■ 
 
 LI B HAHY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N I VLR.5ITY 
 
 OF ILLINOIS 
 
 8£3 A 
 v.l

 
 THE FORLORN HOPE.
 
 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 £ lobcl. 
 
 EDMUND YATES, 
 
 AUTHOB OF " RUNNING THE GAUNTLET," " KISSING THE ROD," ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18 CATHERINE ST., STRAND. 
 1867. 
 
 [All rights of translation and reproduction reserved.]
 
 IjSlfo 
 
 mi 
 v.i 
 
 TO 
 
 CHARLES FECHTER.
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/forlornhopenovel01yate
 
 CONTENTS. 
 ■ mi" 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 i. " Sound an Alarm" i 
 
 ii. Master and Pupil 24 
 
 in. Watching and Waiting 45 
 
 iv. Mrs. Wilmot 72 
 
 v. A Resolve, and its Results .... 94 
 
 vi. At Kilsyth . 124 
 
 vii. Brooding 147 
 
 viii. Kith and Kin 165 
 
 ix. Ronald 193 
 
 x. Cross-examination 212 
 
 xi. Irreparable 239 
 
 xii. The Leaden Seal 258
 
 THE FORLOM HOPE. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 " SOUND AX ALARM." 
 
 The half-hour clressing-bell ruiig out as Sir Dun- 
 can Forbes jumped from the hired carriage which 
 had borne him the last stage of Ins journey to 
 Kilsyth, and immediately followed his servant, 
 who had put in a pantomimically abrupt appear- 
 ance at the carriage - door, to his room. The 
 steaming horses shook their sides, and rattled 
 their harness dismally, in the dreary autumnal 
 evening ; but a host of gillies and understrappers 
 had hurried out at the noise of the approaching 
 wheels, and so quickly despoiled the carriage oi 
 its luggage, that within a very few minutes its 
 VOL. I. b
 
 2 THE FORLOKN HOPE. 
 
 driver — comforted by something over his fare, 
 in addition to a stiff glass of the incomparable 
 Kilsyth whisky — was slowly wending his way 
 back, over a road which to any one but a High- 
 lander would have seemed impassable in the fog 
 that had begun to cloud the neighbouring moun- 
 tains in an almost impenetrable shroud of misty 
 gray. From the cold, chilly, damp mountain air, 
 from the long solitary ride, for the last twenty 
 miles of which he had not met a human creature, 
 to the airy bedroom with its French paper, the 
 bright wood-fire burning on its hearth, the wax 
 candles on the dressing-table, the drawn chintz 
 curtains, the neat writing-table, the little shelf of 
 prettily-bound well-chosen books, was a transition 
 indeed for Duncan Forbes. One glance around 
 sufficed to show him. all these things, and to show 
 him in addition the steaming bath, the warmed 
 linen, the other various arrangements for his 
 comfort which the forethought of Dixon his ser- 
 vant had prepared for him. He was used to 
 luxuries, and thoroughly accustomed to rough it ; 
 he was not an impressionable young man ; but
 
 SOUND AN ALARM. 3 
 
 there are times, even if we be only eight-and- 
 twenty, good-looking, and in the Household Bri- 
 gade, when we feel a kind of sympathy with the 
 working-man who declared that " life was not all 
 beer and skittles," and are disposed to look rather 
 more seriously than usual upon our own condition 
 and our surroundings. The journey from Glen- 
 laggan — it is, it must be confessed, an awful road 
 — had had its effect on Duncan Forbes. Why he 
 should have permitted himself to be worked upon 
 either by a sense of solitude, or by an involuntary 
 tribute to the wildness of the scenery, or perhaps 
 by dyspepsia, arising from a recent change of 
 living, to fall temporarily into a low state of mind ; 
 to think about his duns, debts, and difficulties ; to 
 wonder why he was not at that moment staying 
 with his mother in Norfolk, instead of plunging 
 into the depths of the Highlands ; to think of his 
 cousin Ethel Spalding, and to clench his fists 
 violently and mutter strong expressions as the 
 image of a certain Dundas Adair, commonly 
 called Lord Adair, rose before him simultaneously 
 with that of his said cousin ; why he then fell into
 
 4 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 a state which was half lachrymose and half morose, 
 impelling him to refresh himself from a silver 
 flask, and to make many mental resolutions as to 
 his future life, — why he did all this is utterly im- 
 material to us, as Sir Duncan Forbes is by no 
 manner of means our hero, in fact has very little to 
 do with our story. But the journey had its effect 
 upon him, and rendered the comfort and luxury 
 of Kilsyth doubly precious in his eyes. So that 
 when he had had his bath, and, well advanced in 
 his dressing, was luxuriating in the comfort of 
 cleanliness and fresh linen, and the prospect of an 
 excellent dinner, he had sufficiently returned to 
 his normal condition to ask Dixon — who had 
 preceded him by a couple of days — whether the 
 house was full, and who were there. 
 
 " House quite full, sir," replied Dixon. " Co- 
 lonel Jefferson, sir, of the First Life -guards ; 
 Capting Severn, sir, of the Second Life-guards, 
 and his lady; Markis Towcester, as have jist 
 jined the Blues ; Honble Capting Shaddock, of the 
 Eighteenth 'Ussars ; Lord Roderick Douglas, of 
 the Scots Fusiliers; and — "
 
 SOUND AN ALARM. 5 
 
 " Drop the Army List, Dixon," growled his 
 master, at that moment performing heavily on his 
 head with a pair of hair-brushes; "who else is 
 here?" 
 
 " There's the Danish Minister, sir — which I 
 won't try to pronounce his name — and his lady 
 and there's the Dook and Duchess of Northaller- 
 ton — which the Dook has the gout that bad, his 
 man told me — used to be in our ridgment, Sir 
 Duncan, and was bought out by his mother 
 on his father's death — as tojbe past bearin' some- 
 times ; and Lady Fairfax, sir ; and Lady Dunkeld, 
 as is Lady Muriel's cousin, sir; and a Mr. Pit- 
 cairn, as is a distant relation of the family's ; and a 
 Mr. Fletcher, as is, I'm told, a hartist, or some- 
 thing of that kind, sir — he hasn't brought a man 
 here, sir ; so I'm unable to say ; but he seems 
 to be well thought of, sir; quite at his ease, as 
 they say, among the company, sir." 
 
 " Dear me!" said Duncan Forbes, suspending 
 the action of the hair-brushes for a moment, while 
 he grinned grimly; "you seem to be a great 
 observer, Dixon."
 
 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 "Well, sir, one can't keep one's hears shut 
 entirely, nor one's eyes, and I noticed this gentle- 
 man took a kind of leading part in the talk at 
 dinner, sir, yesterday. 0, I forgot, sir; Miss 
 Kilsyth have not been well for the last two or 
 three days, sir ; kep' her room, havin' caught cold 
 returnin' from a luncheon -party up at what they 
 call a shealing — kind of 'ut, sir, in the 'ills, where 
 they put up when stalkin', as I make out, sir, — 
 and her maid says is uncommon low and bad." 
 
 "Ill, is she?— Miss Kilsyth? Jove, that's 
 bad ! Haven't they sent for a doctor, or that kind 
 of thing?" 
 
 "Yes, sir, they have sent for a doctor; and 
 he's been, sir ; leastways when I say doctor, sir, I 
 mean to say the 'pothecary from the village, sir. 
 Comes on a shady kind of a cob, sir, and I 
 shouldn't say knew much about it. Beg your 
 pardon, sir — dinner gong !" 
 
 Sir Duncan Forbes' toilette is happily com- 
 plete at the time of this announcement, and he 
 sallies downstairs towards the drawing-room. En- 
 tering, ho finds_ most of the company already as-
 
 SOUND AN ALARM. 7 
 
 sembled; and in the careless glance which he 
 throws around as the door closes behind him, he 
 recognises a bevy of London friends, looking, 
 with perhaps the addition of a little bronze in the 
 men, and a little plumpness in the ladies, exactly 
 as he left them at the concluding ball of the 
 season] two months ago. Some he has not seen 
 for a longer period, his host among them. Kilsyth 
 of Kilsyth, keen sportsman, whether with rod or 
 gun ; landlord exercising influence over his tenants, 
 not by his position alone, but by the real indubit- 
 able interest which he takes in their well-being ; 
 lord-lieutenant of his county, first patron and best 
 judge at its agricultural meetings, chairman of 
 the bench of magistrates, prime mover in the her- 
 ring fishery, — what does Kilsyth of Kilsyth do 
 in London? Little enough, truth to tell; gives 
 a very perfunctory attendance at the House of 
 Commons, meets old friends at Brookes's, dines at 
 a few of the earlier meetings of the Fox Club, and 
 does his utmost to keep out of the way of the Liberal 
 whip, who dare not offend him, and yet grieves 
 most lamentably over his shortcomings at St. Ste-
 
 8 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 plien's. See him now as he stands on the hearth- 
 rug, with his back to the drawing-room fire, a 
 hale hearty man, whose fifty years of life have 
 never bent his form nor scarcely dimmed the fire 
 in his bright blue eye. Life, indeed, has been 
 pretty smooth and pleasant to Kilsyth since, when 
 a younger son, he was gazetted to the 42d ; and 
 after a slight sojourn in that distinguished regi- 
 ment, was sent for by his father to take the place 
 of his elder brother, killed by the bursting of a gun 
 when out on a stalk. A shadow — deep enough 
 at the moment, but now mercifully lightened by 
 Time, the grim yet kindly consoler — had fallen 
 across his path when his wife, whom he loved so 
 well, and whom he had taken from her quiet 
 English home, where, a simple parson's daughter, 
 she had captivated the young Highland officer, had 
 died in giving birth to a second child. But he had 
 survived the shock ; and long afterwards, when he 
 had succeeded to the family title and estates, and 
 was, indeed, himself well on the way to middle age, 
 had married again. Kilsyth's second wife was 
 the sister of a Scottish earl of old family and small
 
 SOUND AN ALARM. V 
 
 estate, a high-bred woman, much younger than her 
 husband, who had borne him two children (little 
 children at the time our story opens), and who, 
 not merely in her Highland neighbourhood, but in 
 the best society of London, in which she was un- 
 grudgingly received, was looked upon as a pattern 
 wife. With the name of Lady Muriel Kilsyth the 
 most inveterate scandalmongers had never ventured 
 to make free. The mere fact of her being more 
 than twenty years younger than her husband had 
 given them the greatest hope of onslaught when 
 the marriage was first announced ; but Lady Mu- 
 riel had calmly faced her foes, and not the most 
 observant of them had as yet espied the smallest 
 flaw in her harness. Her behaviour to her hus- 
 band, without being in the least degree gushing, 
 was so thoroughly circumspect, they lived together 
 on such excellent terms of something that was 
 evidently more than amity, though it never pre- 
 tended to devotion, that the scandalmongers were 
 utterly defeated. Balked in one direction, they 
 launched out in another ; they could not degrade 
 the husband by their pity, but they could mildly
 
 10 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 annoy the wife with reflections on her conduct to 
 her step-children. " Poor little things/' they said, 
 " with such an ambitious woman for step-mother, 
 and children of her own to think of! Ronald 
 may struggle on ; but as for poor Madeleine — " and 
 uplifted eyebrows and shrugged shoulders com- 
 pleted the sentence. It is needless to say that 
 Kilsyth himself heard none of these idle babblings, 
 or that if he had, he would have treated them with 
 scorn. " My lady" was to him the incarnation of 
 every thing that was right and proper, that was 
 clever and far-seeing; he trusted her implicitly 
 in every matter ; he looked up to and respected 
 her ; he suffered himself to be ruled by her, and 
 she ruled him very gently and with the greatest 
 talent and tact in every matter of his life save one. 
 Lady Muriel was all-powerful with her husband, 
 except when, as he thought, her views were in the 
 least harsh or despotic towards his daughter Ma- 
 deleine ; and then he quietly but calmly held his 
 own way. Madeleine was his idol, and no one, 
 not even his wife, could shake him in his ado- 
 ration of her. As he stands on the hearth-rug,
 
 SOUND AN ALARM. 11 
 
 there is a shadow on his bright cheery face, for he 
 has had bad news of his darling since he came in 
 from shooting, — has been forbidden to go to her 
 room lest he should disturb her; and at each opening 
 of the door he looks anxiously in that direction, 
 half wishing, half fearing Lady Muriel's advent 
 with the doctor's latest verdict on the invalid. 
 
 The thin slight wiry man talking to Kilsyth, 
 and rattling on garrulously in spite of his friend's 
 obvious preoccupation, is Captain Severn, per- 
 haps the best steeple - chase rider in England, 
 and untouchable at billiards by any amateur. 
 He is a slangy, turfy, raffish person, hating ladies' 
 society, and using a singular vocabulary full of 
 BeWs-Life idioms. He is, however, well con- 
 nected, and has a charming wife, for whose sake 
 he is tolerated ; a lovely little fairy of a woman, 
 whose heart is as big as her body ; the merriest, 
 most cheerful, best-tempered creature, trolling 
 out her little French chansons in a clear bird-like 
 voice ; acting in charades with infinite character 
 and piquancy ; and withal the idol of the poor in 
 the neighbourhood of their hunting-box in Leices-
 
 12 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 tershire ; and the quickest, softest, and most atten- 
 tive nurse in sickness, as a dozen of her friends 
 could testify. 
 
 That bald head which you can just see over the 
 top of the Morning Post belongs to the Duke of 
 Northallerton, who has been all his life more or 
 less engaged in politics ; who has, when his party 
 has been in office, held respectively the important 
 positions of Postmaster- General and Privy Seal ; 
 and who was never so well described as by one of 
 his private secretaries, who declared tersely that 
 his grace was a " kind old pump." Outwardly 
 he is a tall man of about fifty-five, with a high 
 forehead, which has stood his friend through life, 
 and obtained him credit for gifts which he never 
 possessed, a boiled-gooseberry eye, a straight nose, 
 and projecting buck-teeth. As becomes an old 
 English gentleman, he wears a very high white 
 cravat and a large white waistcoat ; indeed it is 
 only within the last few years that he has relin- 
 quished his blue coat and gold buttons, and very 
 tight pantaloons. He is reading the paper airily 
 through his double glasses, and uttering an occa-
 
 SOUND AN ALARM. 13 
 
 sional " Ha !" and " Dear me!" as he wades 
 through the movements of the travelling aristo- 
 cracy; but from time to time he removes the glasses 
 from his nose, and looks up with a half-peevish 
 glance at his neighbour. Colonel Jefferson. Charley 
 Jefferson (no one ever called him any thing else) 
 has a large photograph album before him, at which 
 he is not looking in the least ; on the contrary, his 
 glance is directed straight in front of him ; and 
 as he stands six feet four, his eyes, when he is sit- 
 ting, would be about on a level with a short man's 
 head; and he is tugging at his great sweeping 
 grizzled moustache, and fidgeting with his leg, 
 and muttering between his clinched teeth at inter- 
 vals short phrases, which sound like " Little brute ! 
 break his neck ! beastly little cad !" and such-like. 
 The individual thus objurgated by the Colonel 
 is highly thought of by Sir Bernard Burke, and 
 known to Debrett as John Ulick Delatribe, Marquis 
 of Towcester, eldest son of the Duke of Plymouth,^ 
 who has just been gazetted to the Blues, after 
 some years at Eton and eighteen months' wander- 
 ing on the Continent. Though he is barely twenty,
 
 14 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 a more depraved young person is rarely to be 
 found ; his tutor, the Rev. Merton Sandford, who 
 devoted the last few years of his life to him, and 
 who has retired to his well-earned preferment of 
 the largest living in the duke's gift, lifts up his 
 eyes and shakes his head when, over a quiet bottle 
 of claret with an old college friend, he speaks of 
 Lord Towcester. The boy's reputation had pre- 
 ceded him to London ; a story from the Viennese 
 Embassy, of which he was the hero, came across 
 in a private note to Blatherwick of the F. 0. , en- 
 closed in the official white sheep-skin despatch- 
 bag, and before night was discussed in half the 
 smoking-rooms in Pall- Mall. The youngsters 
 laughed at the anecdote and envied its hero ; but 
 older men looked grave ; and Charley Jefferson, 
 standing in the middle of a knot of men on the 
 steps of the Rag, said he was deuced glad that 
 the lad wasn't coming into his regiment ; for if that 
 story were true, the service would be none the 
 better for such an accession to it, as, if it were his 
 business, he should take an early opportunity of 
 pointing out; and the listeners, who knew that
 
 SOUND AN ALARM. 15 
 
 Colonel Jefferson was the best soldier and the 
 strictest martinet throughout the household cav- 
 alry, and who marked the expression of his face as 
 he pulled Ins moustache and strode away after de- 
 livering his dictum, thought that perhaps it was 
 better for Towcester that his lot was cast in a 
 different corps. You would not have thought 
 there was much harm in the boy, though, from 
 his appearance. Look at him now, as he bends 
 over Lady Fairfax, mitil his face almost touches 
 her soft glossy hair. It is a round, boyish, inge- 
 nuous face, though the eyes are rather deeply set, 
 and there is something cruel about the mouth 
 which the thin downy moustache utterly fails to 
 hide. As Lady Fairfax turns her large dark eyes 
 on her interlocutor, and looks up at him, her bril- 
 liant white teeth flashing in an irrepressible smile, 
 the Colonel's growls become more frequent, and 
 he tugs at his moustache more savagely than ever. 
 Why ? If you know any thing about these people, 
 you will remember that ten years ago, when Emily 
 Fairfax was Emily Ponsonby, and lived with her 
 old aunt, Lady Mary, in the dull rambling old
 
 16 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 house at Kew, Charley Jefferson, a penniless cor 
 net in what were then the 13th Light Dragoons, 
 was quartered at Hounslow; danced, rode, and 
 flirted with her ; carried off a lock of her hair 
 when the regiment was ordered to India ; and far 
 away up country, in utter ignorance of all that was 
 happening in England, used to gaze at it and kiss 
 it, long after Miss Ponsonby had married old Lord 
 Fairfax, and had become the reigning belle of the 
 London season. Old Lord Fairfax is dead now, 
 and Charley Jefferson has come into his uncle's 
 fortune ; and there is no cause or impediment why 
 these twain should not become one flesh, save that 
 Emily is still coquettish, and Charley is horribly 
 jealous ; and so matters are still in the balance. 
 
 The little old gentleman in the palpable flaxen 
 wig and gold spectacles, who is poring over that 
 case of Flaxman's cameos in genuine admiration, 
 is Count Bulow, the Danish Ambassador ; and the 
 little old lady whose face is so wrinkled as to sug- 
 gest an idea of gratitude that she is a lady, and 
 consequently is not compelled to shave, is his wife. 
 They are charming old people, childless them-
 
 SOUND AN ALARM. 17 
 
 selves, but the cause of constant matchmaking in 
 others. More flirtations come to a successful issue 
 in the embassy at Eaton-place than in any other 
 house in town ; and the old couple, who have for 
 years worthily represented their sovereign, are 
 sponsors to half the children in Belgravia. They 
 are both art-lovers, and their house is crammed 
 with good things — pictures from Munich and Diis- 
 seldorf, choice bits of Thorwaldsen, big elk-horns, 
 and quaint old Scandinavian drinking-cups. Old 
 Lady Potiphar, who has the worst reputation and 
 the bitterest tongue in London, says you meet 
 " odd people" at the Bulows' ; said " odd people" 
 being artists and authors, English and foreign. 
 Mr. Fletcher, E.A., who is just now talking to 
 the Countess, is one of the most favoured guests at 
 the embassy, but he is not an " odd person," even 
 to Lady Potiphar, for he goes into what she calls 
 " sassiety," and has been " actially asked to 
 Mar'bro' House" — where Lady Potiphar is not 
 invited. A quiet, unpretending, gentlemanly, 
 middle-aged man, Mr. Fletcher ; wearing his ar- 
 tistic honours with easy dignity, and by no means 
 VOL. I. c
 
 18 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 oblivious of the early days when he gave drawing- 
 lessons at per hour to many of the nobility who 
 now call him their friend. 
 
