LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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