A Resolve, and its Results.
The illness of Madeleine Kilsyth engrossed the attention and engaged
the sympathy of her father so completely, and so entirely blinded him
to other considerations, that when he chanced to encounter a servant
on his way to Wilmot's room, in whose hand he recognised the ominous
yellow cover which indicated a telegraphic despatch, he immediately
accompanied the man to the door. He then hardly gave his guest time to
peruse the message before he said impetuously:
"Nothing to take you away from us, I trust. Pray tell me?" and the
otherwise polite gentleman did his best to peer at the pencilled
characters on the flimsy sheet of paper which Wilmot held in his hand.
For a moment his eager question remained unanswered, and his guest
stood frowning and uncertain. The next, though the frown remained, the
look of uncertainty passed away, and then Wilmot turned frankly to the
impatient questioner and said:
"This is a message from an old friend and patient of mine. He wants me
very much, and asks me to return at once."
"And--and what will you do? _Must_ you go?" asked the distressed
father in a tone of the keenest anxiety.
"I shall stay here, sir, until your daughter is out of danger. There
are many who can replace me in London in Foljambe's case; there is no
one who can replace me here in Miss Kilsyth's."
"You are very good, Wilmot. I really can't thank you sufficiently,"
said Kilsyth, immensely relieved.
"No need to thank me at all, my dear sir," said Wilmot. "And now I
will make my report to you, which no doubt you were coming to hear."
The two gentlemen had rather a long talk, and on its completion Wilmot
returned to his room to write letters; and Kilsyth went to tell Lady
Muriel that they had had a narrow escape of losing Wilmot, but he had
determined to disregard the message, and stay by Madeleine. Did she
not think Wilmot a very fine fellow? Had she not perfect confidence in
his skill? and was not the interest he was taking in Madeleine's case
extraordinary? To all these queries the Lady Muriel made answer in the
affirmative, with heightened colour and brightened eyes, which, if
Kilsyth had happened to notice those phenomena at all, he would have
ascribed to an increase of feeling towards Madeleine; to be hailed, on
his part, with much gratitude and delight. But Kilsyth did not happen
to notice them at all.
Chudleigh Wilmot was a man accustomed to act promptly on a resolution;
and perhaps, like many more of similar temperament, likely to act all
the more promptly when the motives of that resolution were not quite
clear or quite justifiable before his own judgment. In the present
instance he certainly did not act with perfect candour towards
himself. He made very much to himself of his apprehensions concerning
the result of Madeleine's illness, and his absolute want of confidence
in the skill of Mr. Joyce. He resolutely shut his eyes to the long and
substantial claims of Mr. Foljambe to paramount consideration on his
part, and he determined to "see this matter out," as he phrased it, in
his one-sided mental cogitation, by which he meant that he was
determined to invest the temptation in his way with the specious name
of duty, and to try to persuade himself that he had the assent of his
conscience in pursuing a course opposed to his judgment. In pursuance
of this determination, Chudleigh Wilmot wrote to his wife the
following letter. To anyone familiar with the man's habits, it
would have been suggestive, that when he had written "Kilsyth," and
the date, he paused for several minutes, fidgeted with a stick of
sealing-wax, got up and walked about the room, and, finally, began to
write with unusual haste:
"MY DEAR MABEL,--Your telegram came all right; but my leaving this is
quite impossible for the present. You must tell Foljambe how I am
circumstanced. Poor old fellow! I am sorry for him; but he will pull
through, as usual; and there is nothing to be done for him which
anyone else cannot do just as well as myself. He had better see
Whittaker; or, if he does not like him for any reason--and the dear
old boy _is_ whimsical--let him see Perkins: tell him I recommend
either confidently. You had better go and see him, if your cold is all
right again, and cheer him up. As for me, I am effectually imprisoned
here until this case decides itself one way or the other. Miss Kilsyth
could not possibly be left to the care of the country doctor here; and
there is no one within any _possible_ distance but Sir Saville, who
would not _stay_, supposing he would _come_, which is doubtful. The
same answer must be given in all cases for the next week or so. There
is no use in anyone telegraphing for me. The country about here is
beautiful; but of course I don't see much of it. The Kilsyths are
pleasant people in their way, and full of gratitude to me. Lady Muriel
talks of making your acquaintance when they come to town. Nothing of
consequence at home, I suppose? Tell Whittaker to look after Foljambe
very zealously, if he will have him.--Yours affectionately,
C. WILMOT.
"P. S. The case is malignant scarlet-fever, and my patient and I are
in quarantine. Kilsyth is in great trouble--devoted to his daughter."