 There are three or four young ladies present, 
 who need no particular description, and who are 
 dividing the homage of Captain Shaddock ; while 
 Lord Roderick Douglas, a young nobleman to 
 whom Nature has been more bountiful in nose 
 than in forehead, and Mr. Pitcairn, a fresh- 
 coloured, freckled, blue-eyed gentleman, lithe 
 and active as a greyhound, are muttering in a 
 corner, making arrangements for the next day's 
 shooting. 
 
 The entrance of Sir Duncan Forbes caused a 
 slight commotion in the party; and every one 
 had a look or a word of welcome for the new 
 comer, for he was a general favourite. He moved 
 easily from group to group, shaking hands and 
 chatting pleasantly. Kilsyth, who was specially 
 fond of him, grasped his hand warmly ; the Duke 
 laid aside the Morning Post in the midst of a 
 most interesting leader, in which Mr. Bright was 
 depicted as a pleasant compound of Catiline and
 
 SOUND AN ALARM. 19 
 
 Judas Iscariot ; Count Bulow gave up his cameos ; 
 and even grim Charley Jefferson relaxed in his 
 feverish supervision of Lord Towcester. 
 
 As for the ladies, they unanimously voted Dun- 
 can charming, quite charming, and could not make 
 too much of him. 
 
 " And where have you come from, Duncan ?" 
 asked Kilsyth, when the buzz consequent on his 
 entrance had subsided. 
 
 " Last, from Burnside," said Duncan. 
 
 u Burnside ! — where's Burnside ?" asked Cap- 
 tain Severn shortly. 
 
 " Burnside is on the Tay, the prettiest house 
 in all Scotland, if I may venture to say so, being 
 at Kilsyth ; of course it don't pretend to any thing 
 of this kind. It's a mere doll's-house of a place, 
 nothing but a shooting-box; but in its way it's a 
 perfect paradise." 
 
 "Are you speaking by the card, Duncan?" 
 said Count Bulow, with the slightest foreign 
 accent; "or was there some Peri in this paradise 
 that gave it such fascination in your eyes ?" 
 
 " Peri ! No indeed, Count," replied Duncan,
 
 20 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 laughing ; " Burnside is a bachelor establishment, 
 — rigidly proper, quite monastic, and all that kind 
 of thing. It belongs to old Sir Saville Howe, 
 who was a swell doctor in London — 0, ages 
 ago !" 
 
 " Sir Saville Howe !" exclaimed the Duke ; " I 
 know him very well. He was physician to the 
 late King, and was knighted just before his ma- 
 jesty's death. I haven't seen him for years, and 
 thought he was dead." 
 
 " He's any thing but that, Duke. A remark- 
 ably healthy old man, and as jolly as possible ; 
 capital company still, though he's long over se- 
 venty. And his place is really lovely ; the worst 
 of it is, it's such a tremendous distance from 
 here. I've been travelling all day; and as it is 
 I thought I was late for dinner. The gong 
 sounded as I left my room." 
 
 "You were late, Duncan; you always are," 
 said Kilsyth, with a smile. " But the Duchess is 
 keeping you in countenance to-night, and Lady 
 Muriel has not shown yet. She is up with Made- 
 leine, who is ill, poor child."
 
 SOUND AN ALAKM. 21 
 
 "Ah, so I was sorry to hear. What is it? 
 Nothing serious, I hope?" 
 
 " No, please God, no. But she caught cold, 
 and is a little feverish to-night : the doctor is with 
 her now, and we shall soon have his report. All, 
 here is the Duchess." 
 
 The Duchess of Northallerton, a tall portly 
 woman, with a heavy ruminating expression of 
 face, like a sedate cow, entered as he spoke, and 
 advancing said a few gracious nothings to Dun- 
 can Forbes. She was closely followed by a ser- 
 vant, who, addressing his master, said that Lady 
 Muriel would be engaged for a few minutes longer 
 with the doctor, and had ordered dinner to be 
 served. 
 
 The conversation at dinner, falling into its re- 
 cent channel, was resumed by Lord Towcester, 
 who said, " Who had you at this doctor's, Dun- 
 can ? Queer sort of people, I suppose ?" 
 
 " Some of his patients, perhaps," said Lady 
 Fairfax, showing all her teeth. 
 
 "Black draught and that sort of thing to 
 drink, and cold compresses on the sideboard," said
 
 22 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 Captain Severn, who was nothing if not objec- 
 tionable. 
 
 " I never had better living, and never met 
 pleasanter people," said Duncan Forbes pointedly. 
 " They wouldn't have suited you, perhaps, Severn, 
 for they all talked sense ; and none of them knew 
 the odds on any thing — though that might have 
 suited you perhaps, as you'd have been able to 
 win their money." 
 
 "Any of Sir Saville's profession?" cut in the 
 Duke, diplomatically anxious to soften matters. 
 
 " Only one — a Dr. "VVilmot ; the great man 
 of the day, as I understand." 
 
 " 0, every body has heard of Wilmot," said 
 half-a-dozen voices. 
 
 " He's the great authority on fever, and that 
 kind of thing," said Jefferson. " Saved Broad- 
 water's boy in typhus last year when all the rest 
 of them had given him up." 
 
 " Dr. Wilmot remains there," said Duncan ; 
 " our party broke up yesterday, but Wilmot 
 stays on. He and I had a tremendous chat last 
 night, and I never met a more delightful fellow."
 
 SOUND AN ALARM. 23 
 
 At this moment Lady Muriel entered the room, 
 and as she passed her husband's chair laid a small 
 slip of paper on the table by his plate ; then went 
 up to Duncan Forbes, who had risen to receive 
 her, and gave him a hearty welcome. Kilsyth 
 took an opportunity of opening the paper, and 
 the healthy colour left his cheeks as he read : 
 
 " M. is much worse to-night. Dr. Joyce now 
 pronounces it undoubted scarlet-fever.'''' 
 
 The old man rose from the table, asking per- 
 mission to absent himself for a few moments; and 
 as he moved, whispered to Duncan, who was sitting 
 at his right-hand, " You said Dr. Wilmot was 
 still at Burnside ?" 
 
 Receiving an answer in the affirmative, he 
 hurried into the hall, wrote a few hasty lines, 
 and gave them to the butler, saying, " Tell 
 Donald to ride off at once to Acray, and tele- 
 graph this message. Tell him to gallop all the 
 way."
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MASTER AND PUPIL. 
 
 Duncan Forbes was given to exaggeration, as is 
 the fashion of the day ; but he had scarcely 
 exaggerated the beauty of Burnside, even in the 
 rapturous terms which he chose to employ in 
 speaking of it. It was, indeed, a most lovely 
 spot, standing on the summit of a high hill, 
 wooded from base to crest, and with the silver 
 Tay — now rushing over a hard pebbly bed, now 
 softly flowing in a scarcely fathomable depth of 
 still water through a deep ravine with towering 
 rocks on either side — bubbling at its feet. From 
 the higher windows — notably from the turret ; and 
 it was a queer rambling turreted house, without 
 any preponderating style of architecture, but em- 
 bracing, and that not unpicturesquely, a great 
 many — you looked down upon the pretty little
 
 MASTER AND PUPIL. 25 
 
 town of Dunkeld, with its broad bridge spanning 
 
 the flood, and the gray old tower of its cathedral 
 
 rearing itself aloft like a hoary giant athwart the 
 
 horizon, and the trim lawn of the ducal residence 
 
 in the distance — an oasis of culture in a desert 
 
 of wildness, yet harmonising sufficiently with its 
 
 surroundings. Sloping down the steep bank on 
 
 which the house was placed, and overhanging the 
 
 brawling river beneath, ran a broad gravel path, 
 
 winding between the trees, which at certain points 
 
 had been cut away to give the best views of the 
 
 neighbouring scenery; and on this path, at an early 
 
 hour on the morning succeeding the night on 
 
 which Duncan Forbes had arrived at Kilsyth, 
 
 two men were walking, en£ao;ed in earnest con- 
 es/ O O 
 
 versation. An old man one of them, but in the 
 enjoyment of a vigorous old age : his back is 
 bowed, and he uses a stick ; but if you remark, he 
 does not use it as a crutch, lifting it now and 
 again to point his remark, or striking it on the 
 ground to emphasize his decision. A tall old man, 
 with long white hair flowing away from under 
 the brim of his wideawake hat, with bright blue
 
 26 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 eyes and well-cut features, and a high forehead 
 and white hands, with long lithe clever-looking 
 fingers. Those eyes and fingers have done their 
 work in their day, professionally and socially. 
 Those eyes have looked into the eyes of youth and 
 loveliness, and have read in them that in a few 
 months their light would be quenched for ever; 
 those fingers have clasped the beating pulses of 
 seemingly full and vigorous manhood, and have 
 recognised that the axe was laid at the root of the 
 apparently tall and flourishing tree, and that in a 
 little time it would topple headlong down. Those 
 eyes " looked love to eyes that spake again ;" 
 those hands clasped hands that returned their 
 clasp, and that trembled fondly and confidingly 
 within them ; that voice, professionally modu- 
 lated to babble of sympathy, compassion, and 
 hope, trembled with passion and whispered all its 
 human aspirations into the trellised ear of beauty, 
 once and once only. Looking at the old gentle- 
 man, so mild and gentle and benevolent, with his 
 shirt-front sprinkled with snuff, and his old- 
 fashioned black gaiters and his gouty shoes, you
 
 MASTER AND PUPIL. 27 
 
 could hardly imagine that he was the hero of a 
 scandal which five -and -thirty years before had 
 rung through society, and given the Satirist, and 
 other scurrilous publications of the time, matter 
 for weeks and weeks of filthy comment. And yet 
 it was so. Sir Saville Howe (then Dr. Rowe), 
 physician to one of the principal London hospitals, 
 and even then a man of mark in his profession, 
 was called in to attend a young lady who repre- 
 sented herself as a widow, and with whom, after a 
 time, he fell desperately in love. For months he 
 attended her through a trying illness, from which, 
 under his care, she recovered. Then, when her 
 recovery was complete, he confessed his passion, 
 and they were engaged to be married. One 
 night, within a very short time of the intended 
 wedding, he called at her lodgings and found a 
 man there, a coarse slangy blackguard, who, after 
 a few words, abruptly proclaimed himself to be the 
 lady's husband, and demanded compensation for 
 his outraged honour. Words ensued; and more 
 than words : the man — half-drunk, all bully — 
 struck the doctor ; and Howe, who was a power-
 
 28 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 ful man, and who was mad with rage at what he 
 imagined was a conspiracy, returned the blows 
 with interest. The police were summoned, and 
 Howe was hauled off to the station-house ; but on 
 the following day the prosecutor was not forth- 
 coming, and the doctor, was liberated. The scan- 
 dal spread, and ruffians battened on it, as they 
 ever will; but Dr. Howe's courage and profes- 
 sional skill enabled him to live it down; and 
 when, two years after, in going round a hospital- 
 ward with his pupils, he came upon his old love 
 at the verge of death, his heart, which he thought 
 had been sufficiently steeled, gave way within 
 him, and once more he set himself to the task of 
 curing her. He did all that could be done ; had 
 her removed to a quiet suburban cottage, tended 
 by the most experienced nurses, never grudged 
 one moment of his time to visit her constantly ; 
 but it was too late : hard living and brutal treat- 
 ment had done their work ; and Dr. Howe's only 
 love died in his arms, imploring Heaven's bless- 
 ings on him. That wound in Ins life, deep as it 
 was, has long since cicatrised and healed over,
 
 MASTER AND PUPIL. 29 
 
 leaving a scar which was noticeable to very few 
 long before he attained to the first rank in his 
 profession and received the titular reward of his 
 services to royalty. He has for some time retired 
 from active practice, though he will still meet in 
 consultation some old pupil or former colleague ; 
 but he takes life easily now, passing the season 
 in London, the autumn in Scotland, and the win- 
 ter at Torquay; in all of which places he finds 
 old friends chattable and kindly, who help him to 
 while away the pleasant autumn of his life. 
 
 The other man is about eight-and-thirty, with 
 keen bright brown eyes, a broad brow, straight 
 nose, thin lips, and heavy jaw, indicative of firm- 
 ness, not to say obstinacy; a tall man with stoop- 
 ing shoulders, and a look of quiet placid attention 
 in Ins face ; with a slim figure, a jerky walk, and a 
 habit of clasping his hands behind his back, and 
 leaning forward as though listening ; a man likely 
 to invite notice at first sight from his unmistak- 
 able earnestness and intellect, otherwise a quiet 
 gentlemanly man, whose profession it was impos- 
 sible to assign, yet who was obviously a man of
 
 30 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 mark in his way. This was Chudleigh "Wilmot, 
 who was looked upon by those who ought to 
 know as the coming man in the London medical 
 profession; whose lectures were to be attended 
 before those of any other professor at St. Virus's 
 Hospital; whose contributions on fever cases to 
 the Scalpel had given the Times subject-matter for 
 a leader, in which he had been most honourably 
 mentioned ; and who was commencing to reap the 
 harvest of honour and profit which accrues to the 
 fortunate few. He is an old pupil of Sir Saville 
 Eowe's, and there is no one in whose company 
 the old gentleman has greater delight. 
 
 11 Smoke, Chudleigh, smoke ! Light up at 
 once. I know you're dying to have your cigar, 
 and daren't out of deference to me. Fancy I'm 
 your master still, don't you?" 
 
 " Not a bit of it, old friend. I've given up 
 after-breakfast smoking as a rule, because, you 
 see, that delightful bell in Charles-street begins to 
 ring about a quarter to ten, and — " 
 
 " So much the better. Let them ring. They 
 were knockers in my day, and I recollect how
 
 MASTER AND PUPIL. 31 
 
 delighted I used to be at every rap. But there's 
 no one to ring or knock here ; and so you may 
 take your cigar quietly. I've been longing for 
 this time; longing to have what the people about 
 here call a ' crack' with you — impossible while 
 those other men were here ; but now I've got you 
 all to myself." 
 
 " Yes," said Wilmot, who by this time had 
 lighted his cigar — " yes, and you'll have me all to 
 yourself for the next four days ; that is to say, if 
 you will." 
 
 " If I will! Is there any thing in the world 
 could give me greater pleasure ? I get young 
 again, talking to you, Chudleigh. I mind me of 
 the time when you used to come to lecture, a 
 great raw boy, with, I should say, the dirtiest 
 hands and the biggest note-book in the whole 
 hospital." And the old gentleman chuckled at his 
 reminiscence. 
 
 " Well, I've managed to wash the first, and to 
 profit by the manner in which I filled the second 
 from your lectures," said Wilmot, not without a 
 blush.
 
 32 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 " Not a bit, not a bit," interposed Sir Saville ; 
 " you would have done well enough without any 
 lectures of mine, though I'm glad to think that 
 in that celebrated question of anaesthetics you stuck 
 by me, and enabled me triumphantly to defeat 
 Macpherson of Edinburgh. That was a great 
 triumph for us, that was ! Dear me, when I 
 think of the charlatans ! Eh, well, never mind ; 
 I'm out of all that now. So, you have a few 
 days more, you were saying, and you're going to 
 give them up to me." 
 
 " Nothing will please me so much. Because, 
 you see, I shall make it a combination of pleasure 
 and business. There are several thino-s on which 
 I want to consult you, — points which I have re- 
 served from time to time, and on which I can get 
 no such opinion as yours. I'm not due in town 
 until the 3d of next month. Whittaker, who 
 has taken my practice, doesn't leave until the 5th, 
 which is a Sunday, and even then only goes as 
 far as Guildford, to a place he's taken for some 
 pheasant -shooting ; a nice, close, handy place, 
 where Mrs. Whittaker can accompany him.] [She
 
 MASTER AND PUPIL. 33 
 
 thinks he's so fascinating, that she does not like to 
 let him out of her sight." 
 
 "Whittaker! Whittaker !" said Sir Saville; 
 "is it a bald man with a cock-eye ? — used to be 
 at Bartholomew's." 
 
 " That's the man ! He's in first-rate practice 
 now, and deservedly, for he's thoroughly clever 
 and reliable ; but his beauty has not improved 
 by time. However, Mrs. Whittaker doesn't see 
 that ; and it's with the greatest difficulty he ever 
 gets permission to attend a lady's case." 
 
 " You must be thankful Mrs. Wilmot isn't 
 like that." 
 
 u 0, I am indeed," replied Wilmot shortly. 
 
 " By the way, I've never had an opportunity 
 of talking to you about your marriage, and about 
 your wife, Chudleigh. I got your wedding-cards, 
 of course; but that's — ah, that must be three 
 years ago." 
 
 " Four." 
 
 " Four ! Is it indeed so long ? Tut, tut ! how 
 time flies ! I've called at your house in London, 
 but your wife has not been at home ; and as I 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 don't entertain ladies, you see, of course I've 
 missed an opportunity of cultivating her acquaint- 
 ance." 
 
 " Ye-es. I've heard Mrs. Wilmot say that 
 she had seen your cards, and that she was very 
 sorry to have been out when you called," said 
 Dr. Wilmot with, in him, a most unnatural hesi- 
 tation. 
 
 "Yes, of course," said old Sir Saville, with a 
 comical look out of the corners of his eyes, which 
 fell unheeded on his companion. " Well, now, as 
 I've never seen her, and as I'm not likely to see 
 her now, — for I'm an old man, and I've given up 
 ceremony visits at my time of life, — tell me about 
 your wife, Chudleigh ; you know the interest I 
 take in you ; and that, perhaps, may excuse my 
 asking about her. Does she suit you ? Are you 
 happy with her ?" 
 
 Wilmot looked hard for an instant at his 
 friend with a sudden quick glance of suspicion, 
 then relaxed his brows, and laughed outright. 
 
 " Certainly, my dear Sir Saville, you are the 
 most original of men. Wlio on earth else would
 
 MASTER AND PUPIL. 35 
 
 have dreamt of asking a man such a home ques- 
 tion ? It's worse than the queries put in the pro- 
 posal papers of insurance-offices. However, I'm 
 glad to be able to give a satisfactory answer. I 
 am happy with my wife, and she does suit me." 
 
 " Yes ; but what I mean is, are you in love 
 with her?" 
 
 "Am I what?" 
 
 u In love with her. I mean, are you always 
 thinking of her when you are away from her ? 
 Are you always longing to get back to her? Does 
 her face come between you and the book you are 
 reading? When you are thinking-out an intricate 
 case, and puzzling your brains as to how you 
 shall deal with it, do you sometimes let the whole 
 subject slip out of your mind, to ponder over the 
 last words she said to you, the last look she gave 
 you?" 
 
 " God bless your soul, my dear old friend ! 
 You might as well ask me if I didn't play leap- 
 frog with the house-surgeon of St. Vitus'*, or 
 challenge any member of the College of Physi- 
 cians to a single-wicket match. Those are the
 
 36 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 ddassements of youth, my dear sir, that you are 
 talking about ; of very much youth indeed." 
 
 " I know one who wasn't ' very much youth' 
 when he carried out the doctrine religiously," said 
 the old gentleman in reply. 
 
 "All, then perhaps the lady wasn't his wife," 
 said Wilmot, without the smallest notion of the 
 dangerous ground on which he was treading. 
 " No, the fact is simply this : I am, as you know, 
 a man absorbed in my profession. I have no 
 leisure for nonsense of the kind you describe, 
 nor for any other kind of nonsense. My wife 
 recognises that perfectly; she does all the call- 
 ing and visiting which society prescribes. I go 
 to a few old friends' to dinner in the season, and 
 sometimes show up for a few minutes at the house 
 of a patient where Mrs. "Wilmot thinks it neces- 
 sary for me to be seen. We each fulfil our duties 
 perfectly, and we are in the evening excellent 
 friends." 
 
