerned, his future must be a blank. He had made his mind up to that, and would go through with it. Of the former he had very little, but very sweet experience--just one short glimpse of what might have been, and then back again into the dull dreary life; and of the latter--well, he had prized it and cherished it at one time, had laboured to obtain and deserve it; but it was little enough to him now.

Among the old Rhenish towns, at that time of year almost free of English, save such as from economical motives were there resident, Wilmot lingered lovingly, and spent many happy weeks. To the ordinary tourist, eager for his next meal of castles and crags, the town means simply the hotel where he feeds and rests for the night, while its inhabitants are represented by the landlord and the waiters, whose exactions hold no pleasant place in his memory. But those who stay among them will find the Rhenish burghers kindly, cheery, and hospitable, with a vein of romance and an enthusiastic love for their great river strangely mixed up with their national stolidity and business-like habits. Desiring to avoid even such few of his countrymen as were dotted about the enormous salons of the hotels, and yet; to a certain extent, fearing solitude, Wilmot eagerly availed himself of all the chances offered him for mixing with native society, and was equally at home in the merchant's parlour, the artist's atelier, or the student's kneipe. Pleasant old Vaterland! how many of us have kindly memories of thee and of thy pleasures, perhaps more innocent, and certainly cheaper, than those of other countries,--memories of thy beer combats, and thy romantic sons, our confrères, and thy young women, with such abundance of hair and such large feet!

At length, when more than three months had glided away, Wilmot determined upon starting at once for Berlin. He had lazed away his time pleasantly enough, far more pleasantly than he had imagined would ever have been practicable, and he had laid the ghosts of his regret and his remorse more effectually than at one time he had hoped. They came to him, these spectres, yet, as spectres should come, in the dead night-season, or at that worst of all times, when the night is dead and the day is not yet born, when, if it be our curse to lie awake, all disagreeable thoughts and fancies claim us for their own. The bill which we "backed" for the friend whose solvency and whose friendship have both become equally doubtful within the last few weeks; the face of her we love, with its last-seen expression of jealousy, anger, and doubt; the pile of neatly-cut but undeniably blank half-sheets of paper which is some day to be covered with our great work--that great work which we have thought of so long, but which we are as far as ever from commencing: all these charming items present themselves to our dreary gaze at that unholy four-o'clock waking, and chase slumber from our fevered eyelids. Chudleigh Wilmot's ghosts came too, but less, far less frequently than at first; and he was in hopes that in process of time they would gradually forsake him altogether, and leave him to that calm unemotional existence which was henceforth to be his.

Meantime he began to hunger for news of home and home's doings. For the first few weeks of his absence he had regularly abstained even from reading the newspapers, and up to the then time he had sent no address to his servants, choosing to remain in absolute ignorance of all that was passing in London. This was in contradiction to his original intention, but, on carefully thinking it over, he decided that it would be better that he should know nothing. He apprehended no immediate danger to Madeleine, and he knew that she could not be better than under old Sir Saville Rowe's friendly care. He knew that there was no human probability of anything more decisive leaking out of the circumstances of his wife's death. For any other matter he had no concern. His position in London society, his practice, what people said about him, were now all things of the past, which troubled him not; and hitherto he had looked on his complete isolation from his former world as a great ingredient in his composure and his better being. But as his mind became less anxious and his health more vigorous, he began to hunger for news of what was going on in that world from which he had exiled himself; and he hurried off to Berlin, anxious to secure some pied-à-terre which he could make at least a temporary home; and he had no sooner arrived at the Hôtel de Russie than he wrote at once to Sir Saville, begging for fall and particular accounts of Madeleine Kilsyth's illness, and to his awn servant, desiring that all letters which had been accumulating in Charles-street should be forwarded to him directly.

Knowing that several days must elapse before his much-longed-for news could arrive, Wilmot amused himself as best he might To the man who has been accustomed to dwell in capitals, and who has been spending some months in provincial towns, there is a something exhilarating in returning to any place where the business and pleasure of life are at their focus, even though it be in so tranquil a city as Berlin. The resident in capitals has a keen appreciation of many of those inexplicable nothingnesses which never are to be found elsewhere; the best provincial town is to him but a bad imitation, a poor parody on his own loved home; and in the same way, though the chief city of another country may be far beneath that to which he is accustomed, nay, even in grandeur and architectural magnificence may not be comparable to some of the provincial towns of his native land, he at once falls into its ways, and is infinitely more at home in it, because those ways and customs remind him of what he has left behind. Amidst the bustle and the excitement--mild though it was--of Berlin, Wilmot's desire for perpetual wandering began to ebb. A man who has nearly reached forty years of age in a fixed and settled routine of life makes a bad Bedouin; and when the sting which first started him--be it of disappointment, remorse, or ennui, and the last worst of all--loses its venom, he will probably be glad enough to join the first caravan of jovial travellers which he may come across, so long as they are bound for the nearest habitable and inhabitable city. Chudleigh Wilmot knew that a return to England and his former life was, under existing circumstances, impossible; he felt that he could not take up his residence in Paris, where he would be constantly meeting old English Mends, to whom he could give no valid reason for his self-imposed exile; but at Berlin it would be different. Very few English people, at least English people of his acquaintance, came to the Prussian capital; and to those whose path he might happen to cross he might, for the present at all events, plead his studies in a peculiar branch of his profession in which the German doctors had long been unrivalled; while as for the future--the future might take care of itself!