When he had sealed this letter, and left it on the table for the post,
Wilmot once more went to his patient's room. The suffering girl had
fallen into an uneasy slumber; her face, with the disfiguring flush
invading its fairness, was turned towards the door, the heavy eyes
were closed, and the parched red lips were open. With a skilful
noiseless touch, Wilmot lifted the restless head to an easier attitude
upon the pillow, and moistened the dry mouth. The girl's golden hair
had slipped out of the silken net which had confined it, and a
quantity of its thick tresses was caught in one hot hand. Wilmot
released the tangled hair, laid the hand upon the smooth coverlet,
looked long at the young face, and then, stepping gently to the window
where the nurse was sitting, asked how long the patient had been
sleeping. Ever since he had left her, it seemed. Lady Muriel had been
there, "leastways at the dressing-room door," the nurse added, and had
wanted to see him particularly, she (the nurse) thought, about sending
the children out of the way of infection. Lady Muriel also asked
whether they were not going to cut off Miss Kilsyth's hair.
"Which it does seem a pity, poor dear!" said the nurse, speaking in
the skilful whisper which does not disturb the patient, and is the
most difficult of _tones_ to acquire; and throwing a motherly glance
at the sleeping girl, who just then moaned painfully.
"Cut off her hair!" said Wilmot,--as if the mere notion were a horrid
barbarism, which he could not contemplate as a possibility; "certainly
not--it is entirely unnecessary."
"Well, sir," said the nurse, "it's mostly done in fevers. Wherever
I've nursed, I've always done it, first thing."
Wilmot turned red and hot. Why should he shrink from sanctioning or
ordering the sacrifice in this case, as he had done in a thousand
others without a thought of hesitation or regret, just like any other
detail? Why, indeed? if not because those were the _thousand_ cases,
while this was the _one_. But he did not face the question; he turned
aside from it--turned aside, with his eyes piercing the gloom of the
shaded room, in search of the gleam of the golden locks. "No, no," he
thought, "the 'little head sunning over with curls' shall 'shine on,'
if I can manage it." So he told the nurse that was a matter for after
consideration, and that she was to have him called when Miss Kilsyth
should wake; and he went out for a solitary walk.
Lady Muriel was most grateful to Dr. Wilmot for the care and skill
which he exercised in Madeleine's case. Scarcely Kilsyth himself was
more unremitting in his inquiries after the patient, more anxious as
to the result. But husband and wife were actuated by totally different
motives. The man feared lest the hope of his life should be quenched,
the woman lest the object of her ambition should be frustrated; the
man dreaded the loss of his darling, the woman the confusion of her
scheme. For Lady Muriel had a scheme in connection with Madeleine
Kilsyth, which it may be as well at once to declare.
It is Mr. Longfellow who informs us that no one is so accursed by
fate, no one so utterly desolate, but some heart, though unknown,
responds unto his own. When Lady Muriel Inchgarvie was running her
career of two London seasons, waiting for the arrival of the man whom
she could persuade herself into marrying, and whom she could persuade
into marrying her; while Mr. Burton and Sir Coke Only were fluttering
like moths round her brilliant light,--the world, which thinks it
marks everything, and which hugs itself in appreciation of its
wonderful sagacity and perspicacity, and which had already supremely
settled that Lady Muriel had no heart to lose, little knew that its
sentence was a just one--simply because Lady Muriel had lost her
heart. There was a connection of the house of Inchgarvie, a tall thin
Scotchman, named Stewart Caird, a barrister of Lincoln's-inn, who had
been a long time settled in London, and who, in virtue of his
aristocratic connections, his perfect gentlemanliness, and his utter
harmlessness--for everyone knew that poor Stewart merely lived from
hand to mouth, by the exercise of his profession, and by writing in
the law magazines and reviews--was asked into a good deal of society.