 " Ye-es," said Sir Saville doubtfully; "that's 
 all delightful, and—" 
 
 "As to longing to get back to her, and nice
 
 MASTER AND PUPIL. 37 
 
 coming between you and your book, and always 
 thinking, and that kind of thing," pursued Wil- 
 mot, not heeding him, " I recollect, when I was a 
 dresser at the hospital, long before I passed the 
 College, I had all those feelings for a little cousin of 
 mine who was then living at Knightsbridge with 
 her father, who was a clerk in the Bank of Eng- 
 land. But then he died, and she married — not 
 the barber, but another clerk in the Bank of 
 England, and I never thought any more about 
 it. Believe me, my dear friend, except to such 
 perpetual evergreens as yourself, those ideas die 
 off at twenty years of age." 
 
 " Well, perhaps so, perhaps so," said the old 
 gentleman ; " and I daresay it's quite right, only 
 — well, never mind. Well, Chudleigh, it's a plea- 
 sant thing for me, remembering you, as I said, a 
 great hulking lad when you first came to lecture, 
 to see you now carrying away every thing before 
 you. I don't know that you're quite wise in giving 
 Whittaker your practice, for he's a deep design- 
 ing dog ; and you can tell as well as I do how a 
 word dropped deftly here and there may steal
 
 38 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 away a patient before the doctor knows where he 
 is, especially with old ladies and creatures of that 
 sort. But, however, it's the slack time of year, 
 — that's one thing to be said, — when every body 
 that's any body is safe to be out of town. Ah, 
 by the way, that reminds me ! I was glad to see 
 by the Morning Post that you had had some very 
 good cases last season." 
 
 " The Morning Post 1 — some very good cases ! 
 What do you mean?" 
 
 " I mean, I saw your name as attending 
 several of the nobility : i His lordship's physi- 
 cian, Dr. Wilmot, of Charles Street,' et cetera; 
 that kind of thing, you know." 
 
 " 0, do you congratulate me on those ? 
 I certainly pulled young Lord Coniston, Lord 
 Broadwater's son, through a stiff attack of ty- 
 phus ; but as I woidd have done the same for Ins 
 lordship's porter's child, I don't see the value of 
 the paragraph. By the way, I shouldn't wonder 
 if I were indebted to the porter for the paragraph." 
 
 u Never mind, my dear Chudleigh, whence 
 the paragraph comes, but be thankful you got it.
 
 MASTER AND PUPIL. 39 
 
 c Sweet/ as Shakespeare says, — ' sweet are the uses 
 of advertisement ;' and our profession is almost 
 the only one to which they are not open. The 
 inferior members of it, to be sure, do a little in the 
 way of the red lamp and the vaccination gratis ; 
 but when you arrive at any eminence you must 
 not attempt any thing more glaring than gallop- 
 ing about town in your carriage, and getting 
 your name announced in the best society." 
 
 "The best society!" echoed Wilmot with an 
 undisguised sneer. " My dear Sir Saville, you 
 seem to have taken a craze for Youth, Beauty, 
 and High Life, and to exalt them as gods for 
 your idolatry." 
 
 " For my idolatry ! No, my boy, for yours. 
 I don't deny that when I was in the ring, I did 
 my best to gain the approbation of all three, and 
 that I succeeded I may say without vanity. But 
 I'm out of it now, and I can only give counsel 
 to my juniors. But that my counsel is good 
 worldly wisdom, Chudleigh, you may take the 
 word of an old man who has — well, who has, he 
 natters himself, made his mark in life."
 
 40 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 The old gentleman was so evidently sincere 
 in this exposition of his philosophy, that Wilmot 
 repressed the smile that was rising to his lips, and 
 said : 
 
 " We can all of us only judge by our own 
 feelings, old friend; and mine, I must own, don't 
 chime in with yours. As to Youth — well, I'm 
 now old for my age, and I only look upon it as 
 developing more available resources and more 
 available material to work upon; as to Beauty, 
 its influence died out with me when Maria Strutt 
 married the clerk in the Bank of England ; and 
 as to High Life, I swear to you it would give me 
 as much pleasure to save the life of one of your 
 gillie's daughters, as it would to be able to patch 
 up an old marquis, or to pull the heir to a duke- 
 dom through his teething convulsions." 
 
 The old man looked at his friend for a mo- 
 ment and smiled sardonically, then said : 
 
 " You're young yet, Chudleigh ; very young 
 — much younger than your years of London life 
 should permit you to be. However, that's a 
 malady that Time will cure you of. Saving lives
 
 MASTER AND PUPIL. 41 
 
 of gillie's (laughters is all very well in the ab- 
 stract, and no one can value more than I do the 
 power which Providence, under Him, has given 
 to us; but— Well, what is it?" 
 
 This last remark was addressed to a servant 
 who was approaching them. 
 
 "A telegram, sir, for Dr. Wilmot," said the 
 man, handing an envelope to Wilmot as he spoke ; 
 " just arrived from the station." 
 
 Wilmot tore open the envelope and read its 
 enclosure — read it twice with frowning brow and 
 sneering mouth ; then handed it to his host, saying : 
 
 " A little too strong, that, eh ? Is one never 
 to be free from such intrusions ? Do these people 
 imagine that because I am a professional man 
 I am to be always at their beck and call ? Who 
 is this Mr. Kilsyth, I wonder, who hails me as 
 though I were a cabman on the rank ?" 
 
 u Mr. Kilsyth, my dear fellow!" said Sir 
 Saville, laughing; " I should like to see the face of 
 any Highlander who heard you say that. Kilsyth 
 of Kilsyth is the head of one of the oldest and 
 most powerful clans in Aberdeenshire."
 
 42 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 " I suppose he won't be powerful enough to 
 have me shot, or speared, or ' hangit on a tree,' 
 for putting his telegram into my pocket, and 
 taking no further notice of it, for all that," said 
 Wilmot. 
 
 " Do you mean to say that you intend to re- 
 fuse his request, Chudleigh ?" 
 
 " Most positively and decidedly, if request you 
 call it. I confess it looks to me more like a com- 
 mand ; and that's a style of thing I don't particu- 
 larly affect, old friend." 
 
 " But do you see the facts? Miss Kilsyth is 
 down with scarlet- fever — " 
 
 u Exactly. I'm very sorry, I'm sure, so far 
 as one can be sorry for any one of whose existence 
 one was a moment ago in ignorance ; and I trust 
 Miss Kilsyth will speedily recover; but it won't be 
 through any aid of mine." 
 
 " My dear Chudleigh," said the old man 
 gently, "you are all wrong about this. It's not 
 a pleasant thing for me, as your host, to bid you 
 go away; more especially as I had been look- 
 ing forward with such pleasure to these few
 
 MASTER AND PUPIL. 43 
 
 days' quiet with you. But I know it is the right 
 thing for you to do ; and why you should refuse, 
 I cannot conceive. You seem to have taken um- 
 brage at the style of the message ; but even if one 
 could be polite in a telegram, a father whose pet 
 daughter is dangerously ill seldom stops to pick 
 his words." 
 
 " But suppose I hadn't been here?" 
 "My dear friend, I decline to suppose any 
 thing of the sort. Suppose I had not been in 
 the way when Sir Astley advised his late Majesty 
 to call me in ; I should still have been a successful 
 man, it's true; but I should not have had the hon- 
 our or the position I have, nor the wealth which 
 enables me now to enjoy my ease, instead of slaving 
 away still like — like some whom we know. No, 
 no ; drop your radicalism, I beseech you. You 
 would go miles to attend to a sick gillie or a shep- 
 herd's orphan. Do the same for a very charming 
 young girl, as I'm told, — Forbes knows her very 
 well, — and for one of the best men in Scotland." 
 
 " "Well, I suppose you're right, and I must 
 go. It's an awful journey, isn't it?"
 
 44 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 " Horses to the break, Donald ; and tell 
 George to get ready to drive Dr. Wilmot. — I'll 
 send you the first stage. Awful journey, you 
 call it, through the loveliest scenery in the High- 
 lands ! I don't know what causes the notion, but 
 I have an impression that this will be a memorable 
 day in your career, Chudleigh." 
 
 " Have you, old friend?" said Wilmot, with a 
 shoulder-shrug. " One doesn't know how it may 
 end, but, so far, it has been any thing but a plea- 
 sant one. Nor does a fifty-mile journey over hills 
 inspire me with much pleasant anticipation. But, 
 as you seem so determined about it being my 
 duty, I'll go." 
 
 " Depend on it, I am giving you good advice, 
 as some day you shall acknowledge to me." 
 
 And within half-an-hour Chudleigh Wilmot 
 had started for Kilsyth, on a journey which was 
 to influence the whole of his future life.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WATCHING AND WAITING. 
 
 The news which she had learned from Doctor 
 Joyce, and had in her brief pencil-note com- 
 municated to her husband, was horribly annoying 
 to Lady Muriel Kilsyth. To have her party 
 broken up — and there was no doubt that, as soon 
 as the actual condition of affairs was known, many 
 would at once take to flight — was bad enough; 
 but to have an infectious disorder in the house, 
 and to be necessarily compelled to keep up a sem- 
 blance of sympathy with the patient labouring 
 under that disorder, even if she were not required 
 to visit and tend her, was to Lady Muriel spe- 
 cially galling ; more specially galling as she hap- 
 pened not to possess the smallest affection for the 
 individual in question, indeed to regard her rather 
 with dislike than otherwise. When Lady Muriel
 
 46 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 Inchgarvie married Kilsyth of Kilsyth, — the Inch- 
 garvie estates being heavily involved, and her bro- 
 ther the Earl, who had recently succeeded to the 
 title, strongly counselling the match, — she agreed 
 to love, honour, and obey the doughty chieftain 
 whom she espoused ; but she by no means under- 
 took any responsibilities with regard to the two 
 children by his former marriage. The elder of 
 these, Ronald, was just leaving Eton when his 
 step-mother appeared upon the scene ; and as he 
 had since been at once gazetted to the Life-guards, 
 and but rarely showed in his father's house, he 
 had caused Lady Muriel very little anxiety. But it 
 was a very different affair with Madeleine. She 
 had the disadvantage of being perpetually en evi- 
 dence ; of being very pretty ; of causing blunder- 
 ing new acquaintances to say, u Impossible, Lady 
 Muriel, that this can be your daughter !" of riling 
 her step-mother in every possible way — notably by 
 her perfect high-breeding, her calm quiet ignor- 
 ing of intended slights, her determinate persist- 
 ence in keeping up the proper relations with her 
 father, and her invariable politeness — nothing but
 
 WATCHING AND WAITING. 47 
 
 politeness — to her step-mother. One is necessarily 
 cautious of using strong terms in these days of 
 persistent repression of all emotions ; but it is 
 scarcely too much to say that Lady Muriel hated 
 her step-daughter very cordially. They were too 
 nearly of an age for the girl to look up to the 
 matron, or for the matron to feel a maternal 
 interest in the girl. They were too nearly of an 
 age for the elder not to feel jealous of the younger 
 — of her personal attractions, and of the influence 
 which she undoubtedly exercised over her father. 
 
 Not that Lady Muriel either laid herself out 
 for attraction, or was so devotedly attached to her 
 husband as to desire the monopoly of his affection. 
 By nature she was hard, cold, self-contained, and 
 very proud. Portionless as she had been, and 
 desirable as it was that she should marry a rich 
 man, she had refused several offers from men 
 more coeval with her than the husband she at 
 last accepted, simply because they were made 
 by men who were wealthy, and nothing else. 
 Either birth or talent would, in conjunction with 
 wealth, have won her ; but Mr. Burton, the great
 
 48 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 pale-ale brewer, and Sir Coke Only, the great 
 railway carrier, proffered their suits in vain, and 
 retired in the deepest confusion after Lady Mu- 
 riel's very ladylike, but thoroughly unmistakable, 
 rejection of their offers. She married Kilsyth 
 because he was a man of ancient family, large 
 income, warm heart, and good repute. At no 
 period, either immediately before or after her 
 marriage, had she professed herself to be what is 
 called " in love" with the worthy Scottish gentle- 
 man. She respected, humoured, and ruled him. 
 But not for one instant did she forget her duty, or 
 give a chance for scandal-mongers to babble of 
 her name over their five-o'clock tea. No woman 
 married to a man considerably her senior need be 
 at any loss for what, as Byron tells us, used to be 
 called a cicisbeo, and was in his time called a 
 cortejo, if she be the least attractive. And Lady 
 Muriel Kilsyth was considerably more than that. 
 She had a perfectly-formed, classical little head, 
 round which her dark hair was always tightly 
 bound, culminating in a thick knot behind, large 
 deep liquid brown eyes, an impertinent retrousse
 
 WATCHING AND WAITING. 49 
 
 nose, a pretty mouth, an excellent complexion, 
 and a ripe melting figure. You might have 
 searched the drawing-rooms of London through 
 and through without finding a woman better cal- 
 culated to fascinate every body save the youngest 
 boys, and there were many even of them who 
 would gladly have boasted of a kind look or word 
 from Lady Muriel. When her marriage was 
 announced, they discussed it at the clubs, as they 
 will discuss such things, the dear genial old prosers, 
 the bibulous captains, the lip-smacking Bardolphs 
 of St. James's-street ; and they prophesied all kinds 
 of unhappiness and woe to Kilsyth. But that topic 
 of conversation had long since died out for want 
 of fuel to feed it. Lady Muriel had visited London 
 during the season ; had gone every where ; had 
 been reported as perfectly adoring her two little 
 children; and had no man's name invidiously 
 coupled with hers. Peace reigned at Kilsyth, and 
 the intimates of the house vied with each other in 
 attention and courtesy to its new mistress ; while 
 the gossips of the outside world had never a word 
 to say against her. 
 
 VOL. I. e
 
 50 THE FORLOliN HOPE. 
 
 I don't say that Lady Muriel Kilsyth was 
 thoroughly happy, any more than that Kilsyth 
 himself was in that beatific state ; because I 
 simply don't believe that such a state of things is 
 compatible with the ordinary conditions of human 
 life. It is not because the old stories of our none 
 of us being better than we should be, of our all 
 having some skeleton in our cupboards, and some 
 ulcerated sores beneath our flannel waistcoats, 
 have been so much harped upon, that I am going 
 to throw my little pebble on the great cairn, and 
 add my testimony to the doctrine of vanitas vani- 
 tatum. It would be very strange indeed, if, as 
 life is nowadays constituted, we had not our 
 skeleton, and a time when we could confront 
 him ; when we could calmly untwist the button 
 on the door and let him out, and pat his skull, 
 and look at his articulated ribs, and notice how 
 deftly his wire-hooked thigh-bones jointed on to 
 the rest of his carcass; and see whether there 
 were no means of ridding ourselves of him, — say 
 by flinging him out of window, when the police 
 would find him, or of stowing him away in the
 
 WATCHING AND WAITING. 51 
 
 dust-bin, when he would be noticed by the con- 
 tractor ; and of finally putting him back, and 
 acknowledging ourselves compelled to suffer him 
 even unto the end. I do not say that in the 
 broad-shouldered, kind-hearted, jovial sportsman 
 Lady Muriel had found exactly what she dreamed 
 upon when, in the terraced garden at Inchgarvie, 
 she used to read Walter Scott, and, looking over the 
 flashing stream that wound through her father's 
 domain, fancy herself the Lady of the Lake, and 
 await the arrival of Fitzjames. I do not say that 
 Kilsyth himself might not, in the few moments 
 of his daily life which he ever spared to reflection, 
 and which were generally when he was shaving 
 himself in the morning, — I do not say that Kil- 
 syth himself might not have occasionally thought 
 that his elegant and stately wife might have been 
 a little kinder to Madeleine, a little more recocr- 
 nisant of the girl's charms, a little more thought- 
 ful of her wants, and a little more tender towards 
 her girlish vagaries. But neither of them, how- 
 ever they may have thought the other suspected 
 them, ever spoke of their secret thoughts; and 
 
 UBRARY ~ — 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
 
 52 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 to the outer world there was no more well- 
 assorted couple than the Kilsyths. 
 
 It was a great thing for the comfort of the 
 entire party that Lady Muriel was a woman of 
 nerve, and that Kilsyth took his cue from her, 
 backed up by the fact that it was his darling 
 Madeleine who was ill, and that any inconvenience 
 that might accrue to any of the party in conse- 
 quence of her illness would be set down to her ac- 
 count. Lady Muriel gave a good general answer, 
 delivered with a glance round the table, and was 
 inclusive of every body, so as to prevent any 
 further questioning. Dr. Joyce had said that 
 Madeleine was not so well that night; but that 
 was to be expected ; her cold was very bad, she 
 was slightly feverish : any one — and Lady Muriel 
 turned deftly to the Duchess of Northallerton — 
 who knew any thing, would have expected that, 
 would they not ? The Duchess, who knew 
 nothing, but who didn't like to say so, declared 
 that of course they would ; and then Lady Muriel, 
 feeling it necessary that conversation should be 
 balked, turned to Sir Duncan Forbes, and began
 
 WATCHING AND WAITING. 53 
 
 to ask him questions as to his doings since the 
 end of the season. Forbes replied briskly, — there 
 was no better man in London to follow a lead, 
 whether in talk or at cards, — and so turned the 
 talk that most of those present were immediately 
 interested. The names which Duncan Forbes 
 mentioned were known to all present; all were 
 interested in their movements ; all had some- 
 thing to say about them ; so that the conversation 
 speedily became general, and so remained until 
 the ladies quitted the table. When they had 
 retired, Kilsyth ordered in the tumblers ; and it 
 was nearly eleven o'clock before the gentlemen 
 appeared in the drawing-room. Then Lady Fair- 
 fax, with one single wave of her fan, beckoned 
 Charley Jefferson into an empty seat on the otto- 
 man by her side, — a seat which little Lord Tow- 
 cester, immediately on entering the door, had 
 surveyed with vinous eyes, — and, while one of 
 the anonymous young ladies was playing endless 
 variations on the "Harmonious Blacksmith," com- 
 menced and continued a most vivid one-sided 
 conversation, to all of which the infatuated Colonel
 
 54 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 only replied by shrugs of his shoulders, and tugs 
 at his heavy moustache. Then the Duchess pur- 
 sued the Duke into a corner ; and rescuing from 
 him the Morning Post, which his grace had 
 pounced upon on entering the room with the 
 hope of further identifying Mr. Bright with Judas 
 Iscariot, began addressing him in a low mono- 
 tone, like the moaning of the sea; now rising 
 into a little hum, now falling into a long sweep- 
 ing hiss, but in each variety evidently confound- 
 ing the Duke, who pulled at his cravat and 
 rubbed his right ear in the height of nervous 
 dubiety. In the behaviour of the other guests 
 there was nothing pronounced, save occasional 
 and unwonted restlessness. The Danish Minister 
 and his wife played their usual game at back- 
 gammon ; and the customary talk, music, and 
 flirtation were carried on by the remainder of the 
 company ; but Lady Muriel knew that some 
 suspicion of the actual truth had leaked out, and 
 determined on her plan of action. 
 