Wandering Unter den Linden, pausing in mute admiration before the Brandenburger Thor, or the numerous statues with which the patriotism of the inhabitants and the sublime skill of the sculptor Rauch has decorated the city, loitering in the Kunst Kammer of the palace, spending hour after hour in the museum, reviving old recollections, tinged now with such mournfulness as accrues to anything which has been put by for ever, in visiting the great anatomical collection, dropping into the opera or the theatre, and walking out to Charlottenburg or other of the pleasant villages on the Spree, Chudleigh Wilmot found life easier to him in Berlin than it had been for many previous months. There, for the first time since he left England, he availed himself of the fame which his talent had created for him, and found himself heartily welcome among the leading scientific men of the city, to all of whom he was well known by repute. To them, inquiring the cause of his visit, he gave the prepared answer, that he had come in person to study their mode of procedure, which had so impressed him in their books; end this did not tend to make his welcome less warm. So that, all things taken into consideration, Wilmot had almost made up his mind to remain in Berlin, at least for several months. He could attend the medical schools--it would afford him amusement; and if in the future he ever resumed the practice of his profession, it could do him no harm; his life, such as it was, were as well passed in Berlin as anywhere else; and meanwhile time would be fleeting on, and the gulf between him and Madeleine Kilsyth, would be gradually widening. It must widen! No matter to what width it now attained, he could never hope to span it again.

One day, on his return to his hotel after a long ramble, the waiter who was specially devoted to his service received him with a pleasant grin, and told him that a "post packet" of an enormous size awaited him. The parcel which Wilmot found on his table was certainly large enough to have created astonishment in the mind of anyone, more especially a German waiter, accustomed only to the small square thin letters of his nation. There was but one huge packet; no letter from Sir Saville Rowe, nor from Mr. Foljambe, to whom Wilmot had also written specially. Wilmot opened the envelope with an amount of nervousness which was altogether foreign to his nature; his hand trembled unaccountably; and he had to clear his eyes before he could set to work to glance over the addresses of the score of letters which it contained. He ran them over hurriedly; nothing from Sir Saville Rowe, nothing from Mr. Foljambe, no line--but he had expected none from any of the Kilsyths. He threw aside unopened a letter in Whittaker's bold hand, a dozen others whose superscriptions were familiar to him, and paused before one, the mere sight of which gave him an inexplicable thrill. It was a long, broad, blue-papered envelope, addressed in a formal legal hand to him at his house in Charles-street, and marked "Immediate." There are few men but in their time have had an uneasy sensation caused by the perusal of their own name in that never-varying copying-clerk's caligraphy, with its thin upstrokes and thick downstrokes, its carefully crossed t's and infallibly dotted i's. Few but know the "further proceedings" which, unless a settlement be made on or before Wednesday next, the writers are "desired to inform" us, they will be "compelled to take." But Chudleigh Wilmot was among those few. During the whole of his career he had never owed a shilling which he could not have paid on demand, and his experience of law in any way had been nil. And yet the sight of this grim document had an extraordinarily terrifying effect upon him. He turned it backwards and forwards, took it up and laid it down several times, before he could persuade himself to break its seal, a great splodge of red wax impressed with the letters "L. & L." deeply cut. At length he broke it open. An enclosure fell from it to the ground; but not heeding that, Wilmot held up the letter to the fast-fading light, and read as follows:

"Lincoln's-Inn.

"Sir,--In accordance with instructions received from the late Mr. Foljambe of Portland-place--"

The late Mr. Foljambe! He must be dreaming! He rubbed his eyes, walked a little nearer to the window, and reperused the letter. No; there the sentence stood.

"In accordance with instructions received from the late Mr. Foljambe of Portland-place, we forward to you the enclosed letter. As it appeared that in consequence of your absence from England you could not be immediately communicated with, and in pursuance of the instructions more recently verbally communicated to us by our late client in the event of such a contingency arising, we have taken upon ourselves to make the necessary arrangements for the funeral, as laid down in a memorandum written by the deceased; and the interment will take place to-morrow morning at Kensal-green Cemetery. We trust you will approve of our proceedings in this matter, and that you will make it convenient to return to London as soon as possible after the receipt of this letter, as there are pressing matters awaiting your directions.

"Your obedient servants,

"LAMBERT & LEE.

"Dr. Wilmot."

The late Mr. Foljambe! His kind old friend, then, was dead! Again and again he read the letter before he realised to himself the information conveyed in that one sentence: the late Mr. Foljambe--pressing matters awaiting his directions. Wilmot could not make out what it meant. That Mr. Foljambe was dead he understood perfectly; but why the death should be thus officially communicated to him, why the old gentleman's lawyers should express a hope that he would approve of their proceedings, and a desire that he should at once return to London, was to him perfectly inexplicable, unless--but the idea which arose in his mind was too preposterous, and he dismissed it at once.

