LITMIR.BIZ

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sullen conviction in Mabel Wilmot's voice impressed her friend painfully, and kept her silent for a while. Then she said:

      "You are unjust, Mabel. You have concealed your suffering and illness from me as effectually as from him."

      "Do you attempt to compare the cases?" said Mrs. Wilmot with a degree of passion extremely unusual to her. "I deny that they admit of comparison. However, there is an end of the subject; let us talk of something else. If I am not better in a day or so, I can do as Mr. Foljambe has had to do: I can call in Whittaker, or somebody else. It does not matter. Let us turn to some more agreeable topic." And the friends talked of something else. They lunched together, and they went out driving; they did some very consolatory shopping, and paid a number of afternoon calls. But Henrietta Prendergast watched her friend closely and unremittingly; and came to the conclusion that she was really ill, and also that it was imperatively right her husband should be informed of the fact. Henrietta dined at Charles-street; and when the two women were alone in the evening, and the confidence-producing tea-tray had been removed, she tried to introduce the interdicted subject. Ordinarily she was anything but a timid woman, anything but likely to be turned from her purpose; but there was something new in Mabel's manner, a sad intensity and abstraction, which puzzled and distressed her, and she had never in her life felt it so hard to say the things she had determined to say.

      Argument and persuasion Mrs. Wilmot took very ill; and at length her friend told her, in an accent of resolution, that she had made up her mind as to her own course of action.

      "It is wrong to leave Wilmot in ignorance, Mabel," she said; "wrong to him and wrong to you. If only a little of all you have acknowledged to me were the matter with you, it would still be wrong to conceal it from him. If you will not tell him, I will. If you will not promise me to write to him tonight, I will write to him to-morrow. Mind, Mabel, I mean what I say; and I will keep my word."

      Mrs. Wilmot had been leaning, almost lying, back in a deep easy-chair, when her friend spoke. She raised herself slowly while she was speaking, her dark eyes fixed upon her, and when she had finished, caught her by the wrist.

      "If you do this thing, Henrietta, I most solemnly declare to you that I will never speak to you or see you again. In this, in all that concerns my husband and myself, I claim, I insist upon perfect freedom of action. No human being--on my side at least--shall come between him and me. I am thoroughly in earnest in this, Henrietta. Now choose between him and me."

      "Choose between him and you! What can you mean, Mabel?"

      "I know what I mean, Henrietta, and I am determined in this. When you know all, you will see that only I can speak to him; and that I must speak, not write."

      "Then you will speak?"

      "Yes, I will speak. I suppose he will return in a few days; and then I will speak."

      Then Mabel Wilmot told her friend intelligence which surprised her very much, and they stayed together until late; and when they parted Mrs. Prendergast looked very thoughtful and serious.

      "This will make things either better or worse," she said to herself that night. "If he returns soon, and receives the news well, all may go on well afterwards; but if he stays away for this girl's sake much longer, I don't think even the child will do any good."

      Many times within the next few days, in thinking of her friend, Mrs. Prendergast said, "There's a desperation about her that I never saw before, and that I don't like."

      The days passed over, and Wilmot's patients were obliged either to content themselves with the attendance of the insinuating Whittaker, or to exercise their own judgment and call in some other physician of their own choice. There was no doubt that the delay was injuring Wilmot. He might have had his week's holiday, and passed it with Sir Saville Rowe, and welcome; but he was not at Sir Saville's, and the week had long been over. As for Mr. Foljambe, his indignation was extreme.

      "Hang it!" he observed, "if Chudleigh can't come back when he might, why does he pretend to keep up a London practice? And to send me Whittaker too; a fellow I hate like--like colchicum. I suppose I can choose my doctor for myself, can't I?"

      Thus the worthy and irascible old gentleman, who was more attached to Chudleigh Wilmot than to any other living being, would discourse to droppers-in concerning his absent favourite; and as the droppers-in to the invalid room of the rich banker were numerous, and of the class to whom Wilmot was especially well known, the old gentleman's talk led to somewhat wide and varied speculation on the causes and inducements of his absence. Mr. Foljambe had ascertained all the particulars which Wilmot had given his wife; and Kilsyth of Kilsyth was soon a familiar phrase in connection with the rising man. Everybody knew where he was, and "all about it;" and when the unctuous and deprecating Whittaker talked of the "specially interesting case" which was detaining Wilmot, glances of unequivocal intelligence, but of somewhat equivocal meaning, were interchanged among his hearers; and guesses were made that Miss Kilsyth was a "doosed nice" girl, or her stepmother Lady Muriel,--"young enough to be Kilsyth's daughter, you know, and never lets him forget it, by Jove,"--was a "doosed fine" woman. "The Kilsyths" began to be famous among Wilmot's clientèle and the old banker's familiars; the Peerage, lying on his bookshelves, and hitherto serenely undisturbed, with its covering of dust, was frequently in demand; and young Lothbury, of Lombard, Lothbury, & Co., made quite a sensation when he informed a select circle of Mr. Foljambe's visitors that he knew Ronald Kilsyth very well--was in his club in fact.

      "Old Kilsyth's son," he explained; "a very good fellow in his way, and quite the gentleman, as he ought to be of course, but a queer-tempered one, and a bit of a prig."

      "Have you written to your husband, Mabel?" said Mrs. Prendergast with solemn anxiety, when the third week of Wilmot's absence was drawing to a close, and his wife's illness had increased day by day, so that now it was a common topic of conversation among their acquaintance.

      "No," returned Mabel, "I have not. I have told you I will not write, but speak to him; and I am resolved."

      "But Whittaker? Surely he does not know your husband is ignorant of your state?"

      "O, dear no," returned Mrs. Wilmot, with a smile by no means pleasant to see. "He is the jolliest and simplest of men in all matters of this kind. Mrs. Whittaker wouldn't, in fact couldn't, have a finger ache unknown to him; and he never suspects that things are different with me."

      "Mabel," said her friend, "you do very, very wrong; but I will not interfere or argue with you. Only, remember, I believe much will depend on your reception of him."

      "Don't be alarmed, Henrietta," said Mabel Wilmot. "I promise you, unhesitatingly, that Wilmot will not be dissatisfied with the reception he shall have from me.".

CHAPTER VIII.

      Kith and Kin.

       Table of Contents

      It was a good thing for Kilsyth that he had a soft, sweet, affectionate being like Madeleine on whom he could vent the fund of affection stored in his warm heart, and who could appreciate and return it. In the autumn of life, when the sad strange feeling first comes upon us, that we have seen the best of our allotted time, and that the remainder of our pilgrimage must be existence rather than life; when the ears which tingled at the faintest whisper of love know that they will never again hear the soft liquid language once so marvellously sweet to them; when the heart which bounded at the merest promptings of ambition beats with unmoved placidity even as we recognise the victories of our juniors in the race; when we see the hopes and cares and wishes which we have so long cherished one by one losing their sap and strength and verdure, one by one losing their hold on our being, and borne whirling away, lifeless and shrivelled, on the sighing wind of time,--we need be grateful indeed if we have anything so cheering and promiseful as a daughter's affection. It is the old excitement that has given a zest to life for so many years; administered in a very mild form indeed, but still there. The boys are well enough, fine gentlemanly fellows, making their way in the world, well spoken of, well esteemed, doing credit to the parent stock, and taking--ay,

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