 So that night, when the men had gone to the 
 smoking-room, and the ladies were" some of them
 
 WATCHING AND WAITING. 55 
 
 talking in each other's bedrooms, and others di- 
 gesting and thinking over, as is the feminine man- 
 ner, under the influence of hair-brush, the events 
 of the day ; when Kilsyth had made a tip-toe visit 
 to his darling's chamber, and had shaken his head 
 sadly over a whispered statement from her little 
 German maid that she was " Men malade" and 
 had returned to his room and dismissed his man, 
 and was kicking nervously at the logs on the 
 hearth, and mixing his tumbler preparatory to 
 taking his narcotic instalment of Blackwood, — he 
 heard a tap at his door, and Lady Muriel, in a 
 most becoming dressing-gown of rose - coloured 
 flannel, entered the room. The tumbler was put 
 down, the Blackwood was thrown aside, and in a 
 minute Kilsyth had wheeled an easy-chair round 
 to the hearth, and handed his wife to it. 
 
 " You're tired, Alick, I know, and I wouldn't 
 have disturbed you now had there not been suffi- 
 cient reason — " 
 
 " Madeleine's not worse, Muriel? I was there 
 this minute, and Gretchen said that — " 
 
 " no, she's no worse! I was in her room
 
 56 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 too just now, — though I think it is a little absurd 
 my going, — and there does not seem to be much 
 change in her since I saw her, just before dinner. 
 She is asleep just now." 
 
 " Thank God for that!" said Kilsyth heartily. 
 " After all, it may be a fright this doctor is giving 
 us. I don't think so very much of his opinion, 
 and—" 
 
 " I could not say that. Joyce is very highly 
 thought of at Glasgow, and was selected from 
 among all the competitors to take charge of this 
 district, and that, in these days of competition, 
 is no ordinary distinction. And it is on this very 
 point I came to speak to you. You got my pencil- 
 note at dinner ? Very well. Just now you con- 
 tented yourself with asking a question of Gret- 
 chen— " 
 
 " She said Madeleine was asleep, and would 
 not let me into the room." 
 
 " And quite rightly ; but I went in to the bed- 
 side. Madeleine is asleep certainly ; but her sleep 
 is restless, broken, and decidedly feverish. There 
 is not the smallest doubt that Dr. Joyce is right
 
 WATCHING AND WAITING. 57 
 
 in his opinion, and that she is attacked with scarlet- 
 fever." 
 
 "You think so, Muriel?" said Kilsyth anx- 
 iously. " I mean not blindly following Joyce's 
 opinion ; but do you think so yourself?" 
 
 "I do ; and not I alone, but half the house 
 thinks so too. How do they know it ? Heaven 
 knows how these things ever get known, but they 
 get wind somehow ; and you will see that by to- 
 morrow there will be a general flight. It is on 
 this point that I have come to speak to you, if you 
 will give me five minutes." 
 
 " Of course, Muriel ; of course, my lady. But 
 I think I've done the best that could be done ; 
 at all events, the first thing that occurred to me 
 after you wrote me that note. Duncan Forbes 
 had been saying in the drawing-room before din- 
 ner, before you came in, that the great London 
 fever-physician, Dr. Wilmot, was staying at Burn- 
 side, away from here about fifty miles, with old 
 Sir Saville Rowe, whom I recollect when I was 
 a boy. Duncan had left him this morning, and 
 he was going to stay at Burnside just a day or
 
 58 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 two longer ; and I sent one of the men with a 
 telegram to the station, to ask Dr. Wilmot to 
 come over at once, and see Maddy." 
 
 Lady Muriel was so astonished at this evidence 
 of prompt action on her husband's part that she 
 remained silent for a minute. Then she said, 
 
 " That was quite right, quite right so far as 
 Madeleine was concerned ; but my visit related 
 rather to other people. You see, so soon as it is 
 actually known that there is an infectious disorder 
 in the house, the house will be deserted. Now 
 my question is this : will it not be better to an- 
 nounce it to our guests, making the best and the 
 lightest of it, as of course one naturally would, 
 rather than let them — " 
 
 u Ye-es, I see what you mean, my lady," said 
 Kilsyth slowly; " and of course it would not do to 
 keep people here under false pretences, and when 
 we knew there was actual danger. Still I think as 
 this story of scarlet-fever is only Joyce's opinion, 
 and as I have telegraphed for Dr. Wilmot, who 
 will be here to-morrow ; and as it seems strange, 
 you know, to think that poor darling Maddy
 
 WATCHING AND WAITING. 59 
 
 should be the cause of any one's leaving Kilsyth, 
 perhaps, eh? one might put off making the 
 announcement until Joyce's opinion were corro- 
 borated by Dr. Wilmot." 
 
 "I am afraid the mischief is already done, 
 Alick, and that its results will be apparent long 
 before Dr. Wilmot can reach here," said Lady 
 Muriel. " However, let us sleep upon it. I am 
 sure to hear whether the news has spread in the 
 house long before breakfast, and we can consult 
 again." And Lady Muriel took leave of her 
 husband, and retired to her room. 
 
 Trust a woman for observation. Lady Muriel 
 was perfectly right. The nods and shoulder- 
 shrugs and whisperings which she had observed 
 in the drawing-room had already borne fruit. 
 On her return to her own room she saw a little 
 note lying on her table — a little note which, as 
 she learned from Pinner, her attendant, had j ust 
 been brought by Lady Fairfax's maid. It ran 
 thus : 
 
 " Dearest Lady Muriel, — A frightful attack
 
 GO THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 of neuralgia {my neuralgia) — which, as you know, 
 is so awful — has been hanging over me for the 
 last three clays, and now has come upon me in 
 lis fullest force. I am quite out of my mind with 
 it. I have striven — 0, how I have striven! — 
 to keep up and try to forget it, when surrounded 
 by your pleasant circle, and when looking at your 
 dear self. But it is all in vain. I am in agonies. 
 The torture of the rack itself can be nothing to 
 what I am suffering to-night. 
 
 " Poor dear Sir Benjamin Brodie used to say 
 that I should never be well in a northern climate. 
 I fear he was right. I fear that the air of this 
 darling Kilsyth, earthly Paradise though it is — 
 and I am sure that I have found it so during 
 three weeks of bliss ; 0, such happiness ! — is 
 too bracing, too invigorating for poor me. But 
 I should loathe myself if I were to make tins an 
 open confession. So I will steal away, dearest 
 Lady Muriel, without making any formal adieux. 
 When all your dear friends assemble at breakfast 
 to-morrow, I shall be on my somowing way south, 
 and only regret that my wretched health prevents
 
 WATCHING AND WAITING. 61 
 
 me longer remaining where I have been so en- 
 tirely happy. 
 
 " With kindest regards to your dear husband, 
 I am, dearest Lady Muriel, ever your loving 
 
 " Emily Fairfax. 
 
 " P.S. — I have told my maid to beg some of 
 your people to get me horses from the Kilsyth 
 Arms ; so that I shall speed away early in the 
 morning without disturbing any one. I hope 
 dear Madeleine will soon be quite herself again." 
 
 Lady Muriel read this letter through twice 
 with great calmness, though a very scornful smile 
 curled her lip during its perusal. She then 
 twisted the note up into a wisp, and was about 
 to burn it in the flame of the candle, when she 
 heard a short solemn tap at her chamber-door. 
 She turned round, bade Pinner open the door, 
 and looked with more displeasure than astonish- 
 ment at the Duchess of Northallerton, who ap- 
 peared in the entrance. The Duchess had the 
 credit in society of being a " haughty-looking 
 woman." Her stronghold in life, bevond the fact
 
 62 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 of her being a duchess, had been in her Roman 
 nose and arched eyebrows. But, somehow, haughty 
 looks become wonderfully modified in deshabille, 
 and Roman noses and arched eyebrows lose a 
 good deal of their potency when taken in con- 
 junction with two tight little curls twisted up in 
 hairpins, and a headdress which, however much 
 fluted and gauffered, is unmistakably a nightcap. 
 The Duchess's nocturnal adornments were unmis- 
 takably of this homely character, and her white 
 wrapper was of a hue, which, if she had not been 
 a duchess, would have been pronounced dingy. 
 But her step was undoubtedly tragic, and the 
 expression of her face solemn to a degree. Lady 
 Muriel received her with uplifted eyebrows, and 
 motioned her to a chair. The Duchess dropped 
 stiffly into the appointed haven of rest ; but arched 
 her eyebrows at Pinner with great significance. 
 
 " You can go, Pinner. I shall not require 
 you any more," said Lady Muriel; adding, "I 
 presume that was what you wished, Duchess?" 
 as the maid left the room. 
 
 " Precisely, dear Muriel; but you always were
 
 WATCHING AND WAITING. 63 
 
 so wonderfully ready to interpret one's thoughts. 
 I remember your dear mother used to say — but I 
 won't worry you with my stories. I came to 
 speak to you about dear Madeleine." 
 
 "Ye-es," said Lady Muriel quietly, finding 
 the Duchess paused. 
 
 u Well, now, she's worse than any of them 
 suspect. Ah, I can see it by your face. And 
 I know what is the matter with her. Don't start ; 
 I won't even ask you; I won't let you com- 
 mit yourself in any way ; but I know that it's 
 measles." 
 
 Lady Muriel kept her countenance admirably 
 while the Duchess proceeded. " I know it by 
 a sort of instinct. When Madeleine first com- 
 plained of her head, I looked narrowly at her, 
 and I said to myself, ' Measles ! undoubtedly 
 measles !' Now, you know, Muriel, though there 
 is nothing dangerous in measles to a young person 
 like Madeleine, — and she will shake them off 
 easily, and be all the better afterwards, — they are 
 very dangerous when taken by a person of ma- 
 ture age. And the fact is, the Duke has never
 
 64 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 had them — never. "When Ellington was laid up 
 with them, I recollect the Duke wouldn't remain 
 in the house, but went off to the Star and Garter, 
 and stayed there until all trace of the infection 
 was gone. And he's horribly afraid of them. 
 You know what cowards men are in such matters ; 
 and he said just now he thought there was a rash 
 on his neck. Such nonsense ! Only where his 
 collar had rubbed him, as I told him. But he's 
 dreadfully frightened ; and he has suggested that 
 instead of waiting till the end of the week, as we 
 had intended, we had better go to-morrow." 
 
 " I think that perhaps under all circumstances 
 it would be the best course," said Lady Muriel, 
 quite calmly. 
 
 " I knew your good sense would see it in the 
 right light, my dear Muriel," said the Duchess, 
 who had been nervously anticipating quite a 
 different answer, and who was overjoyed. " I 
 was perfectly certain of your coincidence in our 
 plan. Now, of course, we shall not say a word 
 as to the real reason of our departure — the Duke, 
 I know, would not have that for the world. "We
 
 WATCHING AND WAITING. 65 
 
 shall not mention it at Redlands either; merely 
 say we — 0, I shall find some good excuse, for 
 Mrs. Mnrgatroyd is a chattering little woman, 
 as yon know, Muriel. And now I won't keep 
 yon up any longer, dear. You'll kindly tell 
 some one to get us horses to be ready by — say 
 twelve to-morrow. Stay to luncheon ? No, dear. 
 I think we had better go before luncheon. The 
 Duke, you see, is so absurd about his ridiculous 
 rash. Good-night, dear." And the Duchess 
 stalked off to tell the Duke, who was not the least 
 frightened, and whose rash was entirely fictitious, 
 how well she had sped on her mission. 
 
 Lady Muriel accurately obeyed the requests 
 made to her in Lady Fairfax's letter, and verb- 
 ally by the Duchess ; and each of them found 
 their horses ready at the appointed time. Lady 
 Emily departed mysteriously before breakfast ; 
 but as the Duchess's horses were not ordered till 
 twelve, and as the post came in at eleven, her 
 grace had time to receive a letter from Mrs. Mnr- 
 gatroyd, of Redlands, whither they were next 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 bound, requesting them to postpone their arrival 
 for a day or two, as a German prince, who had by 
 accident shot a stag, had been so elated by the 
 feat, that he had implored to be allowed to stay 
 on, with the chance of repeating it ; and as he 
 occupied the rooms intended for the Duke and 
 Duchess, it was impossible to receive them until 
 he left. After reading this letter, the Duchess 
 went to Lady Muriel, and expressed her opinion 
 that she had been too precipitate; that, after all, 
 nothing positive had been pronounced ; that there 
 were no symptoms of the Duke's rash that morn- 
 ing, which had been undoubtedly caused, as she 
 had said last night, by his collar, and which was 
 no rash at all ; and that perhaps, after all, their 
 real duty was to stay and help their dear Muriel 
 to nurse her dear invalid. But they had miscal- 
 culated the possibility of deceiving their dear 
 Muriel. Lady Muriel at once replied that it was 
 impossible that they could remain at Kilsyth; 
 that immediately on the Duchess's quitting her 
 on the previous night she had made arrangements 
 as to the future disposition of the rooms which
 
 WATCHING AND WAITING. 67 
 
 they occupied ; that she would not for the world 
 take upon herself the responsibility which would 
 necessarily accrue to her if any of them caught 
 the disease ; and that she knew the Duchess's own 
 feelings would tell her that she, Lady Muriel, 
 however ungracious it might seem, was in the 
 right in advising their immediate departure. The 
 Duchess tried to argue the point, but in vain ; and 
 so she and the Duke, and their servants and bag- 
 gage, departed, and passed the next three days 
 at a third-rate roadside inn between Kilsyth and 
 Eedlands, where the Duke got lumbago, and the 
 Duchess got bored ; and where they passed their 
 time alternately wishing that they had not left 
 Kilsyth, or that the people at Eedlands were ready 
 to receive them. 
 
 Very little difference was made by the other 
 guests at Kilsyth in the disposition of their day. 
 If they were surprised at the sudden defection 
 of the Northallerton s and Lady Fairfax, they were 
 too well-bred to show it. Charley Jefferson mooned 
 about the house and grounds, a thought more 
 disconsolate than ever; but he was the onlv
 
 68 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 member of the party who at all bemoaned the 
 departure of the departed. Lady Duukeld con- 
 gratulated her cousin Muriel on being rid of 
 " those awful wet blankets," the Northallertons. 
 Captain Severn, in whispered colloquy with his 
 wife, " hoped to heaven Charley Jefferson would 
 see what a stuck-up selfish brute that Emily Fair- 
 fax was." Lord Roderick Douglas and Mr. Pit- 
 cairn went out for their stalk ; and all the rest 
 of the company betook themselves to their usual 
 occupations. 
 
 " Where's her ladyship ?" 
 
 a 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 recommend- 
 ing you to go out as usual. Your fine London 
 physician never asked for you, never mentioned 
 your name."
 
 WATCHING AND WAITING. fi9 
 
 "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 wel- 
 comed 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. Wil- 
 mot, 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 pos- 
 sibly be done for Miss Kilsyth up to this point." 
 
 U A laudato vivo laudari" murmured Dr. Joyce.
 
 70 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 " But, fortunately or unfortunately, as I learn 
 from him, a district of thirty miles in circum- 
 ference looks to him for its health. Xow I am, 
 for the next few clays 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 unremit- 
 ting attention for the result." 
 
 " I'm so hot and so thirsty, and these pillows
 
 WATCHING AND WAITING. 71 
 
 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 to- 
 night ; but your voice is so kind, and your man- 
 ner, 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 Wil- 
 mot'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 every-day life is not like the 
 every-day 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 coun- 
 tenance. Sometimes the impression is quite 
 vague, and the questioner is conscious only that
 
 MRS. WILMOT. 
 
 73 
 
 there must be something of interest to be known. 
 The man's wife may be dear to him, with a 
 special clearness 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 conse- 
 quence. 
 
 It was in the vaguest form that the ques- 
 tion, " What sort of a woman is Chudleigh Wil- 
 mot'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,
 
 74 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 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, pre- 
 occupied, and absorbed physician dwelt within its 
 walls, devoting all his energies of mind and body 
 to the battle with disease, in which he was re- 
 solved 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 Dar- 
 lington 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
 
 MKS. WILMOT. 75 
 
 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 recol- 
 lection. 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
 
 76 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 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 Ins 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, and to a degree, which no other 
 object could ever compete with. It never oc- 
 curred to him for a moment that there was any 
 injustice to Mabel in this. He would be an 
 affectionate and faithful husband; but he was a 
 practical man — not an enthusiast, not a dreamer. 
 If he succeeded — and he was determined to sue-
 
 MRS. WILMOT. 77 
 
 ceed — she would share his success, the realisa- 
 tion of his ambition, and would secure all its ad- 
 vantages to herself. A man to do real work in 
 the world, and to do it as a man ought — as alone 
 he could feel the answer of a good conscience in 
 doing anything he should undertake — must put 
 his work above and before every thing. He 
 would do this ; he would be an eminent physician, 
 a celebrated and rich man ; a good husband too ; 
 and his wife should never have reason to find fault 
 with him, or to envy the wives of other men — 
 men who might indeed be more sentimental and 
 demonstrative, but who could not have a stronger 
 sense of duty than he. Thus thought, thus re- 
 solved Mabel Darlington's lover ; and very good 
 thoughts, very admirable resolves his were. They 
 had only one defect : but he never suspected its 
 existence. It was a rather radical defect too, 
 being this : that they were not those of a lover 
 at all. 
 
 They were married, and all] went very well 
 with the modest and exemplary household. At 
 first the AVilmot menage was not so fashionably
 
 78 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 located as afterwards; but Mrs. Wilmot's house 
 was always a model of neatness, propriety, and 
 the precise degree of elegance which the rising 
 man's income justified at each level which he 
 attained. Wilmot's mother continued to like her 
 daughter-in-law, and to regard her son's marriage 
 as most propitious, though she had sometimes a 
 doubt whether she really did understand his wife 
 quite so thoroughly as she had understood Mabel 
 Darlington. But Wilmot's mother had now been 
 dead some years. Mrs. Wilmot had no near 
 relatives, and she was a woman of few intima- 
 cies ; her life was placid, prosperous, conventional. 
 She had, at the period with wdiich this stoiy 
 deals, a handsome house, a good income, an 
 agreeable and eminently respectable social circle ; 
 a handsome, irreproachable husband, rapidly ris- 
 ing into distinction ; one intimate friend, and — a 
 broken heart. 
 
 Chudleigh Wilmot's wife was young; if not 
 beautiful, at least very attractive, accomplished, 
 lady-like, and "amiable," in the generally ac- 
 cepted interpretation of that unsatisfactory word.
 
 MRS. WILMOT. 79 
 
 What better or what worse description could pos- 
 sibly be given ? It describes a thousand women 
 in a breath, and it designates not one in parti- 
 cular. There was only one person in existence 
 who could have given a more clear, intelligible, 
 and distinct description of Mrs. Wilmot than this 
 stereotyped one. This person was her friend 
 Mrs. Prendergast — a lady somewhat older than 
 herself, and whose natural and remarkable quick- 
 ness and penetration were aided in this instance 
 by close acquaintance and sleepless jealousy. If 
 Mrs. Prendergast had been an ordinary woman, 
 as silly as her sisterhood and no sillier, the fact 
 that she was extremely jealous of Mrs. Wilmot 
 would have so obscured and perverted her judg- 
 ment, that her opinion would not have been worth 
 having. But Mrs. Prendergast was very unlike 
 her sisterhood. Not only was she negatively 
 less silly, but she was positively clever ; and being 
 severe, suspicious, and implacable as well, if not 
 precisely a pleasant, she was at least a remarkable 
 woman. Nothing obscured or perverted Mrs. 
 Prendergast' s judgment ; neither did anything
 
 80 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 touch her heart. She had mind, and a good deal 
 of it ; she had experience and tact, insight, fore- 
 sight, and caution. She was a woman who might 
 possibly be a very valuable friend, but who could 
 not fail to be a very dangerous enemy. In such 
 a nature the power of enmity would probably be 
 greater than the power of friendship, and the 
 one would be likely to crush the other if ever 
 they came into collision. Mrs. Prendergast was 
 Mrs. Wilmot's friend. Whether she was the 
 friend of Mrs. Wilmot's husband remains to be 
 seen. If she had been asked to say what manner 
 of woman the rising man's wife was, and had 
 thought proper to satisfy the inquirer, her por- 
 traiture might have been relied upon as implicitly 
 for its truthfulness as that of the most impartial 
 observer, which is saying at once that Mrs. Pren- 
 dergast was a woman of exceptional mental quali- 
 ties, and of a temperament rare among those 
 charming creatures to whom injustice is easy and 
 natural. 
 