In the course of his reflections his eyes fell upon the enclosure which had fallen from the letter to the ground. He picked it up, and at a glance saw that it was a note addressed to him in his friend's well-known clear handwriting--clearer indeed and firmer than it had been of late. He opened it at once; and on opening it the first thing which struck him was, that it was dated more than twelve months previously. It ran thus:

"Portland-place.

"My DEAR CHUDLEIGH,--A smart young gentleman, with mock-diamond studs in his rather dirty shirt, and a large signet-ring on his very dirty hand, has just been witnessing my signature to the last important document which I shall ever sign--my will--and has borne that document away with him in triumph, and a hansom cab, which his masters will duly charge to my account. I shall send this letter humbly by the penny post, to be put aside with that great parchment, and to be delivered to you after my death. In all human probability you will be by my bedside when that event occurs, but I may not have either the opportunity or the strength to say to you what I should wish you to know from myself; so I write it here. My dear boy, Chudleigh--boy to me, son of my old friend--when I told your father I would look after your future, I made up my mind to do exactly what I have done by my signature ten minutes ago. I knew I should never marry, and I determined that all my fortune should go to you. By the document (the young man in the jewelry would call it a document)--by the document just executed, you inherit everything I have in the world, and are only asked to pay some legacies to a few old servants. Take it, my dear Chudleigh, and enjoy it. That you will make a good use of it, I am sure. I leave you entirely free and unfettered as to its disposal, and I have only two suggestions to make--mind, they are suggestions, and not requirements. In the first place, I should be glad if you would keep on and live in my house in Portland-place--it has been a pleasant home to me for many years; and I do not think my ghost would rest easily if, on a revisit to the glimpses of the moon, he should find the old place peopled with strangers. It has never known a lady's care--at least during my tenure--but under Mrs. Wilmot's doubtless good taste, and the aptitude which all women have for making the best of things, I feel assured that the rooms will present a sufficiently brave appearance. The other request is, that you should retire from the active practice of your profession. There! I intended to arrive at this horrible announcement after a long round of set phrases and subtle argument; but I have come upon it at once. I do not want you, my dear Chudleigh, entirely to renounce those studies or the exercise of that talent in which I know you take the greatest delight; on the contrary, my idea in this suggestion is, that your brains and experience should be even more valuable to your fellow-creatures than they are BOW. I want you to be what the young men of the present day call a 'swell' in your line. I don't want you to refuse to give the benefit of your experience in consultation; what I wish is to think that you will be free--be your own master--and no longer be at the beck and call of everyone; and if any lady has the finger-ache, or M. le Nouveau Riche has overeaten himself, and sends for you, that you will be in a position to say you are engaged, and cannot come.

"If some of our friends could see this letter, they would laugh, and say that old Foljambe was selfish and eccentric to the last; he has had the advantage of this man's abilities throughout his own illnesses, and now he leaves him his money on condition that he sha'n't cure anyone else! But you know me too well, my dear Chudleigh, to impute anything of this kind to me. The fact is, I think you're doing too much, working too hard, giving up too much time and labour and life to your profession. You cannot carry on at the pace you've been going; and believe an old fellow who has enjoyed every hour of his existence, life has something better than the renom gained from attending crabbed valetudinarians. What that something is, my dear boy, is for you now to find out. I have done my possible towards realising it for you.

"And now, God bless you, my dear Chudleigh! I have no other request to make. To any other man I should have said, 'Don't let the tombstone-men outside the cemetery persuade you into any elaborate inscription in commemoration of my virtues.' 'Here lies John Foljambe, aged 72,' is all I require. But I know your good sense too well to suspect you of any such iniquity. Again, God bless you!

"Your affectionate old friend,

"JOHN FOLJAMBE."

Tears stood in Wilmot's eyes as he laid aside the old gentleman's characteristic epistle. He took it up again after a pause and looked at the date. Twelve months ago! What a change in his life during that twelve months! Two allusions in the letter had made him wince deeply--the mention of his wife, the suggestion that undoubtedly he would be at the deathbed of his benefactor. Twelve months ago! He did not know the Kilsyths then, was unaware of their very existence. If he had never made that acquaintance; if he had never seen Madeleine Kilsyth, might, not Mabel have been alive now? might he not--Whittaker was a fool in such matters--might he not have been able once more to carry his old friend successfully through the attack to which he now had succumbed? Were they all right--his dead wife, Henrietta Prendergast, the still small voice that spoke to him in the dead watches of the night? Had that memorable visit had such a baleful effect on his career? was it from his introduction to Madeleine Kilsyth that he was to date all his troubles?