He was a languid, consumptive-looking man, with a high hectic colour,
and deep-violet eyes, and a soft tremulous voice; and after he had
claimed kinship with Lady Muriel, and had his claim allowed, he found
plenty of opportunities of meeting her constantly, and on every
occasion he was to be found by her side. This was the one chance which
fortune had bestowed on Muriel Inchgarvie of loving and being
simultaneously beloved; and it is but fair to say that she availed
herself of it. Not for one instant did either of them think of the
hopelessness of their passion. Lady Muriel well knew that a marriage
with Stewart Caird was simply impossible; and Stewart Caird knew it
too, possessing at the same time the additional knowledge, that even
if family affairs could have been squared by his coming into the
immediate heritage of fabulous wealth, there was yet a slight drawback
in the fact that his lungs could not possibly hold out beyond six
months. And yet they went on loving and fooling: to her the mere fact
that there could never be any ties between them was, as it always has
been, an incentive to a quasi-romantic attachment; to him, with the
perfect conviction that he was a doomed man, the love of a pretty
high-bred woman softened the terrors of death, and prevented him from
dwelling on his fate. So they went on; the world taking little heed of
them, and they ignoring the world; he growing weaker and weaker, but
always disguising his weakness, until one night in the height of the
season, when Lady Muriel, dressed for a ball, received a short
pencil-note, feebly scrawled: "If you would see me before I die, come
at once.--S.C. You know me well enough to be certain that this is no
romantic figure of speech." The writing, feeble throughout, trailed
off at last into scarcely legible characters. Lady Muriel wrote one
hasty line to the lady who was to be her chaperon, pleading illness as
her excuse for not fetching her, threw a thick cloak and hood over her
ball-dress and her ivy-wreathed hair, and told the coachman, who was
devoted to her, to drive her to Old-square, Lincoln's-inn. There,
propped up by pillows, and attended by a hired nurse, who was by no
means reluctant to take a hint, and, accompanied by a spirit-bottle,
to betake herself to a further room, she found poor Stewart Caird,
with large bistre rings round his eyes and two flaming red spots on
his hollow cheeks. Between the attacks of a racking cough, he told her
that his end was nigh; that he had long foreseen it, but that he could
not deny himself the privilege of winning her love. He acknowledged
the selfishness of the act; but trusted she would pardon him, when he
assured her that the knowledge that she cared for him had
inexpressibly lightened the last few months of his earthly career, and
that he should die more happily, knowing that he left one regretful
heart behind him. He said this in a voice which was tolerably firm at
first, but which, touched by her sobs, grew more and more tremulous,
and finally broke down, when, in an access of emotion, she flung her
arms round him, and clasped him to her heart. How long they remained
thus tranced in love and grief neither ever knew; it was the first,
the last wild access of passion that ever was to accrue to either. The
future, so imminent to one of them at least, was unthought of, and
they lived but in the then present fleeting moment, But before they
parted Stewart spoke to Muriel of his younger brother Ramsay, who had
been left to his care, and whom he was now leaving to the mercy of the
world. For Muriel there was, he said he was persuaded, a career in
life. When it fell to her, when she was enjoying it, would she, for
the sake of him who had loved her--ah, so deeply and so dearly!--whose
life she had cheered, and who with his dying breath would call upon
and bless her name--would she watch over and provide for Ramsay Caird?
With the dying man's hand in hers, with her arm round his neck, with
her eyes looking into his, even then glazed and wandering, Muriel
swore to fulfil his wishes, and to undertake this charge. Within
forty-eight hours Stewart Caird was dead; within six weeks after his
death Muriel Inchgarvie was the pledged wife of Kilsyth; and within a
fortnight of her betrothal she had hit upon a plan for the future of
her dead lover's brother.
Ramsay Caird's future career in life was, as Lady Muriel decided, to
be one with Madeleine Kilsyth's, and his fortune was to come to him
through his wife. Madeleine's godfather, a childless, rich, old
Highland proprietor, an old friend and neighbour of Kilsyth's, had at
his death left her twenty thousand pounds, to be hers on her coming of
age, or on her marrying with her father's consent. A pleasant
competence in itself, but a princely fortune for a young man of small
ideas like Ramsay Caird, who was earning a very precarious salary,
given to him more from kindness than from any deserts of his, in the
office of the Edinburgh agent to several large estates. Soon after her
marriage Lady Muriel sent for the young man to Kilsyth, found him
gentlemanly and unassuming, sufficiently shrewd to comprehend the
extremely delicate hints which she gave him as to the course which she
wished him to adopt, and sufficiently delicate to prevent his at once
plunging _in medias res_. Since then he had been frequently at
Kilsyth, and had done his best to make himself agreeable to Madeleine.