 The two women were habitually much to- 
 gether. Mrs. Prendergast was a childless widow.
 
 MRS. WILMOT. 81 
 
 Mrs. Wilmot was a childless wife. Neither had 
 absorbing domestic occupations to employ her, — 
 each had a good deal of time at the other's dis- 
 posal ; hence it happened that few days passed 
 without their meeting, and enjoying that desul- 
 tory kind of companionship which is so puzzling 
 to the male observer of the habits and manners 
 of womankind. Their respective abodes were 
 within easy distance of each other. Mrs. Pren- 
 dergast lived in Cadogan-place, and Mrs. Wilmot 
 lived in Charles-street, St. James's. When they 
 did not see one another, they exchanged notes ; 
 and in short they kept up all the ceremonial of 
 warm feminine friendship ; and each really did 
 like the other better than any one else in the 
 world, with one exception. In Mrs. Wilmot's 
 case the exception was her husband ; in Mrs. 
 Prendergast's, the exception was herself. There 
 was a good deal of sincerity and warmth in their 
 friendship, but on one point there was a decided 
 inequality. Mrs. Prendergast understood Mrs. 
 Wilmot thoroucdilv ; she read her through and 
 through, she knew her off by heart ; but Mrs. 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 Wilmot knew very little of her friend — only just 
 as much as her friend chose she should know. 
 Which was a convenient state of things, and 
 tended to preserve their pleasant and salutary 
 relations unbroken. Mrs. Prendergast had played 
 Eleanor Galligai to Mrs. Wilmot' s Marie de' Me- 
 dicis for a considerable time, and with uninter- 
 rupted success, when Chudleigh Wilmot was sent 
 for, in the perplexity and distress at Kilsyth ; 
 and as a matter of course she had heard from 
 his wife about his prolonged visit to Sir Saville 
 Howe, whom she was well aware Mrs. Wilmot 
 disliked with the quiet, rooted, persistent aver- 
 sion so frequently inspired in the breasts of even 
 the very best and most conscientious of women 
 by their husbands' intimate friends. Wilmot was 
 utterly unconscious that his wife entertained any 
 such feeling ; and Sir Saville Eowe himself would 
 have been hardly more astonished than Wilmot, 
 if it had been revealed to him that the confidence 
 and regard which existed between the former 
 master and pupil were counted a grievance, and 
 Wilmot's visit to Burnside resented, silently in-
 
 MES. WILMOT. 83 
 
 deed, in grief rather than in anger, as an in- 
 jury. 
 
 In this fact may be found the key-note to 
 Mrs. Wilmot's character ; a key-note often struck 
 by her friend's hand, and never with an erring, 
 a faltering, or a rough touch. 
 
 There was not much of the tragic element 
 in Henrietta Prendergast's jealousy of Mabel Wil- 
 mot, but there was a great deal of the mean. 
 When Mabel was a young girl, Henrietta was a 
 not much older widow. She was Mabel's cousin ; 
 had married, when \ery young, a man who had 
 survived their marriage only one year. She had 
 more money than Mabel ; their connections were 
 the same; she had as much education, and even 
 better manners. She met -Chuclleigh Wilmot on 
 the occasion of his renewing his acquaintance with 
 Mabel Darlington, and she was as much, though 
 differently, fascinated with him as Mabel herself. 
 She compared her qualifications with those of her 
 cousin; and she arrived at the not unnatural con- 
 clusion that their charms were equal, supposing 
 him incapable of discerning how much cleverer
 
 84 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 a woman than Mabel she was, — and hers very 
 superior, should he prove capable of understand- 
 ing and appreciating her intellectual superiority. 
 She forgot one simple element in the calculation, 
 and it made all the difference — she forgot Mabel's 
 prettiness. Henrietta Prendergast made very few 
 mistakes, but she did constantly make one blun- 
 der; she forgot her plain face, she under-esti- 
 mated the power of beauty. Perhaps no plain 
 woman ever does understand that power, ever does 
 make sufficient allowance for it, when arrayed 
 against her in any kind of combat ; it is certain 
 that Henrietta did not in this instance. It is 
 certain that though Chudleigh Wilmot thought 
 of marrying Mabel Darlington without being very 
 much in love with her, he never thought of mar- 
 rying Henrietta Prendergast at all. 
 
 And now, when she had come to the con- 
 clusion that Chudleigh Wilmot had not loved 
 Mabel Darlington, and did not love his wife, — was, 
 in short, a man to whom love was unknown, by 
 whom it was unvalued, undesired, — she was still 
 steadily, sleeplessly jealous of Mabel Wilmot. "I
 
 MRS. WILMOT. 85 
 
 would have made him love mef she would say to 
 herself, as she read the thoughts of her friend ; 
 " I would have been as ambitious for him as he 
 is for himself; I would have shown him that his 
 aim was the highest and the worthiest. I would 
 have loved him, and sympathised with him too. 
 She only loves him ; she does not understand him. 
 Why did she come in between him and me ?" 
 For this very clever woman had actually deluded 
 herself into the belief that, but for Mabel, Chud- 
 leigh Wilmot would have loved, or at least have 
 married her. She would have made him love 
 her afterwards, as she said. So for a long time 
 she disliked her cousin, and hankered after her 
 cousin's husband, and believed that she would 
 have been the best, the most suitable, and the 
 happiest of wives to the man who evidently had 
 not a wife of that pattern in Mabel, but who 
 somehow did not seem to perceive the fact. That 
 time had come to an end long before people at 
 Kilsyth asked themselves and each other what 
 sort of woman Chudleigh Wilmot's wife was. 
 But though Mrs. Prendergast no longer hankered
 
 86 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 after her cousin's husband, though the love, in 
 which her active imagination had a large share, 
 had given place to a much more real and genuine 
 hatred, she was jealous of Mabel still. This 
 woman's brain was larger than her heart; her 
 intellectual was higher than her moral nature ; 
 and a lofty feeling would be more transient than 
 a low one. She pitied Mabel Wilmot too, how- 
 ever contradictory such an assertion may seem to 
 shallow perceptions, which do not recognise in life 
 that nothing is so reasonably to be expected, so 
 invariably to be found, as contradictions in cha- 
 racter. She liked her, she understood her, but 
 she was jealous of her — jealous because Mabel had 
 the position she had vainly desired. If she had 
 had her husband's love, Mrs. Prendergast would 
 have been still more jealous of her, and would not 
 have liked, because she could not have pitied her. 
 But she knew she had not that ; she had made the 
 discovery as soon as Mabel, who had made it 
 fatally soon. 
 
 What had the girl's ideal been? was a ques- 
 tion none could answer, and which it is certain
 
 MRS. W1LM0T. 87 
 
 her husband never asked. He was very kind to 
 her ; she had every comfort, every luxury that he 
 could give her ; but she lived in a world of which 
 he knew nothing, and he in and for his profession. 
 He could not have been brought to recognise the 
 possibility of over devotion to the business of his 
 life. He would not have listened to the advance 
 of any claims upon his time, attention, or interest, 
 beyond those which he fulfilled with enthusiasm 
 in the interests of his work, and the courteous 
 observance which he never denied to the rules of 
 his well-regulated household. Chudleigh Wilmot 
 was a clever man in many ways beside that one 
 way in which he was eminently so ; but one study 
 had long lain near his hand, and he had never 
 given time or thought to it ; one book was close to 
 him, and he had never turned its leaves — the 
 study of his wife's character, the book of his 
 wife's heart. 
 
 Mabel Wilmot was inveterately, incurably shy, 
 extremely reserved and reticent by nature, and 
 rather sullen. The latter fault of temper had 
 made itself apparent to her husband very early
 
 88 THE FOIILORN HOPE. 
 
 in their married life ; and having rebuked it with- 
 out effect, he made the great mistake of treating 
 it with disregard. He never noticed it now ; 
 the symptoms escaped him, the disease did not 
 interest him, and it grew and grew. Proud, cold 
 in manner, distant; scrupulously deferential and 
 dutiful in externals ; silent, except where speech 
 was necessary to the management of such affairs 
 as lay within her sphere ; calmly indifferent, to all 
 appearance, to all that did not absolutely concern 
 her individually in the course of their life, her 
 shyness and her sullenness were not perceptible to 
 others now — never to him. He did not know 
 that it was so much the worse ; he did not un- 
 derstand that it had been better to know and feel 
 her faults than to be ignorant of her and them, 
 unconscious of their growth, or their yielding, or 
 their transformation into others, uglier, worse, 
 harder of eradication, more hopeless of cure. He 
 did not love her. The whole story was in that 
 one sentence. 
 
 And she ? She loved him ; certainly not 
 wisely, all things considered, and much too well
 
 MRS. WILMOT. 
 
 89 
 
 for her own peace. She had outgrown her girl- 
 hood since her marriage ; and her character had 
 hardened, darkened, deepened, everything but 
 strengthened, with her advance into womanhood. 
 The girl Chudleigh Wilmot had married, and the 
 graceful languid woman who appeared barely 
 conscious of, and not at all interested in, the fact 
 of his existence, were widely different beings. 
 Mabel had shrunk from the knowledge of the 
 thraldom in which her love for her husband — her 
 calm, cold, generous, irreproachable husband — held 
 her when she had first realised its strength, when 
 the growth of her own love had revealed to her 
 that his was but a puny changeling, with all the 
 sensitiveness of a shy, sullen, and reticent nature. 
 She could not deny, but she could conceal the 
 bondage in which it held her. The qualities of 
 her heart and the defects of her temper had a 
 fight for the mastery, and temper won. Chud- 
 leigh Wilmot, if he had been obliged to think 
 about the matter, would have unhesitatingly de- 
 clared that his wife's temper had improved con- 
 siderably since the early days of their marriage :
 
 90 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 the truth was, it had only lost impulsiveness, 
 and acquired sulk and seeretiveness. 
 
 All this, and the terrible pain at the young 
 woman's unsatisfied heart, — the pain which de- 
 voured her the more ruthlessly as success waited 
 more closely upon the devotion to his profession of 
 the man she loved, and in whose life she had but 
 a nominal share, — was well known to Henrietta 
 Prendergast. It had been long in coming, that 
 burst of agonised confidence, which had made 
 her friend officially aware of all that her acute 
 mind had long believed; but it had come, and 
 like all the confidences of very shy people, it had 
 been complete and expansive. All restraint was 
 over. Mabel might yield to any mood now in 
 Henrietta's presence ; she might talk of him with 
 pride, with love, with anger, with questioning 
 wonder, with despair; she, whose armour of pride 
 and silence no other hand, not even the hand 
 of the husband she loved, had ever pierced, was 
 defenceless, unarmed, at the mercy of her friend, 
 who fancied she had supplanted her, who was 
 jealous of her.
 
 MRS. WILMOT. 91 
 
 Chudleigh Wilmot had been nearly a week 
 at Kilsyth, when Mrs. Prendergast, entering her 
 cousin's drawing-room rather earlier than usual, 
 found her agitated, and in a state of per- 
 plexity. 
 
 "I am so glad you have come, Henrietta," 
 said Mrs. Wilmot, as she kissed her visitor. " I 
 have been in such anxiety to see you. A mess- 
 age was sent early this morning from Mr. Fol- 
 jambe — you know Wilmot' s friend, Mr. Foljambe 
 the banker, of Portland-place — requesting that he 
 would go to him at once. The poor old man 
 has the gout again very badly. Since then a 
 note has come ; written by himself too, and hardly 
 legible. Poor creature! I'm sure he is in horrid 
 pain. Here it is. You see he says, ' the enemy 
 is advancing on the citadel ' — he means his heart 
 or his stomach, I suppose — and he entreats Wil- 
 mot to go to him at once. What ought I to do, 
 Henrietta ?" 
 
 "You must tell him, of course, that Mr. 
 Wilmot is out of town. I should not say he was 
 so far away as Scotland ; I think the mere idea is
 
 92 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 enough to terrify a nervous old man with a super- 
 stition in favour of a particular doctor." 
 
 " Yes, yes, you are right ; so it is. But about 
 Wilmot. Of course he will not like to leave Sir 
 Saville's friends. He thinks more of Sir Saville 
 than of any one in the world, I do believe." 
 
 " Hardly more, Mabel, than of his reputation 
 and Mr. Foljambe, I should think. Why, this 
 Mr. Foljambe is the oldest friend he has in the 
 world — his godfather, his father's friend, — a child- 
 less old man, without kith or kin in the world, 
 who may leave him a fortune any day, and is 
 certain to leave him something very handsome ! 
 He would never be so mad or so ungrateful — 
 is he of an ungrateful disposition, Mabel ?" 
 
 " I don't know exactly," said Mrs. Wilmot, 
 as her colour deepened, and tears rose to her 
 dark gray eyes. " If he has any feeling, it is 
 certainly for his friends — at least he wastes none 
 of it on me" 
 
 " You are always brooding over that, Mabel," 
 said her cousin, " and it is labour and sorrow 
 wasted. No man is worth being miserable about,
 
 MRS. WILMOT. 93 
 
 dear, and Wilmot is no more worth it than his 
 neighbours. Besides, this is a matter of business, 
 you know, and we must look at it so. You had 
 better telegraph at once, I think. Put on your 
 bonnet, and come to the office; don't trust to 
 a servant, and don't lose time. The message will 
 take some time to reach him, at the quickest. I 
 fancy Kilsyth is a long way from any station." 
 
 Her practical tone had a beneficial effect on 
 Mabel. Besides, she brightened at the hope, the 
 expectation of Wilmot's return before the appointed 
 time. The two ladies drove to Charing-cross, and 
 Mabel telegraphed to Wilmot : 
 
 Mr. Foljambe is dangerously ill. Come at 
 once."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 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 Wilmotfs room, in whose 
 hand he recognised the ominous yellow cover 
 which indicated a telegraphic despatch, he imme- 
 diately 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 gentle- 
 man did his best to peer at the pencilled charac- 
 ters on the flimsy sheet of paper which Wilmot 
 held in his hand. For a moment his eager ques- 
 tion remained unanswered, and his guest stood
 
 A RESOLVE, AND ITS RESULTS. 95 
 
 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
 
 96 THE FORLORN HOPE. * 
 
 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 dis- 
 regard 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. 
 
 Chuclleigh 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 to- 
 wards himself. He made very much to himself
 
 A RESOLVE, AND ITS RESULTS. 97 
 
 of his apprehensions concerning the result of 
 Madeleine's illness, and his absolute want of con- 
 fidence 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 deter- 
 mined 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 TVil- 
 mot 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 
 u 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 
 vol. I. H
 
 98 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 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
 
 99 
 
 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 dis- 
 figuring 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
 
 100 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 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. sec 
 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 diffi- 
 cult 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 ; " cer- 
 tainly not — it is entirely unnecessary." 
 
 " Well, sir," said the nurse, " it's mostly 
 done in fevers. Wherever I've nursed, I've al- 
 ways done it, first thing." 
 
 Wilmot turned red and hot. Why should he
 
 A RESOLVE, AND ITS RESULTS. 101 
 
 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. " JSfo, 
 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 Made- 
 leine'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
 
 102 THE FORLORN IIOrE. 
 
 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, re- 
 sponds unto his own. When Lady Muriel 
 Inchgarvie was running her career of two Lon- 
 don 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
 
 A RESOLVE, AND ITS RESULTS. 103 
 
 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 gentle- 
 manliness, and his utter harmlessness — for every- 
 one 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 fomid 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 know-
 
 1 04 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 ledge, that even if family affairs could have been 
 squared by his coming into the immediate heritage 
 of fabulous wealth, there was yet a slight draw- 
 back in the fact that his lungs could not pos- 
 sibly 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 per- 
 fect 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 dis- 
 guising 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
 
 A KESOLVE, AND ITS RESULTS. 105 
 
 wrote one liasty 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. Be- 
 tween 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 self- 
 ishness 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,
 
 106 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 touched by her sobs, grew more and more tremu- 
 lous, 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 re- 
 mained 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 Mu- 
 riel 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
 
 A RESOLVE, AND ITS RESULTS. 107 
 
 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 fort- 
 night 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 child- 
 less,- 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 pre- 
 carious 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 un- 
 assuming, sufficiently shrewd to comprehend the
 
 108 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 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 photo- 
 graph ; kept himself well posted in their move- 
 ments, 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 Made- 
 leine's being captivated by the handsome glib 
 young man who paid her such respectful homage.
 
 A RESOLVE, AND ITS RESULTS. 109 
 
 But for once in her life Lady Muriel was wrong. 
 It is but fair to say that Ramsay Caird never neg- 
 lected 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 ; con- 
 tenting herself by asking Eamsay Caird to spend 
 a week or two now and then at Kilsyth, by throw- 
 ing him frequently into Madeleine's society when 
 there, and by keeping up a perpetual gently flow- 
 ing perennial stream of laudation of her young 
 protege to her husband.
 
 110 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 On Wilmot's return to the house, he inquired 
 whether it would be convenient to Lady Muriel 
 to receive him. 
 
 u 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 man- 
 sion 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 
 step-daughter, 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 irre- 
 proachable 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 
 iar-seeing and an eminently practical man. Thus,
 
 A RESOLVE, AND ITS RESULTS. Ill 
 
 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 unconsci- 
 ously, 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 feel- 
 ing ; and as he dwelt upon the youth, the beauty, 
 and the sufferings of the girl, upon her exceeding
 
 112 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 preciousness to her father (and gave Lady Muriel 
 credit for sharing her husband's feelings far be- 
 yond what she deserved), the soft dark eyes fixed 
 themselves upon him with much interest and 
 curiosity. Deep feeling on any subject was un- 
 familiar 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 strange- 
 ness. 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 re- 
 garded Wilmot with increasing interest and sur- 
 prise, as she discovered more and more of his 
 originality and fertility of mind. She was not a re- 
 markably clever woman ; but she had more brains 
 and more cultivation than were at nil 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
 
 A RESOLVE, AND ITS RESULTS. 113 
 
 in her circle. She had sometimes wondered 
 whether something better was not to bo 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 step-daughter 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 
 
 VOL. T. I
 
 114 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 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 dis- 
 course, 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 woidd 
 be slow to try them. Lady Muriel knew that 
 Chudleigh Wilmot was a married man. The cir- 
 cumstance 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 Chud- 
 leigh Wilmot's wife ?" She could not have ex-
 
 A RESOLVE, AND ITS RESULTS. 115 
 
 plained, 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 Kil- 
 syth sighed. Life was not yet an old story for 
 either Lady Muriel or Chudleigh. 
 
 That evening "Wilinot 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 hope- 
 fulness than he actually felt. He was conscious 
 too of a strange sort of relief — a consciousness 
 which should have shown him how he had de- 
 ceived himself — as the conviction that his pre- 
 sence 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
 
 116 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 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 mur- 
 muring 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.
 
 A RESOLVE, AND ITS RESULTS. 117 
 
 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 dif- 
 ficult 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.
 
 118 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 " 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 every- 
 thing 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 de- 
 pends on yourself. I don't mean about not 
 dying ; I mean about getting well' sooner. AYill 
 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,
 
 A RESOLVE, AND ITS RESULTS. 119 
 
 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, undis- 
 turbed 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 unrelaxed. 
 
 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 un- 
 wearied 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,
 
 120 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 he esteemed, lie next to worshipped Wilmot, hold- 
 ing 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 de- 
 voted 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 apprecia- 
 tive 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
 
 A KESOLVE, AND ITS RESULTS. 121 
 
 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 
 AVilmot loved one woman within the Avails 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 fort- 
 night 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.
 