His introduction to Madeleine Kilsyth! Ah, under what a new aspect she now appeared! Chudleigh Wilmot knew the London world sufficiently to be aware of the very different reception which he would get from it now, how inconvenient matters would be forgotten or hushed over, and how the heir of the rich and eccentric Mr. Foljambe would begin life anew; the doctrine of metempsychosis having been thoroughly carried out, and the body of the physician from which the new soul had sprung having been conveyed into the outer darkness of forgetfulness. True, some might remember how Mr. Wilmot, when he was in practice--so honourable of him to maintain himself by his talents, you know, and really considerable talents, and all that kind of thing--and before he succeeded to his present large fortune, had attended Miss Kilsyth up at their place in the Highlands, and brought her through a dangerous illness, don't you know, and that made the affair positively romantic, you see!--Bah! To Ronald Kilsyth himself the proposition would be sufficiently acceptable now. The Captain had stood out, intelligibly enough, fearing the misunderstanding of the world; but all that misunderstanding would be set aside when the world saw that an eligible suitor had proposed for one of its marriageable girls, more especially when the eligible couple kept a good house and a liberal table, and entertained as befitted their position in society.

Wilmot had pondered over this new position with a curled lip; but his feelings softened marvellously, and his heart bounded within him, as his thoughts turned towards Madeleine herself. Ah, if he had only rightly interpreted that dropped glance, that heightened colour, that confused yet trusting manner in the interview in the drawing-room! Ah, if he had but read aright the secret of that childish trusting heart! Madeleine, his love, his life, his wife! Madeleine, with all the advantages of her own birth, the wealth which had now accrued to him, and the respect which his position had gained for him!--could anything be better? He had seen how men in society were courted, and flattered and made much of for their wealth alone,--dolts, coarse, ignorant, brainless, mannerless savages; and he--now he could rival them in wealth, and excel them--ah, how far excel them!--in all other desirable qualities!

Madeleine his own, his wife! The dark cloud which had settled down upon him for so long a time rolled away like a mist and vanished from his sight. Once more his pulse bounded freely within him; once more he looked with keen clear eyes upon life, and owned the sweet aptitude of being. He laughed aloud and scornfully as he remembered how recently he had pictured to himself as pleasant, as endurable, a future which was now naught but the merest vegetation. To live abroad! Yes, but not solitary and self-contained; not pottering on in a miserable German town, droning through existence in the company of a few old savans! Life abroad with Madeleine for a few months in the year perhaps--the wretched winter months, when England was detestable, and when he would take her to brighter climes--to the Mediterranean, to Cannes, Naples, Algiers it may be, where the soft climate and his ever-watchful attention and skill would enable her to shake off the spell of the disease which then oppressed her.

He would return at once--to Madeleine! Those dull lawyers in their foggy den in Lincoln's-inn little knew how soon he would obey their mandate, or what was the motive-power which induced his obedience. In his life he had never felt so happy. He laughed aloud. He clapped the astonished waiter, who had hitherto looked upon the Herr Englander as the most miserable of his melancholy nation, on the shoulder, and bade him send his passport to the Embassy to be viséd, and prepare for his departure. No; he would go himself to the Embassy. He was so full of radiant happiness that he must find some outlet for it; and he remembered that he had made the acquaintance of a young gentleman, son of one of his aristocratic London patients, who was an attaché to our minister. He would himself go to the Embassy, see the boy, and offer to do any mission for him in England, to convey anything to his mother. The waiter smiled, foreseeing in his guest's happiness a good trinkgeld for himself; gentlemen usually sent their passports by the hausknecht, but the Herr could go if he wished it--of course he could go!

So Wilmot started off with his passport in his pocket. The sober-going citizens stared as they met, and turned round to stare after the eager rushing Englishman. He never heeded them; he pushed on; he reached the Embassy, and asked for his young friend Mr. Walsingham, and chafed and fumed and stamped about the room in which he was left while Mr. Walsingham was being sought for. At length Mr. Walsingham arrived. He was glad to see Dr. Wilmot; thanks for his offer! He would intrude upon him so far as to ask him to convey a parcel to Lady Caroline. Visa? O, ah! that wasn't in his department; but if Dr. Wilmot would give him the passport, he'd see it put all right. Would Dr. Wilmot excuse him for a few moments while he did so, and would he like to look at last Monday's Post, which had just arrived?

Wilmot sat himself down and took up the paper. He turned it vaguely to and fro, glancing rapidly and uninterestedly at its news. At length his eye hit upon a paragraph headed "Marriage in High Life." He passed it, but finding nothing to interest him, turned back to it again, and there he read:

"On the 13th instant, at St. George's, Hanover-square, by the Lord Bishop of Boscastle, Madeleine, eldest daughter of Kilsyth of Kilsyth, to Ramsay Caird, Esq., of Dunnsloggan, N.B."

When Mr. Walsingham returned with the passport he found his visitor had fainted.

[CHAPTER VI.]

The Gulf fixed.