He was a good-looking, gentlemanly, quiet young man, without very much
to say for himself, beyond the ordinary society talk, in which he was
fairly glib; he had the names of all the members of all the families
for whom his principal was agent at his tongue's end; had seen many of
them personally,--even knew the appearance of the rest by photograph;
kept himself well posted in their movements, through the medium of the
fashionable journals; and so could fairly hold his own in the
conversation of the people he was thrown amongst. Lady Muriel, who was
as clever as she was proud and ambitious, reckoned Ramsay Caird up to
a nicety; saw exactly how far he was suitable for her plans, and
thought there was little doubt of Madeleine's being captivated by the
handsome glib young man who paid her such respectful homage. But for
once in her life Lady Muriel was wrong. It is but fair to say that
Ramsay Caird never neglected one of the opportunities so frequently
thrown in his way; that he never once committed himself in any
possible manner; that he did not on every occasion seek to recommend
himself to the girl's favour; but it is certain that he failed in
making the smallest impression on her. Lady Muriel, watching the
progress of affairs with the greatest interest, soon felt this, and
was at first dispirited; afterwards consoling herself by the thought
that the girl was passionless and devoid of feeling, but so docile
withal, that it would be only necessary for her father to suggest her
acceptance of Mr. Caird for her at once to fall into the idea.
Thoroughly comforted by this notion, Lady Muriel had of late given
herself no uneasiness in the matter; contenting herself by asking
Ramsay Caird to spend a week or two now and then at Kilsyth, by
throwing him frequently into Madeleine's society when there, and by
keeping up a perpetual gently flowing perennial stream of laudation of
her young _protégé_ to her husband.
On Wilmot's return to the house, he inquired whether it would be
convenient to Lady Muriel to receive him.
"My lady" was in her own sitting-room, and would be very happy to see
Dr. Wilmot. So, he went thither, and found the mistress of the mansion
alone, and looking to very great advantage in the midst of all the
luxuries and refinements with which wealth--in this instance aided by
good taste--adorns life. Her rich and simple dress, her finished
graceful ease of manner, her sunny beauty, and the perfect propriety
with which she expressed interest and anxiety concerning her
stepdaughter, made her a very attractive object to Wilmot. He had not
yet discovered that she did not in the least experience the sentiments
which she glibly expressed in phrases of irreproachable _tournure_; he
did not suspect her of insincerity or want of feeling, or in fact of
any fault. Everything and everybody at Kilsyth wore the best and
fairest of aspects in the eyes of Chudleigh Wilmot, who was,
nevertheless, a very far-seeing and an eminently practical man. Thus,
he only furnished another proof of the often-proven truth, that his
most distinguishing qualities are the first to fail a man, when
judgment is superseded by passion. That is a strong word to use in
such a case as Chudleigh Wilmot's, at least to use so soon; but the
boundary between the feeling which he entertained knowingly, and the
passion which was growing out of it unconsciously, was very slight,
and was destined so soon to be destroyed that the word may pass
unblamed.
The earlier portion of Lady Muriel Kilsyth's conversation with Wilmot
was naturally devoted to Madeleine. She thanked him, with all her own
peculiar grace and fluency, for his attention, his "priceless care,"
for his resolution, which Kilsyth had communicated to her, to remain
with them in this great trouble. She asked him to tell her his "real
opinion;" and he told it. He told her Madeleine was in danger; but
that he hoped, and thought, and believed, her life would be saved. He
spoke with earnestness and feeling; and as he dwelt upon the youth,
the beauty, and the sufferings of the girl, upon her exceeding
preciousness to her father (and gave Lady Muriel credit for sharing
her husband's feelings far beyond what she deserved), the soft dark
eyes fixed themselves upon him with much interest and curiosity. Deep
feeling on any subject was unfamiliar to Lady Muriel; it was not the
habit of her society, or included in the scheme of her own
organisation, and she liked it for its strangeness. Their
conversation lasted long; for when Wilmot was summoned to see his
patient, Lady Muriel invited him to come again to her sitting-room;
and he did so. The question of sending her children away was speedily
decided in the negative; and then the talk rambled on over a great
variety of subjects, and Lady Muriel regarded Wilmot with increasing
interest and surprise, as she discovered more and more of his
originality and fertility of mind. She was not a remarkably clever
woman; but she had more brains and more cultivation than were at all
common among her "set;" and she did occasionally grow very weary of
the well-bred vapid talk, which was the only form of social
intercourse assumed in her circle. She had sometimes wondered whether
something better was not to be found in the limits within which it
would be proper for her to seek for it; but she had stopped at
wonderment; she had not followed it up by effort; and now the very
thing she had wished for had come to her, in the most unexpected form,
and through the most unlikely channel. A doctor, a man whose name she
had merely casually heard, an outsider, one whom in the ordinary
course of events she would have never met, is called in to attend her
stepdaughter in fever, and all at once a new world opens upon Lady
Muriel Kilsyth.