 122 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 Mabel Wilmot had written to lier husband 
 occasionally during the fortnight which had wit- 
 nessed 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 ob- 
 serve 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 com- 
 plete indifference.
 
 A RESOLVE, AND ITS RESULTS. 123 
 
 Dr. Whittaker continued to report upon the 
 cases to which he had been called in ; and no more 
 telegrams interrupted the concentration of Chud- 
 leigh Wilmot's attention upon the illness and con- 
 valescence of Madeleine Kilsyth.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AT KILSYTH. 
 
 The routine of illness and anxiety, the dull mo- 
 notony of an absorbing care, had rapidly settled 
 down upon Kilsyth, immensely alleviated, of 
 course, by the confidence imposed by Wilmot's 
 presence. The influence of his skill, the insen- 
 sible support of his calmness and self-reliance, 
 were felt all through the household by those 
 members of it to whom the life or death of Made- 
 leine was a matter of infinite importance, and by 
 those who felt a decent amount of interest, but 
 could have commanded their feelings readily 
 enough. As for "Wilmot himself, he would have 
 found it difficult to account for the absorption of 
 feeling and interest with which he watched the 
 case, had he been called upon to render any 
 account of it to others. In his own mind he
 
 AT KILSYTH. 125 
 
 shirked the question, and simply devoted him- 
 self day and night to his patient, leaving the 
 house only once a day for a brief time, during 
 which he would stride up and down the ter- 
 race in front of the house, gulping-in all the 
 fresh air he could inhale ; and then his place in 
 the sick-chamber was taken by an old woman, 
 who had years before been Madeleine's nurse, 
 and who was now married and settled on the 
 estate. Not since the old days of his house- 
 surgeonship at St. Yitus's had Chuclleigh Wil- 
 mot had such a spell of duty as this : the fact 
 of his giving up his time in this manner to a 
 girl with whom he had not exchanged twenty 
 words, with whose friends he had no previous 
 acquaintance, in whom he could have no possible 
 interest, came upon him frequently in his en- 
 forced exercise on the terrace, in his long weary 
 vigils in the sick-room ; and each time that he 
 thought it over, he felt or pronounced it to him- 
 self to be more and more inexplicable. In 
 London he made it an inexorable rule never to 
 leave his bed at night, unless the person sending
 
 126 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 for him were a regular patient, no matter what 
 might be their position in life, or the exigency 
 of their case ; and even among his own connection 
 he kept strictly to consultation and prescription; 
 he undertook no practical work, there were apo- 
 thecaries and nurses for that sort of thing. He 
 had a list of both, whom he could recommend, but 
 he himself never paid any attention to such mat- 
 ters. And here he was acting as a combination of 
 physician, apothecary, and nurse, dispensing the 
 necessary medicines from the family medicine- 
 chest, sitting up all night, concocting soothing 
 drinks, and smoothing hot and uneasy pillows. 
 
 Why ? Chudleigh Wilmot had asked himself 
 that question a thousand times, and had not yet 
 found the answer to it. Beauty in distress — and 
 this girl, for all her mass of golden hair and her 
 bright complexion and her blue eyes, could only 
 be called pretty — beauty in distress was no more 
 strange to Chudleigh Wilmot than to the hero 
 of nautical melodrama at a transpontine theatre. 
 He w T as constantly being called in to cases where 
 he saw girls as young and as pretty as Madeleine
 
 AT KILSYTH. 127 
 
 Kilsyth " hove down in the bay of sickness," as 
 the said nautical dramatic hero forcibly expresses 
 it. Scarcely a day passed that he was not for some 
 few minutes by the couch of some woman of far 
 superior attractions to this young girl, and yet 
 of whom he had never thought in any but the 
 most thoroughly professional manner, listening to 
 her complaints, marking her symptoms, prescrib- 
 ing his remedies, and entering up the visit in his 
 note-book, as he whirled away in his carriage, 
 as methodically as a City accountant. But he 
 had never felt in his life as he felt one bright 
 afternoon when the wild delirium had spent its 
 rage and died away, and the doctor sat by the 
 girl's bedside, and held her hand, no longer dry 
 and parched with fever, and bent over her to 
 catch the low faint accents of her voice. 
 
 "You don't know me, Miss Kilsyth," said he 
 gently, as he saw her dazed by looking up into 
 his face. 
 
 "0 yes," said Madeleine, in ever so low a 
 voice, — "0 yes; you are Doctor — Doctor — I 
 cannot recollect your name ; but I know you
 
 128 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 were sent for, and I saw yon before — before I 
 was—" 
 
 " Before yon were so ill; quite right, my dear 
 young lady. I am Dr. Wilmot, and you have 
 been very ill ; but you are better now, and — 
 please God — will soon be well." 
 
 "Dr. Wilmot! yes, I recollect. But, 
 please, don't think because I could not recall 
 your name that I did not know you. I have 
 known you all through this — this attack. I have 
 had an indefinable sense of your presence about 
 me ; always kind and thoughtful and attentive, 
 always soothing, and — " 
 
 " Hush, my dear child, hush ! you must not talk 
 and excite yourself just yet. You have had, as 
 you probably know, a very sharp attack of illness ; 
 and you must keep thoroughly quiet, to enable us 
 to perfect your recovery." 
 
 " Then I'll only ask one question and say one 
 thing. The question first — How is papa?" 
 
 " Horribly nervous about you, but very well. 
 Constant in his tappings at this door, unremitting 
 in his desire to be admitted ; to which requests
 
 AT KILSYTH. 129 
 
 I have been obdurate. However, when he hears 
 the turn things have taken, he will be reassured." 
 
 " That's delightful ! Now, then, all I have to 
 say is to thank you, and pray God to bless you 
 for your kindness to me. I've known it, though 
 you mayn't think so, and — and I'm very weak 
 now; but — " 
 
 He had his strong arm round her, and managed 
 to lay her back quietly on her pillow, or she would 
 have fainted. As it was, when the bright blue 
 eyes withdrew from his, the light died out of 
 them, and the lids dropped over them, and Made- 
 leine lay thoroughly exhausted after her excite- 
 ment. 
 
 What ivas the reminiscence thus aroused? 
 What ghost with folded hands came stealing 
 out of the dim regions of the past at the sound 
 of this girl's voice, at the glance of this girl's 
 
 O 7 O O 
 
 eyes? What bygone memories, so apart from 
 everything else, rose before him as he listened 
 and as he looked ? He had not hit the trail yet 7 
 but he was close upon it. 
 
 The news that the extremity of danger was 
 VOL. I. k
 
 130 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 past was received with great delight by the guests 
 at Kilsyth. With most of them Madeleine was 
 a personal favourite, and all of them felt that a 
 death in the house would have been a serious 
 personal inconvenience. The Northallertons, Lady 
 Fairfax, and Lord Towcester, were the only se- 
 ceders ; the others either had arranged for later 
 visits elsewhere, or found their present quarters 
 far too comfortable to be given up on the mere 
 chance of catching an infectious disorder. Some 
 of them had had it, and laughed securely ; others 
 feared that from the mere fact of their having 
 been in the house when the attack took place, 
 they were so " compromised" as to prevent their 
 being received elsewhere ; and one or two actually 
 had the charity to think of their host and hostess, 
 and stayed to keep them company, and to be of 
 any service in case they might be required. 
 Charley Jefferson belonged to this last class. 
 Emily Fairfax little knew that by her selfish flight 
 from Kilsyth she had entirely thrown away all 
 her hold over the great honest heart that had so 
 long held her image enshrined as its divinity.
 
 AT KILYSTH. 131 
 
 She never gave a thought to the fact that 
 
 when the big Guardsman used to hum in a 
 
 deep 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 ques- 
 tion 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
 
 132 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 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 infec- 
 tious, 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 7nilitai? t es chat- 
 ting 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 Chudlcigh Wilmot could have
 
 AT KILSYTH. 133 
 
 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 ne- 
 cessarily debarred himself from communion with 
 the others at the dinner-table, might yet enjoy the 
 social converse of such as were not afraid of in- 
 fection. 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 in- 
 valid, and had with the greatest difficulty been 
 restrained from establishing herself en permanence 
 as nurse in Madeleine's chamber ; and Mr. Pit- 
 cairn 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,
 
 134 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 as the closeness of his attendance on his patient 
 became relaxed by her advance towards conva- 
 lescence, and studying him with increased atten- 
 tion, learned to regard him with feelings such as 
 no man of her numerous and varied acquaintance 
 had ever before inspired her with. The im- 
 pression he had made upon her in the first inter- 
 view was not removed or weakened, and he pre- 
 sented himself to her mind — which was naturally 
 inquiring, and possessed considerably more intel- 
 ligence than she had occasion to use, in a general 
 way, in her easy-going, prosperous, and con- 
 ventional life — in the light of an interesting and 
 remunerative study. 
 
 Lady Muriel's faultlessly good manners pre- 
 cluded 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 milit aires, the 
 dashing sportsmen, the grands seigneurs, and the
 
 AT KILSYTH. 135 
 
 ladies of distinction who were among her asso- 
 ciates, 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 in- 
 genuous 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
 
 136 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 without just cause ; and she certainly had not that. 
 She perfectly appreciated her remarkably com- 
 fortable lot in life ; she estimated wealth, station, 
 domestic tranquillity and respect, and the un- 
 bounded power which she exercised in her house- 
 hold 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 humi- 
 lity 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 confi- 
 dantes, 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 acknow- 
 ledge a weakness which her truly admirable man- 
 ners gave her power most successfully to conceal.
 
 AT KILSYTH. 137 
 
 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 ignomini- 
 ously. If Lady Muriel had loved Madeleine 
 Kilsyth, the girl's illness would have put bore- 
 dom 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 pre- 
 tend 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 prin- 
 ciple — 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
 
 138 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 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 
 step-motherly 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 Chudleio-h 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
 
 AT KILSYTH. 139 
 
 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 per- 
 ception, the close observation, and the nascent 
 suspicion which could not fail to accompany it, in 
 such a " thorough" organisation as that of Lady 
 Muriel. She began to take notice of every thing
 
 140 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 concerning "Wilmot, to observe all his ways, and 
 to watch with jealous scrutiny the degree of in- 
 terest he displayed in all his surroundings at 
 Kilsyth. 
 
 As Madeleine progressed in her recovery, Lady 
 Muriel looked for some decline in the physician's 
 absorption in the interest of her case. He would 
 be less punctual, less constant in his attendance 
 upon her ; he would be more susceptible to in- 
 fluences from the outside world ; he would be 
 anxious to get away perhaps — at least he would 
 no longer be indifferent to professional duties 
 elsewhere ; he would begin to weigh their re- 
 spective claims, and would recognise the prepon- 
 derance of those at a distance over that which he 
 had already satisfied more than fully, more than 
 conscientiously, with a fulness and expansion of 
 sympathy and devotion rare indeed. 
 
 Wilmot was extremely popular among the 
 little company at Kilsyth. Wonderfully popular, 
 considering how much he was the intellectual su- 
 perior of every man there ; but then he was one 
 of those clever men who never make their talents
 
 AT KILSYTH. 141 
 
 obnoxious, «and are not bent on forcing a per- 
 petual recognition of their superiority from their 
 associates. He allowed the people he was with 
 to enjoy all the originality, wit, knowledge, and 
 good fellowship that was in him, and did not 
 administer t the least alloy of mortification to their 
 pride with it. When Lady Muriel forcibly ac- 
 knowledged to herself, and would as frankly have 
 acknowledged to anyone else, if anyone else 
 would have asked her a question on the subject, 
 that she held Dr. Wilmot to be the cleverest and 
 most agreeable man she had ever met, she did but 
 echo a sentiment which had found general expres- 
 sion among the party assembled at Kilsyth. 
 
 As the days went by, Lady Muriel began to 
 feel certain misgivings relative to Wilmot. She 
 did not quite like his look, his manner, when he 
 spoke of Madeleine. She did not consider it 
 altogether natural that he should never weary of 
 Kilsyth's garrulity on the subject of his darling 
 daughter. The physician, taking rest from his 
 long and anxious watch, might well be excused 
 if he had tired a little of questions and replies
 
 142 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 about every symptom, every variation, and of 
 endless stories of the girl's childhood, and lauda- 
 tion of her beauty, her virtues, and her filial love 
 and duty. But Dr. Wilmot never tired of these 
 things ; he would, on the contrary, bring back the 
 discourse to them, if it strayed away, as it would 
 do under Lady Muriel's direction ; and moreover 
 she noticed, that no circumstances, no social temp- 
 tation had power to detain him a moment from 
 his patient, when the time he had set for his re- 
 turn to her side had arrived. 
 
 Taking all these things into consideration, and 
 combining them with certain indications which she 
 had noticed about Madeleine herself, Lady Muriel 
 began to think the return of Dr. Wilmot to Lon- 
 don advisable, and to perceive in its being de- 
 ferred very serious risk to her scheme for the 
 endowment of her young kinsman with the hand 
 and fortune of her step-daughter. She was not 
 altogether comfortable about its success, to begin 
 with. Ramsay Caird had not as yet made satis- 
 factory progress in Madeleine's favour. It was 
 not because the girl had no power of loving in her
 
 AT KILSYTH. 143 
 
 that she had listened without the smallest shadow of 
 emotion to Mr. Ramsay Caird, but simply because 
 Mr. Ramsay Caird had not had the tact, or the talent, 
 or the requisite qualifications, or the good fortune 
 to arouse the power of loving him in her. Lady 
 Muriel was far too quick an observer, far too 
 learned a student of human nature, not to read 
 at a glance all that her step-daughter's looks re- 
 vealed ; and her knowledge of life at once in- 
 formed her of the danger to her scheme. What 
 was to be done? Wilmot must be got rid of, 
 must be sent away without loss of time. His 
 business was over, and he must go. That must be 
 treated as a matter of course. He was called in 
 as a professional man to exercise his profession ; 
 and the necessity of any further exercise of it 
 having terminated, his visit was necessarily at an 
 end. No possible suspicion of her real reason for 
 wishing to get rid of him could arise. A married 
 man, of excellent reputation, accustomed to being 
 brought into the closest contact with women of all 
 ages in the exercise of his profession — why, people 
 would shout with laughter at the idea of her
 
 144 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 bringing forward any idea of his flirtation with 
 a girl like Madeleine ! And Kilsyth himself — 
 nothing, not even the influence which she pos- 
 sessed over him, would induce him for an instant 
 to believe any such story. It was very ridiculous ; 
 it must be her own imagination ; and yet — No ; 
 there was no mistaking it, that girl's look ; she 
 could see it even then. Even if Ramsay Caird 
 were not in question, it was a matter which, for 
 Madeleine's own sake, must be quietly but firmly 
 put an end to. Immensely gratified by this last 
 idea — for there is nothing which so pleases us as 
 the notion that we can gratify our own inclinations 
 and simultaneously do our duty, possibly because 
 the opportunities so rarely arise — Lady Muriel 
 sought her husband, and found him busily inspect- 
 ing a new rifle which had just arrived from Lon- 
 don. After praising his purchase, and talking over 
 a few ordinary matters, Lady Muriel said shortly : 
 
 " By the way, Alick, how much longer are 
 we to be honoured by the company of Dr. Wil- 
 mot?" 
 
 The inquiry seemed to take Kilsyth aback.
 
 AT KILSYTH. 145 
 
 more from the tone in which it was uttered than 
 its purport, and he said hesitatingly, 
 
 " Dr. Wilmot! Why, my dear? He must 
 stay as long as Madeleine — I mean — but have 
 you any objection to his being here ?" 
 
 " I ! Not the least in the world ; only he 
 seems to me to be in an anomalous position. Very 
 likely his social talents are very great, but we get 
 no advantage of them ; and as for his professional 
 skill — for which, I suppose, he was called here — 
 there is no longer any need of that. Madeleine is 
 out of all danger, and is on the fair way to health." 
 
 " You think so ?" 
 
 " I'm sure of it. But, at all events, any doubt 
 on that point could be dissipated by asking the 
 Doctor himself." 
 
 " My dearest Muriel, wouldn't that be a little 
 brusque , eh ?" 
 
 " My dear Alick, you don't seem to see that 
 very probably this gentleman is wishing himself 
 far away, but does not exactly know how to make 
 his adieux. A man in a practice like Dr. Wilmot's, 
 however we may remunerate him for his visit 
 
 VOL. I. l
 
 146 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 here, and however agreeable it may be to him" 
 (Lady Muriel could not resist giving way in this 
 little bit), " must lose largely while attending on 
 us. He is a gentleman, and consequently too 
 delicate to touch on such a point ; but it is one, I 
 think, which should be taken into consideration." 
 
 Lady Muriel had had too long experience of 
 her husband not to know the points of his armour. 
 The last thrust was a sure one, and went home. 
 
 " I should be very sorry," said Kilsyth, with a 
 little additional colour in his bronzed cheeks, " to 
 think that I was the cause of preventing Dr. 
 Wilmot's earning more money, or advancing him- 
 self in his profession. We owe him a deep debt 
 of gratitude for what he has done ; but perhaps 
 now, as you say, Madeleine is out of danger, and 
 may be safely left to the care of Dr. Joyce. I'll 
 speak to Dr. Wilmot, my dear Muriel, and make 
 it all right on that point."
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 BROODING. 
 
 The effect of her husband's letter on Mrs. Wil- 
 mot's mind, strengthened by the view taken of its 
 contents by Henrietta Prendergast, was of the 
 most serious and injurious nature. Hitherto the 
 unhappiness which had possessed her had been 
 negative — had been literally zmhappiness, the ab- 
 sence of joy ; but from the hour she read Wilmot's 
 letter, and talked over it with her friend, all that 
 was negative in her state of mind changed to the 
 positive. Hitherto she had been jealous — jealous 
 as only a woman of a thoroughly proud, sensitive, 
 secretive, and sullen nature can be — of an abstrac- 
 tion. Her husband's profession was the bete noir 
 of her existence, was the barrier between her and 
 the happiness for which she vninly longed and 
 pined. She had looked around her, and seen other
 
 148 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 women whose husbands were also working bees 
 in the world's great hive ; but their work did not 
 absorb them to the exclusion of home interests, 
 and the deadening of the sweet and blessed sym- 
 pathies which lent happiness all its glow, and 
 robbed sorrow of half its gloom. Her husband 
 had never spoken an unkind word to her in his 
 life, had never refused her a request, or denied her 
 a pleasure ; but he had never spoken a word to 
 her which told her that the first place in his life 
 was hers ; he had never cared to anticipate a re- 
 quest or to share a pleasure. To a woman like 
 Mabel Wilmot, in whose character there was a 
 strong though wholly unsuspected element of ro- 
 mance, there was an inexhaustible source of suffer- 
 ing in these facts, combined with her husband's 
 proverbial devotion to his profession. Not a clever 
 woman, thoroughly conventional in all her ideas, 
 without a notion of the possibility of altering the . 
 routine of her life to any pattern which might take 
 her fancy, a dreamer, and incurably shy, especi- 
 ally with him, who never discerned that there was 
 anything beneath the surface of her placid, equa-
 
 BROODING. 149 
 
 ble, rather cold manner to be understood, she had 
 ample materials within herself for misery ; and she 
 had always made the most of them. 
 