Fainted! a preposterous thing for a big strong man to do! Fainted, as though he had been a school-girl, or a delicate miss, or a romantic woman troubled with nerves. Mr. Walsingham did not understand it at all. He rang the bell, and told the servant to get some water and some brandy, and something--the right sort of thing; and he picked up Wilmot's head, which was gravitating towards the floor, and he bade him "Hold up, my good fellow!" and then he let his friend's head fall, and gazed at him with extreme bewilderment. He was unused to this kind of performance was Mr. Walsingham, and felt himself eminently helpless and ridiculous. When the water and the brandy were brought, he administered a handful of the former externally, and a wine-glassful of the latter internally; and Wilmot revived, very white and trembling and dazed and vacant-looking. So soon as he could gather where he was, and what had occurred, he made his apologies to Mr. Walsingham, and begged he would add to the kindness he had already shown by sending for a cab, and by allowing him to borrow the newspaper which he had been reading at the time of the attack; it should be carefully returned that afternoon. Mr. Walsingham, who wag the soul of politeness, agreed to each of these requests; the cab was fetched, and Wilmot, with many thanks to his young friend, and with the packet for his young friend's mother, his own passport, and the Morning Post in his pocket, went away in it. Mr. Walsingham, who regarded this little episode in his monotonous life as quite an adventure, waxed very eloquent upon the subject afterwards to his friends, and made it his stock story for several days. "Doosid awkward," he used to say, "to have a fellow, don't you know, who you don't know, don't you know, gone off into fits, and all that kind of thing! Here, too, of all places in the world! If he'd gone off in my rooms, you know, it wouldn't so much have mattered; but here, where old Blowhard"--for by this epithet Mr. Walsingham designated Sir Hercules Shandon, K.P., Her Britannic Majesty's Minister at the Court of Prussia--"where old Blowhard might have come in at any moment, don't you know, it might have been devilish unpleasant for a fellow. What he wanted with the Post I can't make out. I've looked through every column of it since he sent it back, but I can't find anything likely to upset a fellow like that. I thought at first he must have been sinking his fees in some city company that had bust-up, but there's no such thing in the paper; or that he'd read of some chap being poisoned in mistake, and that had come home to him, but there's nothing about that either. I can't make it out.--I say, Tollemache, do you see that Miss Kilsyth's married? Married to Caird, that good-looking fellow that always used to be there at Brook-street--tame cat in the house--and that used to--you know--Adalbert Villa, Omicron-road, eh? Sell for you, old boy; you were very hard hit in that quarter, weren't you, Tolly?"

So Chudleigh Wilmot went back to his hotel in the cab; and the friendly waiter, who had seen him depart so full of life and joyousness, had to help him up the steps, and thought within himself that the great English doctor would have to seek the assistance of other members of his craft. But no bodily illness had struck down Chudleigh Wilmot; he had not recovered his full strength, and the shock to his nerves had been a little too strong--that was all. So soon as he found himself alone, after refusing the friendly waiter's offer of sending for a physician, of getting him restoratives of a kind which came specially within the resources of the Hôtel de Russie, such as a roast chicken and a bottle of sparkling Moselle, and after dispensing with all further assistance or companionship, Wilmot locked the door of his room, and sat down at the table with the newspaper spread open before him. He read the paragraph again and again, with an odd sort of bewildering wonderment that it remained the same, and did not change before his eyes. No doubt about what it expressed--none. Madeleine Kilsyth, who had been worshipped by him for months past; and with whom as his companion he was looking forward to pass his future, was married to another man--that last fact was expressed in so many words. It was all over now, the hope and the fear and the longing; there was an end to it all. If he had only known this three months ago, what an agony of heart-sickness, of dull despair, of transient hope, of wearying feverish longing he had been spared! She was gone, then, so far as he was concerned--taken from him; the one star that had glimmered on his dark lonely path was quenched, and henceforward he was to stumble through life in darkness as best he might. That was a cruel trick of Fortune's, a wretched cruel trick, to keep him back in his pursuit, to throw obstacles of every kind in his way, but all the time to let him see his love at the end of the avenue, as he thought, beckoning to him to overcome them all, to make his way to her, and carry her off in spite of all opposition; then for all the obstacles to melt away, for him to have naught to do but gain the temple unopposed; and when he succeeded in gaining it, for the doors to be open, the shrine abandoned, the divinity gone!