She was quick to receive impressions; and she felt at once that this
day marked an epoch in her life. As this fine-looking, keen,
intelligent man, in whose deep-set eyes, on whose massive forehead
power was enthroned, bent those dark steady eyes upon her, seeming to
read her soul, the frivolity of her life fell away from her, like a
flimsy garment discarded, and she felt, she recognised the charm of
superiority of intellect and strength of character. She drew him out
on the subjects which had the deepest interest for him, as a woman
can, who has tact and perfect manners, even when her intellectual
powers are in no way remarkable; and he enjoyed the happy sociable
hours of the long, uninterrupted afternoon as much, or nearly as much,
as she did. Lady Muriel was too quick and too true an observer to fail
in discerning, before they had strayed very far into the pleasant
paths of their desultory discourse, that there was very little
sentimentality in Chudleigh Wilmot. A practical man, full of action,
of ambition, of love of knowledge, and resolve to win the highest
prizes it could bring him, he yet spoke and looked like a man whose
feelings had been but little tried, and who would be slow to try them.
Lady Muriel knew that Chudleigh Wilmot was a married man. The
circumstance had been mentioned among the people in the house when he
had first been talked of; and she was the first at Kilsyth to ask of
herself, for she had no other to whom to address it, that frequent
question, "What sort of woman is Chudleigh Wilmot's wife?" She could
not have explained, but she did not question, the instinct which led
her to say, as she went to her dressing-room, when their long colloquy
at length came to a conclusion, "I am sure he does not care for her. I
am sure it was not a love-match. I feel convinced he never was in love
in his life, not in any real sense." And then, Lady Muriel Kilsyth
sighed. Life was not yet an old story for either Lady Muriel or
hudleigh.
That evening Wilmot devoted himself to the patient, whose state was
highly precarious; and though he sent reassuring messages to Kilsyth
from time to time, he expressed far more hopefulness than he actually
felt. He was conscious too of a strange sort of relief--a
consciousness which should have shown him how he had deceived
himself--as the conviction that his presence was indeed in the highest
degree beneficial was confirmed by every passing hour. The girl's
eyes--now bright and wandering, now dark and weary--turned in search
of him, in every phase of the fever that was gaining on her, with such
innocent trust and belief as touched him keenly to his conscious
heart. In the stillness of the night, when the very nurse slept, the
physician bent down over the flushed face, and hushed the murmuring
incoherent voice with the tenderest words, and soothed the sick
girl--little more than a child she looked in her hopelessness and
unrest--with all a woman's gentleness. What did he feel for the pretty
young creature thus thrown on his skill, his kindness, his mercy! What
revolution was the silent flight of time, during the hours of that
night, working in Chudleigh Wilmot's life? He was learning the reality
of that in which he had never believed; he was learning the truth of
love. Now, when it was too late, when every barrier of honour, of
honesty, of duty, and of principle stood between him and the object of
the long-deferred, but terribly real, passion which took possession of
him.
When the dawn was stealing into the sick girl's room, the change, the
chill, which come with that ghastly hour to sickness and to health
alike, in wakefulness, came to Madeleine, and she called in a high
querulous tone for her father. The nurse, then beside her, tried to
soothe the girl; but vainly. She refused to lie down; she must, she
would see her father. Wilmot, who knew that she was quite sensible,
quite coherent, and who had feared to startle her by letting her see
him, now came forward, and gently laid her back upon her pillow.
"You shall see your father in the morning," he said. "I am sure you
would not have him disturbed now, my dear; would you?"
"No," she said, with a painful smile; "I would not--certainly not. I
only wanted to know something; and you will tell me."
Her large blue eyes were fixed upon him; her small hand was stretched
out to him with the frankness of a child.
"Of course, if I can, I will tell you."
"Sit down, then," she said, in the thick difficult voice peculiar to
the disease which had hold of her.
He did not sit down, but knelt upon the floor by the bedside, and
raised the pillows on his arm. Her innocent face was close to his.
"Speak as low as you like; I can hear you," said Chudleigh Wilmot.
"I will," she whispered. "I thank you. I only wanted to ask my
father--and I would rather ask you--if--if I am going to die."
