LITMIR.BIZ

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baritone voice the refrain of a little song of hers--

      "Loyal je serai

       Durant ma vie"--

      he was expressing one of the guiding sentiments of his life. Colonel Jefferson was essentially loyal; to shrink from a friend who was in a difficulty, to shuffle out of supporting in purse, person, or any way in which it might be requisite, a comrade who had a claim of old acquaintance or strong intimacy, was in his eyes worse than the majority of crimes for which people stand at the dock of the Old Bailey. In this matter he never swerved for an instant. He never gave the question of infection a thought; he had had scarlet-fever at Eton, and jungle-fever out in India, and he was as case-hardened, he said, as a rhinoceros. He took no credit to himself for being fearless of infection, or indeed for anything else, this brave simple-minded good fellow; but if anyone had been able to see the working of his heart, they would have known what credit he deserved for holding to his grand old creed of loyalty to his friend, and for ignoring the whispers of the siren, even when she was as fascinating and potential as Emily Fairfax. When some one asked if he were going, he laughed a great sardonic guffaw, and affected to treat the question as a joke. When the disease was pronounced to be unmistakably infectious, he at once constituted himself as a means of communication between Dr. Wilmot and the outer world; and his honour and loyalty enabled him to face the fact that probably little Lord Towcester had followed Lady Fairfax to her next visiting place, and was there administering consolation to her with great equanimity. When Dr. Wilmot came out for his half-hour's stride up and down the terrace, he generally found the Colonel and Duncan Forbes waiting for him; and these three would pace away together, the two militaires chatting gaily on light subjects calculated to relieve the tedium of the doctor, and to turn his thoughts into pleasanter channels, until it was time for him to go back to his duty. And when the worst was over, and Chudleigh Wilmot could have longer and more frequent intervals of absence from the sick-room, it was Charley Jefferson who proposed that they should establish a kind of mess in the smoking-room, where the Doctor, who necessarily debarred himself from communion with the others at the dinner-table, might yet enjoy the social converse of such as were not afraid of infection. So a dinner-table was organised in the smoking-room, and Jefferson and Duncan Forbes invited themselves to dine with the Doctor. They were the next day joined by Mrs. Severn, who had all along wished to devote herself to the invalid, and had with the greatest difficulty been restrained from establishing herself en permanence as nurse in Madeleine's chamber; and Mr. Pitcairn asked for and obtained permission to join the party, and proved to have such a talent for imitation and such a stock of quaint Scotch stories as made him a very valuable addition to it. So the "Condemned Cell," as its denizens called it, prospered immensely; and by no means the least enjoyment in the house emanated from it.

      Lady Muriel, seeing more and more of Wilmot, as the closeness of his attendance on his patient became relaxed by her advance towards convalescence, and studying him with increased attention, learned to regard him with feelings such as no man of her numerous and varied acquaintance had ever before inspired her with. The impression he had made upon her in the first interview was not removed or weakened, and he presented himself to her mind--which was naturally inquiring, and possessed considerably more intelligence than she had occasion to use, in a general way, in her easy-going, prosperous, and conventional life--in the light of an interesting and remunerative study.

      Lady Muriel's faultlessly good manners precluded the indulgence of any perceptible absence of mind; and she possessed the enviable faculty which some women of the world exhibit in such perfection, of carrying, or rather helping, on a conversation to which she was not in reality giving attention, and in which she did not feel the smallest particle of interest. The gallant militaires, the dashing sportsmen, the grands seigneurs, and the ladies of distinction who were among her associates, and the gentlemen, at least of the number of her admirers, were accustomed to regard Lady Muriel's powers of conversation as something quite out of the common way; and so indeed they were--only these simple-minded and ingenuous individuals did not quite understand the direction taken by their uncommonness. It never occurred to them to calculate how much of her talking Lady Muriel did by means of intelligent acquiescent looks, graceful little bows, sprightly exclamations, a judicious expression of intense interest in the subject under discussion when it chanced to be personal to the other party to the discourse, and sundry other skilful and effective feminine devices. It never dawned upon them that one half the time she did not hear, and during the whole time she did not care, what was said; that her graceful manner was merely manner, and her real state of mind one of complete indifference to themselves and almost everyone besides. Not that Lady Muriel was an unhappy woman. Far from it. She was too sensible to be unhappy without just cause; and she certainly had not that. She perfectly appreciated her remarkably comfortable lot in life; she estimated wealth, station, domestic tranquillity and respect, and the unbounded power which she exercised in her household domain, quite as highly as they deserved to be estimated; and though as free from vulgarity of mind as from vulgarity of manner, she was not in the least likely to affect any sentimental humility or mistake about her own social advantages. She could as easily have bragged about them as forgotten them; but just because she held them for what they were worth, and did not exaggerate or depreciate them, Lady Muriel was given to absence of mind; and though neither unhappy, nor imagining herself so, she was occasionally bored, and acknowledged it. Only to herself though. Lady Muriel Kilsyth had no confidantes, no intimacies. Hers was the equable kind of prosperous life which did not require any; and she was the last woman in the world to acknowledge a weakness which her truly admirable manners gave her power most successfully to conceal.

      The touch of sorrow or anxiety is a sovereign remedy for ennui. It will succeed when all the resources to which the victims of that fell disease are accustomed to have recourse fail ignominiously. If Lady Muriel had loved Madeleine Kilsyth, the girl's illness would have put boredom to flight, with the first flush or shiver of fever, the first dimness of the eyes, the first tone of complaint in the clear young voice. But Lady Muriel did not love Madeleine, and did not pretend to herself that she loved her. Indeed Lady Muriel never pretended to herself. She had seen and understood that to deceive oneself is at once much easier and more dangerous than to deceive other people, and she avoided doing so on principle--on the worldly-wise principle, that is, by which she so admirably regulated her life--and reaped a rich harvest of popularity. She did not dislike the girl at all, and she would have been very sorry if she had died, partly for the sake of Kilsyth, whom she really liked and admired, and who would have broken his stout simple heart for his daughter--"much sooner and more surely than for me," Lady Muriel thought; "but that is quite natural, and as it should be. She is the child of his first love, and I am his second wife, and he is quite as fond of me as I want him to be;"--for she was a thoroughly sensible woman, and would much rather not have had more love than she could reciprocate. But she was perfectly equable and composed. Throughout Madeleine's illness it did not cause her sorrow, though her manner conveyed precisely the proper degree of stepmotherly concern which was called for under the circumstances; and she did not suffer from anxiety, being rationally satisfied that all the skill, care, and indulgence demanded by the exigencies of the case were liberally bestowed on Madeleine. Anxiety was quite uncalled for, and therefore did not chase away the brooding spirit of ennui from Lady Muriel.

      The first thing that struck her particularly with regard to Chudleigh Wilmot was that she did not experience any sense of boredom in his presence. In fact it dissipated that ordinarily prevailing malady; she was really interested in everything he talked about, really charmed by the manner in which he talked, and had no need whatever to draw on the ever-ready resources of her manner and savoir faire.

      When Wilmot began to make his appearance freely among the small party at Kilsyth, and, after the usual inquiries--in which the serious and impressive tone at first observed was gradually discarded--to enter into general conversation, and to exercise all the very considerable powers which he possessed of making himself agreeable, Lady Muriel found out and admitted that this was the pleasantest time of the day. The interval between this discovery and her finding herself longing for the arrival of that time--dwelling upon all its incidents when she was alone, making it a central point in her life, in fact--was very brief.

      With this new feeling came all the keen perception, the close observation, and the nascent suspicion which could not fail to accompany it, in such a "thorough"

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