Hard fate indeed! hard, hard fate! But it was not to be. His dead wife had said it; Henrietta Prendergast had said it: it was not to be. For him no woman's love, no happy home, no congenial spirit to share his thoughts, his ambition, his success. He sighed as he thought of this, with additional sadness as he remembered that if Henrietta Prendergast's story were true, all this had been his. Such a companion he had had, had never appreciated, and had lost. He had entertained an angel unawares, and he was never to have the chance again. For him a drear blank future--blank save when remorse for the probable fate of the woman who had died loving him, regret for the loss of the woman whom he had loved, should goad him into new scenes of fresh action. Madeleine married! Was, then, his fancy that she, that Madeleine, during that interview in the drawing-room in Brook-street, had manifested an interest in him different from that which she had previously shown, a mere delusion? Had he been so far led away by his vanity as to mistake for something akin to his own feeling the mere gratitude which the young girl had felt towards her physician? Was she, indeed, "his grateful patient," and no more? Wilmot's heart sunk within him, and his cheeks burned, as this view of the subject presented itself to his mind. Had he, professing to be skilled in psychology, committed this egregious blunder? Had he, who was supposed to know what people really were when they had put off the mummeries which they played before the world, and when they had laid by their face-makings and their posturings and their society antics, and revealed to their physician perforce what no one else was allowed to see--had he been deceived in his character study of one who to him was a mere child? The very suddenness of the inspiration had led him to believe in its truth. Until that moment, just before that savage brother of hers had burst in upon them, he had acknowledged to himself the existence of his own passion indeed, but had struggled against it, fully believing it to be unreciprocated, fully believing in the mere gratitude and respect which--as it now seemed--were the sole feelings by which Madeleine had been animated. But surely that day, in her downcast eyes and in her fleeting blush, he had recognised--A new idea, which rushed through his mind like a flash of light, illumining his soul with a ray of hope. Had this been a forced marriage? Had she been compelled by her brother, her father, Lady Muriel--God knows who--to accept this alliance? Had it been carried out against her own free will? Had his absence from England been made the pretext for urging her on to it? Had that been shown to her as a sign of the mistake she had made in supposing that he, Wilmot, eared for her at all? He had never been so near the truth as now, and yet he scouted the notion more quickly than any of the others which he discussed within himself. Such a thing was impossible. The idea of a girl being forced to marry against her will, of her judgment being warped, and the truth perverted for the sake of warping that judgment, was incomprehensible to a man like Wilmot--man of the world in so many phases of his character, but of childlike simplicity in the others. He had heard of such things as the stock-in-trade of the novelist, but in real life they did not exist. Mammon-matches, forced marriages, diabolical torturings of fact--all these various combinations, neatly dovetailed together, filled the shelves of the circulating-library, but were laughed to scorn by all sensible persons when they professed to be accurate representations of what takes place in the every-day life of society.

Besides, if it were so, the mischief was done, and he was all-powerless to counteract it. The marriage had taken place; there was an end of it. It could be undone by no word or deed of his. The times were changed from the old days when a sharp sword and a swift steed could nullify the priest's blessing, and leave the brave gallant and the unwilling bride to be "happy ever after." He was no young Lochinvar, to swim streams and scour countries, to dance but one measure, drink one cup of wine, and bolt with the lady on his saddle-croup. He was a sober, middle-aged man, who must get back to England by the mail-train and the packet-boat; and when he got there--well, make his bow to the bride and bridegroom, and congratulate them on the happy event. It was all over. His turn in the wheel of Fortune had arrived too late; the bequest which his good old friend had secured to him, had it come two months earlier, might have insured his happiness for life; as it was, it left him where it found him, so far as his great object in life, so far as Madeleine Kilsyth, was concerned.

Another long pause for reflection, a prolonged pacing up and down the room, revolving all the circumstances in his mind. Was his whole life bound up in this young girl? did his whole future so entirely hang upon her? Here was he in his prime, with fame such as few men ever attained to, with fortune newly accruing to him--large fortune, leaving him his own master to do as he liked, free, unfettered, with no ties and no responsibilities; and was he to give up this splendid position, or, not giving it up, to forego its advantages, to let its gold turn into withered leaves and its fruits into Dead-Sea apples, because a girl, of whose existence he had been ignorant twelve months before, preferred to accept a husband of her choice, of her rank, of her family connection, rather than await in maidenhood a declaration of his hitherto unspoken love? He was pining under his solitude, the want of being appreciated, the lack of someone to confide in, to cherish, to educate, to love. Was his choice so circumscribed by fate that there was only one person in the world to fulfil all these requirements? Was it preordained that he must either win Madeleine Kilsyth or pass the remainder of his days helplessly, hopelessly celibate? Was his heart so formed as to be capable of the reception of this one individual and none other, to be impressionable by her and her alone? His pride revolted at the idea; and when a man's pride undertakes the task of combating his passion, the struggle is likely to be a severe one, and none can tell on which side the victory may lie.

He would test it, at all events, and test it at once. The kind old man now gone to his rest had hoped that the fortune which he had bequeathed might be of service to the son of his old friend "and to Mrs. Wilmot;" and why should it not, although Mrs. Wilmot might not be the person whom Mr. Foljambe had intended, nor, as Chudleigh had madly hoped on reading his benefactor's letter, Madeleine Kilsyth? He would go back to England at once; he would show these people that--even if they entertained the idea which had been so plainly set before him by Ronald Kilsyth--he was not the man to sink under an injury, however much he might suffer under an injustice. "Love flows like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide," so far he would say to them with Lochinvar; they should not imagine that he was going to pine away the remainder of his life miserably because Miss Kilsyth had chosen to marry someone else. He had been a fool, a weak pliable fool, to make such a statement as he had done in that interview with Ronald Kilsyth. His cheeks tingled with shame as he remembered how he had confessed the passion which he had nurtured, and which he acknowledged beset him even at the time of speaking. And that cool, calculating young man, with his cursed priggish, pedantic airs, his lack of anything approaching enthusiasm, and his would-be frank manner, was doubtless at that moment grinning to himself at the successful result of his calm diplomacy. Chudleigh Wilmot stamped his foot on the floor and ground his teeth in the impotence of his rage.