 An incalculable addition had been made to her 
 store by Wilmot's letter, and Henrietta Prender- 
 gast's comments. Mabel wrote to Mr. Foljambe, 
 under the observation and by the dictation of her 
 friend, merely repeating the words of her hus- 
 band's letter; and during that performance, and 
 the ensuing conversation, she had felt sufficiently 
 black and -bitter to have satisfied any fiend who 
 might have been waiting about for the chance of 
 gratifying his malignity by the coming to grief 
 of human affairs. But it was when she was left 
 alone, when her friend had gone" away, and she 
 was in her solitary room — all the trivial occupations 
 of the day at an end, and only the long hours of 
 the night, often sleepless hours to her, to be faced — 
 that she gave way to the intensity of the bitterness 
 of her spirit ; that she looked into and sounded the 
 darkness and the depth of the gulf of sorrow which 
 had opened before her feet. 
 
 That her husband sought and found all his
 
 150 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 happiness in the duties of his profession; that 
 he had no consciousness, comprehension, or care 
 for the disappointed feelings which occupied her 
 wholly, had been hard enough to bear — how hard, 
 the lonely woman who had borne the burden 
 knew ; but such a state of things, the state from 
 which only a few hours divided her, was happy in 
 comparison with that which now opened suddenly 
 before her. He had neglected her for the profes- 
 sion he preferred ; he was going to neglect his own 
 interests, to depart from his accustomed law of life, 
 to throw the best friend he had in the world over — 
 for a woman : yes, a woman, a sick girl had done 
 what she had failed to do : she had never swayed 
 his judgment, or turned him aside from a purpose 
 for a moment ; and now he was changed by the 
 touch of a more potent hand than hers, and there 
 was an end of the old settled melancholy peaceful- 
 ness of her life ; active wretchedness had come in, 
 and the repose, dear-bought in its deadness of dis- 
 appointment and blight, was all gone. 
 
 Mabel Wilmot sat opposite the long glass in 
 her room that night, and turned the branch-candles
 
 BROODING. 151 
 
 so as to throw a full light upon her face, at which 
 she gazed steadily and long, frowning as she did 
 so. It was a fair face, and the fresh bloom of 
 youth was still upon it. It was a face in which a 
 skilful observer might have read strange matters ; 
 but there were none curious to read the story in the 
 face of the pretty wife of the prosperous rising 
 man. Her eyes were soft and dark, well shaded 
 by long lashes, and marked by finely-arched eye- 
 brows ; and there were none to see that there was 
 frequent gloom and brooding in their darkness — 
 a shadow from the gloominess of the soul within. 
 She was fair rather than pale, and had abundant 
 dark hair ; and as she sat and gazed in the glass, 
 she let its dusky masses loose, and caught them in 
 her hands. The fair face was not pleasant to look 
 upon ; and so she seemed to think, for she mut- 
 tered : 
 
 " She is very pretty, I suppose, and a great 
 deal younger than I am ; never looks sullen, and 
 has no cause. And yet he's not a man I should 
 have thought to have been beguiled by any woman, 
 /never beguiled him, and I was pretty in my
 
 152 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 time ; ay, and new too ! And I have lived in his 
 sight all these years, and he has never sacrificed 
 an hour of time or thought to me. And now he 
 leaves me without hesitation, though I am ill. I 
 have not talked about it, to be sure ; but what is 
 his skill worth, if he did not see it in my face and 
 hear it in my voice without being told ! I was not 
 a case — I was only his wife ; and he never thought 
 of looking, never thought of caring whether I was 
 ill or well. I appear at breakfast, and I go out 
 every day ; that's quite enough for him. I wonder 
 if he knew what I suspect, what I should once 
 have said I hope, is the cause ; but that is a long 
 time ago. Would it have made any difference? 
 I don't mean now; of course it would not now; 
 nothing makes any difference to a man when once 
 his heart is turned aside, and quite filled by ano- 
 ther. I don't think I ever touched his heart ; I 
 know only too well I never filled it." 
 
 Mabel Wilmot was right. She had never 
 filled her husband's heart. She had touched it 
 though, for a time and after a light holiday kind 
 of fashion, which had subsided when life began
 
 BROODING. 153 
 
 in earnest for them, and which he had laid aside 
 and forgotten, as a boy might have abandoned 
 and lost sight of the toys with which he had 
 amused himself during a school vacation. And 
 the girl had been deceived ; had built silently in 
 the inveterately undemonstrative recesses of her 
 heart and fancy a fairy palace, destined to stand 
 for ever empty. It had been swept and gar- 
 nished; but the prince had never come to dwell 
 there : he with busy feet had passed by on the 
 other side, and she had nothing to do but to sit 
 and mourn in the empty chambers. She had 
 borne her grief valiantly until now ; she had only 
 known the passive side of it. But that was all 
 over for ever; and the day that dawned after 
 Wilmot's wife had received his letter found her 
 a different woman from what she had been. 
 
 " Are you sure you are not ill, Mabel?" asked 
 Mrs. Prendergast the day after their colloquy over 
 the letter. " You are so black under the eyes, and 
 your face is so pinched, I fancy you must be ill." 
 
 " Not more so than usual," said Mrs. Wilmot 
 shortly.
 
 154 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 " Than usual, my dear ! What do you mean ? 
 Have you been feeling ill lately?" 
 
 u Yes, Henrietta, very ill." 
 
 66 And have you been doing nothing for your- 
 self? Have you not had advice ?" 
 
 " You know I have not. You have seen me 
 very nearly every day, and you know I have done 
 nothing without your knowledge." 
 
 " But Wilmot?" said Mrs. Prendergast. 
 
 " Wilmot! Much he knows and much he 
 cares about me ! Don't talk nonsense, Henrietta. 
 If I were dying, he would not see it while I 
 could keep on my feet, which I certainly should 
 do as lono; as I could." 
 
 " My clear Mabel," remonstrated Henrietta, 
 " do you mean to tell me that, feeling very ill, 
 you have actually suffered your husband to leave 
 you ? Is that right, Mabel ? Is it right to your- 
 self or fair to him ?" 
 
 " Fair to him!" returned Mrs. Wilmot with a 
 scornful emphasis. " The idea of anything I do 
 being fair or unfair to him. I am so important to 
 him, am I not ? His life is so largely influenced
 
 BROODING. 155 
 
 by me ? Really, Henrietta, I don't understand 
 
 you." 
 
 " yes, you do," said her friend ; and she 
 seated herself beside her, and took her feverish 
 hands firmly in hers ; " you understand me per- 
 fectly. What is the illness, Mabel ? How do you 
 suffer, and why are you concealing it ?" 
 
 " I suffer always, and in all ways," said 
 Mabel, twitching her hands impatiently from her 
 friend's grasp, and averting her face, down which 
 tears began slowly to trickle. " I have not been 
 well for a long time ; and would not one think that 
 he might have seen it? He can be full of skill 
 and perception in everyone's case bat mine." 
 
 Henrietta Prendergast was troubled. She was 
 a woman with an odd kind of conscience. So 
 long as a fact did not come too forcibly before her, 
 so long as a duty did not imperatively confront 
 her, she would ignore it; but she would not do 
 the absolutely, the undeniably wrong, nor leave 
 the obviously and pressingly right undone. Here 
 was a dilemma. She believed that Wilmot's 
 ignorance of his wife's state of health was solely
 
 156 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 the result of her own studious avoidance of com- 
 plaint, or of letting him see, during the short 
 periods of every day that they were together, that 
 she was suffering in any way. Any man whose 
 perceptions were not quickened by the inspiration 
 of love would be naturally deceived by the calm 
 tranquillity of Mrs. Wilmot's manner, which, if 
 occasionally sullen, was apparently influenced in 
 that direction by trivial causes, — household an- 
 noyances, and so forth. And though Henrietta 
 Prendergast had a grudge against Chudleigh Wil- 
 mot, which was all the stronger and the more 
 lasting that it was utterly unreasonable, she could 
 not turn a deaf ear to the promptings of her con- 
 science, which told her she must speak the truth 
 on his behalf now. 
 
 "I must say, Mabel," she began, "that I 
 think it is your own fault that Wilmot has not 
 perceived your state of health. You have care- 
 fully concealed it from him, and now you are 
 angry at your own success. You must not con- 
 tinue to act thus, Mabel ; you will destroy his 
 happiness and your own."
 
 BROODING. 157 
 
 " His happiness !" repeated Mrs. Wilmot with 
 indescribable bitterness; " his happiness and mine ! 
 I know nothing about his happiness, or what he 
 has found it in hitherto, and may find it in for the 
 future. I only know that it has nothing to do with 
 mine ; and that I have no happiness, and never 
 can have any now." 
 
 The 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 com- 
 parison. 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
 
 158 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 lunched together, and they went out driving ; they 
 did some very consolatory shopping, and paid a 
 number of afternoon calls. But Henrietta Pren- 
 dergast watched her friend closely and unremit- 
 tingly ; 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. Hen- 
 rietta dined at Charles-street ; and when the two 
 women were alone in the evening, and the confi- 
 dence-producing tea-tray had been removed, she 
 tried to introduce the interdicted subject. Ordi- 
 narily she was anything but a timid woman, any- 
 thing 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,
 
 BROODING. 159 
 
 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 to-night, I will w T rite to him to-morrow T . 
 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." 
 
 11 Choose between him and you ! What can 
 you mean, Mabel ?"
 
 160 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 " 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
 
 BROODING. 161 
 
 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 Kowe, 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 colchi- 
 cum. I suppose I can choose my doctor for my- 
 self, 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 gcntle- 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 man's talk led to somewhat wide and varied spe- 
 culation 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 de- 
 taining Wilmot, glances of unequivocal intelli- 
 gence, but of somewhat equivocal meaning, were 
 interchanged among his hearers ; and guesses were 
 made that Miss Kilsyth was a " doosed nice " 
 girl, or her step-mother Lady Muriel, — " young 
 enough to be Kilsyth's daughter, you know, and 
 never lets him forget it, by Jove," — was a u doosed 
 fine " woman. u The Kilsyths " began to be 
 famous among Wilmot's clientele and the old 
 banker's familiars ; the Peerage, lying on his book- 
 shelves, 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
 
 BROODING. 163 
 
 circle of Mr. Foljambe's visitors that lie knew 
 Konald 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 Wflmot'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?" 
 
 " 0, 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,
 
 164 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 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 de- 
 pend on your reception of him." 
 
 " Don't be alarmed, Henrietta," said Mabel 
 Wilmot. " I promise you, unhesitatingly, that 
 Wilmct will not be dissatisfied with the reception 
 he shall have from me."
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 KITH AND KIN. 
 
 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 am- 
 bition beats with unmoved placidity even as we 
 recognise the victories of our juniors in the race ; 
 when we see the hopes and cares and wishe9
 
 166 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 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 any- 
 thing 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, there's the deuce of it! — taking the 
 place which we have vacated, and making us feel 
 that we have vacated it. Their mere presence in 
 the world brings to us the consciousness which 
 arose dimly years ago, but which is very bright 
 and impossible to blink now, — that we no longer 
 bel6ng to the present, to the generation by which 
 the levers of the world are grasped and moved ; 
 that we are tolerated gently and genially indeed, 
 with outward respect and with a certain amount 
 of real affection ; but that we are in effect rococo
 
 KITH AND KIN. 167 
 
 and bygone, and that our old-world notions are to 
 be kindly listened to, not warmly adopted. Ulysses 
 is all very well ; in fact, was a noted chieftain in 
 his day, went through his wanderings with great 
 pluck and spirit, had his adventures, dear old boy. 
 You recollect that story about the Griifinn von 
 Calypso, and that scandalous story which was 
 published in the Ogygian Satirist ¥ But it is Tele- 
 machus who is the cynosure of Ithaca nowadays, 
 whom we watch, and on whom we wait. But with a 
 girl it is a very different matter. To her her father — 
 until he is supplanted by her husband — still stands 
 on the old heroic pedestal where, through her 
 mother's interpretation, she saw him long since 
 in the early days of her childhood; in her eyes 
 " age has not withered him, nor custom staled his 
 infinite variety ;" all his fine qualities, which she 
 was taught to love, — and how easily she learned 
 the lesson ! — have but mellowed and improved 
 with years. Her brothers, much as she may love 
 them, are but faint copies of that great original ; 
 their virtues and good qualities are but reflected 
 lights of his — his the be-all and end-all of her ex-
 
 168 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 istence ; and the love between him and her is of 
 the purest and most touching kind. No tinge of 
 jealousy at being supplanted by her sullies that 
 great love with which he regards her, and which 
 is free from every taint of earthiness; towards 
 her arises a chastened remembrance of the old 
 love felt towards her mother, with the thousand 
 softened influences which the old memories in- 
 vest it with, combined with that other utterly in- 
 describable affection of parent to child, which is 
 one of the happiest and holiest mysteries of life. 
 
 So the love between Kilsyth and his girl was 
 the happiness of his existence, the one gentle bond 
 of union between him and the outer world. For 
 so large-hearted a man, he had few intimate re- 
 lations with life ; looking on at it benevolently, 
 rather than taking part even in what it had to 
 offer of gentleness and affection. This was per- 
 haps because he was so thoroughly what is called 
 "old-fashioned." Lady Muriel he honoured, re- 
 spected, and gloried in. On the few occasions 
 when he was compelled to show himself in London 
 society, he went through his duty as though en-
 
 KITH AND KIN. 169 
 
 joying it as much as the most foppish Osric at the 
 court; supported chiefly by the universal admiration 
 which his wife excited, and not a little by the re- 
 membrance that another month would see him freed 
 from all this confounded nonsense, and up to his 
 waist in a salmon stream. There could be no 
 terms of praise too warm for "my lady," who 
 was in his eyes equally a miracle of talent and 
 loveliness, to whom he always deferred in the 
 largest as in the smallest matters of life; but it 
 was Madeleine 
 
 " who had power 
 To soothe the sportsman in his softer hour." 
 
 It was Madeleine who had his deepest, fondest love 
 — a love without alloy ; pure, selfless, and eternal. 
 These feelings understood, it may be imagined 
 Kilsyth had the warmest feelings of gratitude and 
 regard towards Dr. Wilmot for having, as every- 
 one in the house believed, and as was really the 
 fact, saved the girl's life, partly by his skill, prin- 
 cipally by his untiring watchfulness and devotion 
 to her at the most critical period of her illness. 
 In such a man as Kilsyth these feelings could not
 
 170 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 remain long unexpressed ; so that within a couple 
 of days of the interview between Lady Muriel and 
 Dr. Wilmot, Kilsyth took an opportunity of meet- 
 ing the doctor as he was taking his usual stretch 
 on the terrace, and accosting him. 
 
 " Good-morning, Dr. Wilmot; still keeping to 
 the terrace as strictly as though you were on 
 parole ?" 
 
 " Good-morning to you. I'm a sanitarian, 
 and get as much fresh air as I can with as little 
 labour. This terrace seems to me the only level 
 walking ground within eyeshot ; and there's no 
 more preposterous mistake than overdoing ex- 
 ercise. Too much muscularity and gymnastics are 
 amongst the besetting evils of the present day, 
 depend upon it." 
 
 " Very likely ; but I'm not of the present day, 
 and therefore not likely to overdo it myself, or 
 to tempt you into overdoing it. But still I 
 want you to extend your constitutional this morn- 
 ing round to the left; there's a path that skirts 
 the craig — a made path in the rock itself, merely 
 broad enough for two of us to walk, and which
 
 KITH AND KIN. 171 
 
 lias the double advantage that it gives us peeps of 
 some of the best scenery hereabouts ; and it is so 
 little frequented, that it will give us every chance 
 of uninterrupted conversation. And I want to 
 talk to you about Madeleine. " 
 
 Whatever might have been Chudleigh Wil- 
 mot's previous notions as to the pleasure derivable 
 from an extended walk with the old gentleman, the 
 last word decided him ; and they started off at 
 once. 
 
 " I won't pretend to conceal from you, Dr. 
 Wilmot," said Kilsyth, after they had proceeded 
 some quarter of a mile, talking on indifferent 
 subjects, and stopping now and then to admire 
 some point in the scenery, — u I won't pretend to 
 conceal from you, that ever since your arrival 
 here I have had misgivings as to the manner in 
 which you were first summoned. I — " 
 
 " Pray don't think of that, sir." 
 
 " I don't — any more than, I am sure, you do. 
 My Madeleine, who is clearer to me than life, was, 
 I knew, in danger. I heard of your being in 
 what one might almost call the vicinity from
 
 172 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 Duncan Forbes; and without thought or hesita- 
 tion I at once telegraphed to you to come on 
 here.' , 
 
 "Thereby giving me the pleasantest holiday 
 I ever enjoyed in my life, and enabling me to 
 start away, as I was on the point of doing, with 
 the agreeable reflection that I have been of some 
 comfort to some most kind and charming people." 
 
 " I am delighted to hear you say those 
 friendly words, Dr. Wilmot ; but I am not .con- 
 vinced even now. So far as — as the honorarium is 
 concerned, I hope you will allow me to make that 
 up to you ; so that you shall have no reminder in 
 your banker's book that you have not been in full 
 London practice; and as to the feeling beyond 
 the honorarium, I can only say that you have 
 earned my life-long gratitude, and that I should 
 be only too glad for any manner of showing it." 
 
 Wilmot waited a minute before he said, " My 
 dear sir, if there is anything I hate, it is conven- 
 tionality ; and I am horribly afraid of being be- 
 trayed into a set speech just now. With regard 
 to the latter part of your remarks your gratitude
 
 KITH AND KIN. 173 
 
 for any service I may have been to you cannot 
 be surpassed by mine for my introduction to my 
 charming patient and your delightful family circle. 
 With regard to what you were pleased to say about 
 the honorarium, you must be good enough to do 
 as I shall do — forget you ever touched upon the 
 subject. You don't know our professional eti- 
 quette, my dear sir — that when a man is on a holi- 
 day he does no work. Nothing on earth would in- 
 duce, me to take a fee from you. You must look 
 upon anything I have done as a labour of love on 
 my part ; and I should lose all the pleasure of my 
 visit if I thought that that visit had not been 
 paid as a friend rather than as a professional 
 man." 
 
 Kilsyth must have changed a great deal from 
 his former self if these words had not touched his 
 warm generous heart. Tears stood in his bright 
 blue eyes as he wrung Chudleigh Wilmot's hand, 
 and said, " You're a fine fellow, Doctor; a great 
 fellow altogether. I'm an old man now, and 
 may say this to you without offence. Be it as you 
 will. God knows, no man ever left this house
 
 174 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 carrying with him so deep a debt of its owner's 
 gratitude as will hang round you. Now as to 
 Madeleine. You're off, you say, and I can't 
 gainsay your departure ; for I know you've been 
 detained here far too long for the pursuance of 
 your own proper practice, which is awaiting you 
 in London ; and I feel certain you would not go 
 if you felt that by your going you would ex- 
 pose her to any danger of a relapse. But I con- 
 fess I should like to hear from your own lips just 
 your own candid opinion about her." 
 
 Now or never, Chudleigh Wilmot ! No ex- 
 cuse of miscomprehension ! You have examined 
 yourself, probed the inmost depths of your con- 
 science in how many midnight vigils, in how 
 many solitary walks ! You know exactly the 
 state of your feelings towards this young girl ; 
 and it is for you to determine whether you 
 will renounce her for ever, or continue to tread 
 that pleasant path of companionship — so bright 
 and alluring in its present, so dark and hopeless 
 in its future — along which you have recently been 
 straying. Professional and humanitarian consi-
 
 KITH AND KIN. 175 
 
 derations? Are you influenced by them alone, 
 when you reply — 
 
 " My dear sir, you ask me rather a difficult 
 question. Were I speaking of your daughter's re- 
 covery from the disease under which she has been 
 labouring, I should say with the utmost candour 
 that she has so far recovered as to be comparatively 
 well. But I should not be discharging my profes- 
 sional duty — above all, I should not be worthy of 
 that trust which you have reposed in my profes- 
 sional skill, and of the friendship with which you 
 have been so good as to honour me — if I disguised 
 from you that during my constant attendance on 
 Miss Kilsyth, and during the examinations which 
 I have from time to time made of her system, I 
 have discovered that — that she has another point of 
 weakness totally disconnected from that for which 
 I have been treating her." 
 