Her lips were trembling. His sight grew dim as he answered:
"No, my dear. You are very ill; but you are not going to die. You are
going to get well--not immediately, but before long. You must be
patient, you know; and you must do everything you are desired to do."
"I will when I am sensible," she said; "but I am not always sensible,
you know."
"I know. You are quite sensible now, and the best patient I ever had.
A great deal depends on yourself. I don't mean about not dying; I mean
about getting well sooner. Will you try now how long, being quite
sensible, you can keep quiet?"
"I will," she answered, looking at him with the strange solemn gaze we
see so often in the eyes of a child in mortal sickness. "I am so glad,
Dr. Wilmot, you are sure I am not going to die."
Not a shade of doubt of him; perfect trust in him, entire calm and
serenity in the unruffled feeble voice. Her hand lay loosely in his,
undisturbed except by an occasional feverish twitch; her head was
supported by his arm, which held the pillows; his serious eyes scanned
her face. So he knelt and so she lay as the dawn came; so he knelt and
so she lay as the first rays of the sun came glancing in through the
closed window-curtains; but they found the patient sleeping, and the
steady watch of the physician umrelaxed.
So time passed, and Madeleine's illness took its course, and was met
and fought and beaten at every turn by the skill and judgment, the
coolness and the experience of the "rising man." So unwearied a
watcher had never been seen in a sick-room; so cheerful a counsellor
and consoler had rarely been sent to friends and relatives in anxiety
and suspense. He was appreciated at his worth at Kilsyth. As for
Kilsyth himself, he reverenced, he esteemed, he next to worshipped
Wilmot, holding him as almost superhuman. The nurse "had never seen
such a doctor as him in all her born days, never; and not severe
neither; but knowing as the best and wakefullest must have their
little bit of rest at times." He won golden opinions from all within
the old walls of Kilsyth, and more than all from its mistress.
On the whole, and despite his close and devoted attendance on his
patient, Chudleigh Wilmot saw a great deal of Lady Muriel, and an
infinite number of topics were discussed between them. Each day
brought more extended, more appreciative comprehension of her guest to
the by no means dull intellect of Lady Muriel; and each day quickened
her womanly perception and kindled her already keen and ready
jealousy. When many days had gone by, and Lady Muriel would no longer
have dreamed of denying to herself how much she admired Wilmot,--how
utterly different he was from any other man whom she had ever known;
how much more interesting, how much more engrossing, a man to be
looked up to and respected; a man to suffice to all a woman's need of
reverence and deference,--she would still have been far from
acknowledging that she loved him; but her acknowledgment or her denial
would have made no difference in the fact. She did love him, in a
lofty and reserved kind of way, in which no slur upon her honour,
according to the world's code, which takes cognisance only of the
letter of the law and ignores its spirit, was implied; but with all
her heart she loved him.
So now the situation was this. Chudleigh Wilmot loved one woman within
the walls of the old mansion of Kilsyth; and another woman, their
inmate, loved him. Would she--the other, the older, the more
experienced woman--discover his secret, and overwhelm him with its
disgrace? Time alone could tell that--time, of which there was not
much to run; for Wilmot had been a fortnight at Kilsyth before he
could give its master the joyful intelligence that the fever had
relaxed its grip of his child, and--barring the always present danger
in scarlet-fever of relapse, or what is technically called
"dregs"--Madeleine was safe.
Mabel Wilmot had written to her husband occasionally during the
fortnight which had witnessed the rise and the crisis of Miss
Kilsyth's illness. In her letters, which were few and sparing of
details, she never alluded to the cause of her husband's unprecedented
absence; Wilmot did not notice the omission. She gave him few details
concerning herself; Wilmot did not observe their paucity. The glamour
was over him; the enchanted land held him.
"I am not feeling much better," said Mabel in one of her letters; "but
I daresay--indeed I have no doubt--the weather is against me;
Whittaker thinks so too. I enclose his report. There is nothing new
here, or of importance."
Chudleigh Wilmot accepted his wife's account of the state of things at
home, and replied to her letters in his usual strain. He had failed to
notice that she never alluded to Miss Kilsyth; or he would hardly have
dealt with so much emphasis, or at such length, on the details of a
case to which the recipient of his letters manifested such complete
indifference.
Dr. Whittaker continued to report upon the cases to which he had been
called in; and no more telegrams interrupted the concentration of
Chudleigh Wilmot's attention upon the illness and convalescence of
Madeleine Kilsyth.