Married to Ramsay Caird, eh? Ramsay Caird! Well, they had not made such a great catch after all! To hear them talk, to see the state they kept up at Kilsyth, to listen to or look at my Lady Muriel, one would have thought that an earl, with half England in estates at his back, was the lowest they would have stooped to for their daughter's husband. And now she was married to an untitled Scotchman, without money, and--well, if he remembered club-gossip aright, rather a loose fish. Had not Captain Kilsyth been a little too hurried in the clinching of the nail, in the completion of the bargain? As Mr. Foljambe's heir, he, Chudleigh Wilmot, would have been worth a dozen such men as Ramsay Caird; and as to the question of former intimacy, of acquaintance formed during his wife's lifetime, the world would have forgotten that speedily enough.

He would go back to England at once, but when there he would show them he was not the kind of man which, from Ronald Kilsyth's behaviour, that family apparently imagined him. Still the Border song rang in his head--

"There were maidens in Scotland more lovely by far Would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar."

Not more lovely, and probably never to be anything like so dear to him; but there were other maidens in England besides Madeleine Kilsyth. And why should the remainder of his life be to him utterly desolate because this girl either did not love him, or, loving him, was weak enough to yield to the interference of others? Was he to pine in solitude, to renounce all the pleasures of wifely companionship, to remain, as he had hitherto been, self-contained and solitary, because he had placed his affections unworthily, and they had not been understood, or cast aside? No; he had existed, he had vegetated long enough; henceforward he would live. Wealth and fame were his; he was not yet too old to inspire affection or to requite it; by his old friend's death he had obtained an additional claim upon society, which even previously was willing enough to welcome him; he should have the entrée almost where he chose, and he would avail himself of the privilege. So thus it stood. Chudleigh Wilmot left London broken-hearted at having to give up his love, and full of remorse for a crime, not of his commission indeed, but which he imagined had arisen out of his own egotism and selfish preoccupation. He was about to start on his return, with stung sensibility and wounded pride--feelings which rendered him hostile rather than pitying towards the woman to whom he had imagined himself sentimentally attached, and which had completely obliterated and driven into oblivion all symptoms of his remorse.

He wrote a hurried line to Messrs. Lambert and Lee, informing them of his satisfaction with their proceedings hitherto, and notifying his immediate return; and he told the friendly waiter that he should start by that night's mail, and get as far as Hanover. But this the friendly waiter would not hear of. The Herr Doctor must know perfectly well--for had not he, the friendly waiter, heard the German doctors speak of the English doctor's learning?--that he was in no condition to travel that night. If he, the friendly waiter, might in his turn prescribe for the English doctor, he should say, "Wait here to-night; dine, not at the table d'hôte, where there is hurry and confusion, but in the smaller speise-saal, where you usually breakfast; and the cook shall be instructed to send up to you of his very best; and the Herr Oberkellner, a great man, but to be come over by tact, and specially kind in cases of illness, shall be persuaded to go to the cellar and fetch you Johannisberg--not that Zeltinger or Marcobrünner, which, under the name of Johannisberg, they sell to you in England, but real Johannisberg, of Prince Metternich's own vintage--pfa!" and the friendly waiter kissed his own fingers, and then tossed them into the air as a loving tribute to the excellence of the costly drink.

So Wilmot, knowing that there was truth in all the man had said; feeling that he was not strong, and that what little strength he had had gone out of him under the ordeal of the morning at the Embassy, gave way, and consented to remain that night. But the next morning he started on his journey, and on the evening of the third day he arrived in London. He drove straight to his house in Charles-street, and saw at once by the expression of his servant's face that the news of his inheritance had preceded him. There was a struggle between solemnity and mirth on the man's countenance that betrayed him at once. The man said he expected his master back, was not in the least surprised at his coming; indeed most people seemed to have expected him before. What did he mean? O, nothing--nothing; only there had been an uncommon number of callers within the last few days. "Not merely the reg'lars," the man added; "them of course; but there have been many people as we have not seen here these two years past a-rat-tattin', and leavin' reg'lar packs of cards, with their kind regards, and to know how you were, sir." The cards were brought, and Wilmot looked through them. The man was right; scores of his old acquaintance, whom he had not seen or heard of for years, were there represented; people whom he had only known professionally, and who had never been near him since he wrote their last prescription and took their last fee months before, had sought him out again. To what could this be accredited? Either to the earnest desire of all who knew him to console him in the affliction of having lost his friend, or to the information sown broadcast by that diligent contributor to the Illustrated News, who had given exact particulars of the will of the late John Foljambe, Esq., banker, of Lombard-street and Portland-place. But there was no card from any member of the Kilsyth family in the collection. Wilmot searched eagerly for one, but there was none there.

