"Where's her ladyship?"
"In the boudoir, sir, waiting for the doctor."
"What doctor? Dr. Joyce?"
"And the strange gentleman, sir. They're both together in Miss Madeleine's room."
"Ah, Muriel! So Dr. Wilmot has arrived?"
"Yes, and gone off straight with Joyce to Madeleine. You see I was right in recommending you to go out as usual. Your fine London physician never asked for you, never mentioned your name."
"Well, perhaps you were right. I should have worried myself into a fever here; not that I've done any good out--missed every shot. What's he like?"
"He! Who? Dr. Wilmot? I had scarcely an opportunity of observing, but I should say brusque and self-sufficient. He and Joyce went off at once. I thanked him for coming, and welcomed him in your name and my own; but he did not seem much impressed."
"Full of his case, no doubt; these men never think of anything but--Ah, here he is!--Dr. Wilmot, a thousand thanks for this prompt reply to my hasty summons. Seeing the urgency, you'll forgive the apparent freedom of my telegraphing to you."
"My dear sir," said Wilmot, "I am only too happy to be here; not that, if you could have engrossed the attention of this gentleman, there would have been any necessity for the summons. Dr. Joyce has done every thing that could possibly be done for Miss Kilsyth up to this point."
"A laudato viro laudari," murmured
Dr. Joyce. "But, fortunately or unfortunately, as I learn from him, a district of thirty miles in circumference looks to him for its health. Now I am, for the next few days at least, a free man, and at liberty to devote myself to Miss Kilsyth."
"And you will do so?"
"With the very greatest pleasure. In two words let me corroborate the opinion already given. I understand by my friend here Miss Kilsyth has an attack, more or less serious, of scarlet-fever. She must be kept completely isolated from every one, and must be watched with unremitting attention. Dr. Joyce will send to Aberdeen for a skilled nurse, upon whom he can depend; until her arrival I will take up my position in the sick-room."
"Ten thousand thanks; but--is there any danger?"
"So far all is progressing favourably. We must look to Providence and our own unremitting attention for the result."
"I'm so hot and so thirsty, and these pillows are so uncomfortable! Thanks! Ah, is that you, Dr. Wilmot? I was afraid you had gone. You won't leave me--at least not just yet--will you?"
"Not I, my dear. There--that's better, isn't it? The pillow is cooler, and the lemonade--"
"Ah, so many thanks! I'm very weak tonight; but your voice is so kind, and your manner, and--"
"There; now try and sleep.--Good heavens, how lovely she is! What a mass of golden hair falling over her pillow, and what a soft, innocent, childish manner! And to think that only this morning I--ah, you must never hear the details of this case, my dear old master. When I get back to town I will tell you the result: but the details--never.".
CHAPTER IV.
Mrs. Wilmot.
"I wonder what sort of woman Chudleigh Wilmot's wife is," was a phrase very often used by his acquaintances; and the sentiment it expressed was not unnatural or inexcusable. There are some men concerning whom people instinctively feel that there is something peculiar in their domestic history, that their everyday life is not like the everyday life of other people. Sometimes this impression is positive and defined; it takes the shape of certain conviction that things are wrong in that quarter; that So-and-so's marriage is a mistake, a misfortune, or a calamity, just as the grade of the blunder makes itself felt by his manner, or even by the expression of the countenance. Sometimes the impression is quite vague, and the questioner is conscious only that there must be something of interest to be known. The man's wife may be dear to him, with a special dearness and nearness, too sacred, too much a part of his inmost being to be betrayed to even the friendliest eyes; or there may be an estrangement, which pride and rectitude combine to conceal. At all events--and whichever of these may be the true condition of affairs, or whatever modification of them may be true--the man's acquaintance feel that there is something in his domestic story different from that of other men, and they regard him with a livelier curiosity, if he be a man of social or intellectual mark, in consequence.
It was in the vaguest form that the question, "What sort of a woman is Chudleigh Wilmot's wife?" suggested itself to his acquaintances. Naturally, and necessarily, the greater number of those to whom the rising man became known knew him only in his professional capacity; but that capacity involved a good deal of knowledge, and not a little social intercourse; and there was hardly one among their number who did not say, sooner or later, to himself, or to other people, "I wonder what sort of woman Chudleigh Wilmot's wife is?" This question had been asked mentally, and of each other, by several of the inmates of the old mansion of Kilsyth; while the grave, preoccupied, and absorbed physician dwelt within its walls, devoting all his energies of mind and body to the battle with disease, in which he was resolved to conquer. But no one who was there, or likely to be there, could have answered the question, strange to say--not even Wilmot himself.
Chudleigh Wilmot's marriage had come about after a fashion in which there was nothing very novel, remarkable, or interesting. Mabel Darlington was a pretty girl, who came of a good family, with which Wilmot's mother had been connected; had a small fortune, which was very acceptable to the young man just starting in his arduous profession; and was as attractive to him as any woman could have been at that stage of his life. Partly inclination, partly convenience, and in some measure persuasion, were the promoters of the match. Wilmot knew that a medical man had a better chance of success as a married than as a single man; and as this was a fixed, active, and predominant idea among his relatives and friends--in fact, an article of faith, and a perpetual text of continual discourses--he had everything to encourage him in the design which had formed itself, though somewhat faintly, in his mind, when he renewed his acquaintance with Miss Darlington, on the occasion of her appearance at his mother's house in the character of a "come out" young lady. He had often seen her as a child and a little girl, being himself at the time a somewhat older child and a much bigger boy; but he had never entertained for her that disinterested, ardent, wretchedness-producing passion known as "calf love;" so that the impression she made upon him at a later period owed nothing to earlier recollection. His mother liked the girl, and praised her eloquently and persistently to Chudleigh; so eloquently and persistently indeed, that if he had not happened to be of her opinion from the beginning, she would probably have inspired him with a powerful dislike to Miss Darlington, by placing that young lady in his catalogue of bores. He was not by any means the sort of man to marry a woman for whom he did not care at all, to please his mother, or secure his own prosperity; but he was just the sort of man to care all the more for a girl because his mother liked her, and to make up his mind to marry her, if she would have him, the more quickly on that account.
The courtship was a short one; and even in its brief duration Chudleigh Wilmot never felt, never tried to persuade himself, that Mabel was his first object in life. He knew that his profession had his heart, his brain, his ambition in its grasp; that he loved it, and thought of it, and lived for it in a way,