He had a hurried meal--hurried, not because he had anything to do, and wanted to get through with it, but because he had no appetite, and what was placed before him was tasteless and untempting--and sat himself down in his old writing-chair in his consulting-room to ponder over his past and his future. He should leave that house; he must. Though Mr. Foljambe had made no binding requirement, the expression of his wish was enough. Wilmot must leave that house, and obey his benefactor's behests by taking up his residence in Portland-place. He had never thought much of it before, but now he felt that he loved the place in which so much of his life had been passed, and felt very loth to leave it. He recollected when he had fire moved into it, when his practice began to increase and his name began to be known. He remembered how his friends had said that it was necessary he should take up his position in a good West-end street, and how alarmed he was, when the lease was signed and the furniture--rather scanty and very poor, but made to look its best by Mabel's disposition and taste--had been moved in, lest he should be unable to pay the heavy rent. He recollected perfectly the first few patients who had come to see him there: some sent by old Foljambe, some droppers-in from the adjacent military club, allured by the bright door-plate; old gentlemen wishing to be young again, and young gentlemen in constitution rather more worn and debilitated than the oldest of the veterans. He remembered his delight when the first great person ever sent for him; how he had treasured the note requesting his visit; how he had gone to his club and slily looked up the family in the Peerage; and how when he first stood before Lady Hernshaw, and listened to her account of her infant's feverish symptoms, he could, if he had been required, have gone through an examination in the origin and progress of the Hawke family, with the names of all the sons and daughters extant, and come out triumphantly. His well-loved books were ranged in due order on the walls round him; on the table before him stood the lamp by whose light he had gathered and reproduced that learning which had gained him his fame and his position. In that house all is early struggles had been gone through; he remembered the first dinner-parties which had been given under Mabel's superintendence, her diffidence and fright, his nervousness and anxiety. And now that was all of the past; Mabel had vanished for ever and aye; and soon the old house and its belongings, its associations and traditions, would know him no more. What had he gained during those few years? Fame, position, men's good word, the envy of his brother-professionals, and, recently, wealth. What had he lost? Youth, spirit, energy, the at one time all-sufficing love of study and progress in his science, content; and, latterly, the day-spring of a new existence, the hope of a new world which had opened so fairly and so promisingly before him. The balance was on the per-contra side, after all.

The fashionable journals found out his return (how, his servant of all men alone knew), and proclaimed it to the world at large. The world at large, consisting of the subscribers to the said fashionable journals, acknowledged the information, and the influx of cards was redoubled. Some of these performers of the card-trick lingered at the door, and entered into conversation with the presiding genius in black to whom their credentials were delivered. Whether the doctor were well, whethe he intended continuing the practice of his profession, whether the rumour that he intended giving up that house and removing to Portland-place had any substantial foundation; whether it were true that he, the presiding genius, was about to have a new mistress, a lady from abroad--for some even went so far as to make that inquiry--all these different points were put, haughtily, confidentially, jocosely, to the presiding genius of the street-door, and all were answered by him as best he thought fit. Only one of the queries, the last, had any influence on that great man. He fenced with it in public with all the coolness and the dexterity of an Angelo, but in private, in the sacred confidence of the pantry engendered by the supper-beer, he was heard to declare that "the guv'nor knew better than that; or that if he didn't, and thought to introduce furreners, with their scruin' ways, to sit at the 'ead of his table and give horders to them, he'd have to suit himself, and the sooner he knew that the better."

Some of the callers on seeking admittance were admitted--among them Dr. Whittaker. Perhaps amongst the large circle of Wilmot's acquaintances calling themselves Wilmot's friends, that eminent practitioner was the only one who had a direct and palpable feeling of annoyance at Wilmot's return.

Dr. Whittaker's originally good practice had been considerably amplified by the patients who, under Wilmot's advice, had yielded themselves up to Dr. Whittaker's direction during Wilmot's absence, and the substitute naturally looked with alarm upon the reappearance of the great original. So Dr. Whittaker presented himself at an early date in Charles-street, and being admitted, had a long and, on his side at least, an earnest talk with his friend. After the state and condition of various of the leading patients had been discussed between then, Whittaker began to touch upon more dangerous, and, to him more interesting, ground, and said, with an attempt at jocosity,--and Whittaker was a ponderous man, in whom humour was as natural and as easy as it might have been in Sir Isaac Newton,--

"And now that I have given account of my stewardship, I suppose my business is ended, and all I have to do is to return my trust into the hands of him from whom I received it."

He said this with a smile and a smirk, but with an anxious look in his eyes notwithstanding.

"I don't clearly understand you," said Wilmot. "If you mean to ask me whether I intend to take up my practice again, my answer is clear and distinct--No. If you wish to inquire whether those patients whom you have been attending in my absence will continue to send for you, I am in no position to say. All I can say is, that if they send for me, I shall let them know that I have retired from the profession, and that you are taking my place."