 He was looking straight into the old man's 
 eyes as he said this — eyes which dropped at the 
 utterance of the words, then raised themselves 
 again, dull, heavy-lidded, with all the normal light 
 and life extinguished in them.
 
 176 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 " I heard something of this from Muriel, from 
 Lady Muriel, from my wife," muttered Kilsyth ; 
 " but I should like to know from you the exact 
 meaning of your words. Don't be afraid of dis- 
 tressing me, Doctor," he added, after a short 
 pause ; " I have had in my time to listen to a 
 sentence as hard — almost as hard" — his voice fal- 
 tered here — " as any you could pronounce ; and I 
 have borne up against it with tolerable courage. 
 So speak." 
 
 " I have no hard, at least no absolute, sen- 
 tence to pronounce, my dear sir; nothing that 
 does not admit of much mitigation, properly taken 
 and properly treated. Miss Kilsyth is not a hoy- 
 den, you know ; not one of those buxom young 
 women who, according to French notions, are to 
 be found in every English family — " 
 
 "No, no!" interrupted the old gentleman a 
 little querulously. 
 
 " On the contrary, Miss Kilsyth's frame is 
 delicate, and her constitution not particularly 
 strong. Indeed, in the course of my investigation 
 during her recent illness, I discovered that her
 
 KITH AND KIN. 177 
 
 left lung was not quite so healthy as it might 
 be." 
 
 " Her lungs ! Ah, good heavens ! I always 
 feared that would be the weak spot." 
 
 "Are any of her family so predisposed?" 
 
 " One brother died of rapid consumption." 
 
 " Ay, indeed ! Well, well, there's nothing of 
 that kind to be apprehended here, — at least there 
 are no urgent symptoms. But it is only due to 
 you and to myself to tell you that the lungs are 
 Miss Kilsyth's weak point, and that every care 
 should be exercised to ward off the disease which 
 at present, I am happy to say, is only looming in 
 the distance." 
 
 "And what should be the first step, Dr. 
 "Wilmot ?" 
 
 " Eemoval to a softer climate. You have a 
 London house, I know; when do you generally 
 make a move south?" 
 
 " Lady Muriel and the children usually go 
 
 south in October, — about five weeks from hence, 
 
 — and I go down to an old friend in Yorkshire 
 
 for a month's cover-shooting. But this is an ex- 
 YOL. I. N
 
 178 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 ceptional year, and anything you advise shall be 
 done." 
 
 " My advice is very simple ; it is, that you 
 so far make an alteration in your usual pro- 
 gramme as to put Miss Kilsyth into a more con- 
 genial climate at once. This air is beginning now 
 to be moist and raw in the mornings and evenings, 
 and at its best is now unfit for anyone with deli- 
 cate lungs." 
 
 " Would London do ?" 
 
 " London would be a great improvement on 
 Kilsyth — though of course it's treason to say so." 
 
 " Then to London she shall go at once ; and I 
 hope you will allow me the pleasure of anticipating 
 that my daughter, when there, will have the ad- 
 vantage of your constant supervision." 
 
 " Anything I can do for Miss Kilsyth shall 
 be done, you may depend on it, my dear sir. 
 And now I want to say good-bye to you, and to 
 you alone. I have a perfect horror of adieux, and 
 dare not face them with women. So you will 
 make my farewell to Lady Muriel, thanking her 
 for all the kindness and hospitality ; and — and you
 
 KITH AND KIN. 179 
 
 will tell Miss Kilsyth — that I shall hope to see 
 her soon in London ; and — so God bless you, my 
 dear sir, au revoir on the flags of Pail-Mall." 
 
 Half an hour afterwards he was gone. He 
 had made all his arrangements, ordered his horses, 
 and slipped away while all the party was engaged, 
 and almost before his absence from the luncheon- 
 table was remarked. He knew that the road by 
 which he would be driven was not overlooked by 
 the dining-room where the convives would be as- 
 sembled ; but he knew well enough that it was 
 commanded by one particular window, and to 
 that window he looked up with flashing eyes and 
 beating heart. He caught a momentary glimpse 
 of a pale face surrounded by a nimbus of golden 
 hair ; a pale face on which was an expression of 
 sorrowful surprise, and which, as he raised his hat, 
 shrunk back out of sight, without having given him 
 the smallest sign of recognition. That look haunted 
 Chudleigh Wilmot for clays and days ; and while 
 at first it distressed him, on reflection brought him 
 no little comfort, thinking, as he did, that had 
 Madeleine had no interest in him, her expression
 
 180 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 of face would have been simply conventional, and 
 she would have nodded and bowed as to any ordi- 
 nary acquaintance. So he fed his mind on that 
 look, and on certain kindly little speeches which 
 she had made to him from time to time during 
 her illness ; and when he wanted a more tangible 
 reminiscence of her, he took from his pocket-book 
 a blue ribbon with which she had knotted her hair 
 during the earlier days of her convalescence, and 
 which, when she fell asleep, he had picked from the 
 ground and carefully preserved. 
 
 Bad symptoms these, Chudleigh Wilmot ; very 
 bad symptoms indeed ! Bad and easily read ; for 
 there shall be no gawky lad of seventeen years of 
 age, fresh from the country, to join your class at 
 St. Vitus's, who, hearing them described, shall not 
 be able to name the virulent disease from which 
 you are suffering. 
 
 When Lady Muriel heard the result of her 
 husband's colloquy with the Doctor, she was va- 
 riously affected. She had anticipated that Chud- 
 leigh Wilmot would take the first opportunity
 
 KITH AND KIN. 181 
 
 of making his escape from Kilsyth, where his pre- 
 sence was no longer professionally needed, while 
 his patients in London were urgent for his return. 
 Nor was she surprised when her husband told her 
 that Dr. Wilmot had, when interrogated, declared 
 that the air of Kilsyth was far too sharp for Made- 
 leine in her then condition, and that it was per- 
 emptorily necessary that she should be moved 
 south, say to London, at once. Only one remark 
 did she make on this point : " Did Madeleine's re- 
 moval to London — I mean did the selection of 
 London spring from you, Alick, or Dr. Wilmot?" 
 
 " From me, dear — at least I asked whether 
 London would do ; and he said, at all events Lon- 
 don would be infinitely preferable to Kilsyth; and 
 so knowing that we should have the advantage of 
 his taking charge of Madeleine, I thought it would 
 be best for us to get away to Rutland-gate as 
 soon as possible." 
 
 To which Lady Muriel replied, " You were 
 quite right ; but it will take at least a week before 
 all our preparations will be complete for leaving 
 this place and starting south."
 
 182 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 Lady Muriel Kilsyth did not join any of tlie 
 expeditions which were made up after luncheon 
 that day; the rest of the company went away 
 to roaring linns or to heather - covered moun- 
 tains ; walked, rode, drove ; made the purple hills 
 resound with laughter excited by London stories, 
 and flirted with additional vigour, though perhaps 
 without the subtlety imparted by the experience of 
 the season. But Lady Muriel went away to her 
 own room, and gave herself up to thought. She 
 had great belief in the efficacy of " thinking out" 
 anything that might be on her mind, and she re- 
 sorted to the practice on this occasion. Her 
 course was by no means clear or straightforward, 
 but a little thorough application to the subject 
 would soon show her the way. Let her look at it 
 in all its bearings, and slur over no salient point. 
 This man, this Dr. Wilmot — well, he was won- 
 drously fascinating, that she must allow ! His 
 eyes, his earnestness of manner, his gravity, and 
 the way in which he slid from grave to gay 
 topics, as his face lit up, and his voice — ah, that 
 voice, so mellow, so rich, so clear, and yet so soft,
 
 KITH AND KIN. 183 
 
 and capable of such exquisite modulation ! The 
 remembrance of that face, only so recently known, 
 has stopped the current of Lady Muriel's thoughts : 
 she sits there in the low-backed chair, her chin 
 resting on her breast, her hands clasped idly 
 before her, her eyes vaguely looking on the fit- 
 fully flaming logs upon the hearth. Wondrously 
 fascinating; in his mere earnestness so different 
 from the men, young and old, amongst whom 
 her life was passed ; by whom, if thought were 
 possible to them, it was held as something to 
 be ashamed of, while frivolity resulting in vice 
 ruled their lives, and frivolity garnished with 
 slang governed their conversation. Wondrously 
 fascinating ; in the modesty with which he exer- 
 cised the great talent he possessed, and the pos- 
 session of which alone would have turned the 
 head of a weaker man ; in his brilliant energy and 
 calm strength ; in his unwitting superiority to 
 all around him, and the manner in which, ap- 
 parently unconsciously and without the smallest 
 display, he took his place in the front rank, and, 
 no matter who might be present, drew rapt atten-
 
 184 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 tion and listening cars to himself. So much for 
 him. Now for herself. And Lady Muriel rose 
 from the soft snuggery of her cushioned chair, and 
 folded her arms across her breast, and began 
 pacing the room with hurried steps. This man 
 had established an influence over her? Agreed. 
 What was worse, established his influence without 
 intending it, without absolutely wishing it ? Agreed 
 again. Lady Muriel was far too clever a woman 
 to shirk any item or gloss over any replies to her 
 cross-examination of herself. And was she, who 
 had hitherto steered her way through life, avoiding 
 all the rocks and shoals and quicksands on which 
 she had seen so much happiness wrecked, so much 
 hope ingulfed — was she now to drift on for the 
 same perilous voyage, without rudder or compass, 
 without even a knowledge whether the haven would 
 be open to her? Not she. For her husband's, 
 for her own sake, for her own and her children's 
 credit, she would hold the course she had held, 
 and play the part she had played. A shudder ran 
 through her as she pictured to herself the delight 
 with which the thousand-and-one tono-ues of Lon-
 
 KITH AND KIN. 185 
 
 don scandal would whisper and chuckle over the 
 merest hint that their prophecy of years since 
 was beginning to be fulfilled — how the faintest 
 breath of suspicion with which a name could be 
 coupled would fly over the five miles of territory 
 where Fashion reigns. She stopped before the 
 glass, put her hand to her heart, and saw herself 
 pale and trembling at the mere idea. 
 
 And yet to be loved ! Only for once in her life 
 to know that she loved and was loved again, not 
 by a man whom she could tolerate, but by one 
 whom she could look up to and worship. Not 
 reverence — that was not the word ; she reverenced 
 Kilsyth — but whose intellect she could respect, 
 whose self she could worship. 0, only for once 
 in her life to experience that feeling which she 
 had read so much about and heard so much 
 of; to feel that she was loved heart and soul and 
 body; loved with wild passion and calm devo- 
 tion — for such a man as this was capable of both 
 feelings simultaneously — loved for herself alone, 
 independently of all advantages of state and posi- 
 tion ; loved by the most lovable man in the world ;
 
 186 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 Loved ! the word itself was tabooed amongst the 
 women with whom she lived, as being too strong 
 and expressive. They i liked' certain men in a calm, 
 easy, laissez-aller kind of way at the height of their 
 passion ; then married them, with proper amount 
 of bishop, bridesmaid, and wedding present, all 
 duly celebrated in the fashionable journal ; and 
 then " gave up to parties what was meant for man- 
 kind." Ah, the difference between such an ex- 
 istence and that passed as this man's wife ! cheer- 
 ing him in his work, taking part in his worries, 
 lightening his difficulties, always ready with a 
 smiling face and bright eyes to welcome him 
 home, and — Jealous ? Not she ! there would be no 
 such feeling with her in such a case. Jealous ! 
 And as the thought rose in her mind, simultane- 
 ously appeared the blue eyes and the golden hair 
 of her step-daughter. 
 
 That must be nipped in the bud at once ! 
 There was nothing on Dr. Wilmot's part — proba- 
 bly there might be nothing on either side; but 
 sentimental friendship of that kind generally 
 had atrociously bad results ; and Madeleine was a
 
 KITH AND KIN. 187 
 
 very impressionable girl, and now, as Kilsyth had 
 determined, was to be constantly thrown with 
 Wilmot, to be under his charge during her stay 
 in London, and therefore likely to have all her 
 thoughts and actions influenced by him. Such 
 a combination of circumstances would be neces- 
 sarily hazardous, and might be fatal, if prompt 
 measures were not taken for disposing of Made- 
 leine previously. This could only be done by 
 making Eamsay Caird declare himself. Why 
 that young man had never prospered in his suit 
 was inexplicable to Lady Muriel; he was not 
 so good-looking as poor Stewart certainly — not 
 one-tenth part so intense — having an excellent 
 constitution, and looking at life through glasses 
 of the most roseate hue ; but Madeleine was young 
 and inexperienced and docile — at least compa- 
 ratively docile even to Lady Muriel, who, as she 
 knew perfectly well, possessed very little of the 
 girl's love ; and it was through her affection that 
 she must be touched. Who could touch her? 
 Not her father : he was too much devoted to her 
 to enter into the matter ; at least in the proper
 
 188 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 spirit. Who else then ? Ah, Lady Muriel smiled 
 as a happy thought passed through her mind. 
 Ronald, Madeleine's brother, — he was the person 
 to exercise influence in a right and proper way 
 over his sister; and to him she would write at 
 once. 
 
 That night the butler took two letters from 
 the post-box in Lady Muriel's handwriting ; one 
 of them was addressed to Ramsay Caird, in 
 George-street, Edinburgh, and ran thus : 
 
 " Kilsyth. 
 " My dear Ramsay, — For reasons which I 
 have already sufficiently explained to you, you 
 will, I think, be disposed to admit that my in- 
 terest in you and your career is unquestion- 
 able, and you will be ready to take any step 
 which I may strongly urge upon you. In this 
 conviction, I feel sure that you will unhesitatingly 
 adopt the suggestion which I now make, and start 
 for London at the very earliest opportunity. You 
 will be surprised at this recommendation, and at 
 the manner in which I press it ; but, believe me,
 
 KITH AND KIN. 189 
 
 I do not act without much reflection, and with- 
 out thorough conviction of the step I am taking, 
 and which T am desirous you should take. I have 
 so often talked the matter over with you, that 
 there is no necessity for me to enter upon it 
 now, even if there were no danger in my so 
 doing. It will be sufficient to say that we all 
 go to London in a week's time, and that it is 
 specially desirable that you should be there at the 
 same time ; otherwise you may find the ground 
 mined beneath your feet. When you arrive in 
 town, I wish you to call upon Captain Kilsyth 
 at Knightsbriclge Barracks. You will find him 
 particularly clear-headed, and thoroughly con- 
 versant with the ways of the world ; and I should 
 advise you to be guided by him in everything, 
 but specially in the matter in question. Let me 
 have a line to say you are on the point of starting ; 
 and believe me 
 
 " Your sincere friend, 
 
 " Muriel Kilsyth." 
 
 The other letter was addressed to " Captain
 
 190 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 Kilsyth, First Life-guards, Knightsbridge Bar- 
 racks, London." 
 
 " ( Confidential) Kilsyth. 
 
 " My dear Ronald, — You have heard from 
 your father of Madeleine's illness and convales- 
 cence. She is rapidly recovering her strength, 
 and will be her old self physically very shortly. 
 
 " You smile as you see that the word t physi- 
 cally' is underlined ; but this is not, believe me, 
 one of those 6 unmeaning women's dashes' which 
 I have so often heard you unequivocally con- 
 demn. I underlined the word specially, because 
 I think that Madeleine's recovery will be, so 
 far as she is concerned, physical, and physical 
 only. 
 
 "Not that I mean in the least that her reason 
 has been affected, otherwise than it always is most 
 transiently in the access of fever ; but that I think 
 that the occasion which you and I have so often 
 talked of has come, and come in a most undeni- 
 able manner. In a word, Madeleine has lost her 
 heart, if I am not much mistaken, and lost it in
 
 KITH AND KIN. 191 
 
 a quarter where she herself, poor child, can hope 
 for no return of her affection, and where, even if 
 such return were possible, it would only bring 
 misery on her, and 7iim, and degradation to us 
 all. 
 
 u We are coming to London at once, and 
 therein lies simultaneously the danger to Made- 
 leine and my hope of rescuing her from it, princi- 
 pally through your aid. You will see that it is 
 impossible to enter upon this subject at length in 
 a letter ; but I could not let you be in ignorance 
 of what I know will possess an acute and painful 
 interest for you. Of course I have not hinted a 
 word of this to your father, so that you will be 
 equally reticent in any of your communications 
 with him. You shall hear the day we expect to 
 arrive in town, and I hope to see you in Brook- 
 street on the next morning. 
 
 "You will recollect all I said to you about 
 Ramsay Caird. He will probably call on you 
 very shortly after you receive this letter. Bear in 
 mind the cue I gave you, when we last parted, 
 about this young man, and act up to it : he is a
 
 192 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 little weak, a little hesitating ; but I am more con- 
 vinced than ever of the advisability of pursuing 
 the course I then indicated. God bless you ! 
 
 " Your affectionate 
 
 " M. K."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 KONALD. 
 
 When Ronald Kilsyth was little more than four 
 years old his nurses said he was u so odd ;" a 
 phrase which stuck by him through life. As a 
 child his oddity consisted in his curious gravity 
 and preoccupation, his insensibility to Amuse- 
 ment, his dislike of companionship, his love of 
 solitude, his old-fashioned thoughts and manner 
 and habits. He had a dogged honesty which 
 prevented him from using the smallest deception 
 in any way, which prevented him from ever 
 prevaricating or telling those small fibs which 
 are made so much of in the child, but to which 
 he looks back as trivial sins indeed when com- 
 pared with the duplicity of his after-life, — which 
 rendered him obnoxious even to the children 
 
 whom he met as playfellows in the square- 
 vol. I. o
 
 194 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 garden, and who found it impossible to get on 
 with young Kilsyth on account of the rigidity of 
 his morals, displeasing to them even at their ten- 
 der years. When a delicious gnet-cqiens, made 
 of siring stretched from tree to tree, had been, 
 with great consumption of time and trouble, pre- 
 pared for the downfall of the old gardener ; and 
 when the youthful conspirators were all laid up 
 in ambush behind the Portugal laurels, waiting 
 to see the old man, plodding round with rake and 
 leaf-basket in the early dusk of the autumnal 
 evening, fall headlong over the snare, — it was 
 provoking to see little Ronald Kilsyth, in his gray 
 kilt, step out and go up to the old man and show 
 him the pitfall, and assist him in removing it. 
 Tiie conspirators were highly incensed at this 
 treachery, as they called it, and would have sent 
 Honald then and there to Coventry, — not that that 
 would have distressed him much, — had it not 
 bee a for his magnanimity in refusing, even when 
 under pressure, to give up the names of those in 
 the plot. Bat as in this, so in everything else ; 
 and the little frequenters of the square soon found
 
 RONALD. 195 
 
 Ronald Kilsyth u too good" for them, and were 
 by no means anxious to secure his companionship 
 in their sports. 
 
 At Eton, whither he was sent so soon as he 
 arrived at the proper age, he very shortly ob- 
 tained the same character. Pursuing the strict 
 path of duty, — industrious, punctual, [and. regular, 
 with very fair abilities, and scrupulously making 
 the most of them, — he never lost an opportunity 
 and never made a friend. All that was good of 
 him his masters always said; but they stopped 
 there ; they never said anything that was kind. In 
 school they could not help respecting him ; out of 
 school they would as soon have thought of mak- 
 ing Ronald Kilsyth their companion as of taking 
 Hind's Algebra for pleasant reading. And it was 
 the same with his schoolfellows. They talked of 
 his steadiness and of his hard-working with pride, 
 as reflecting on themselves and the whole school. 
 They speculated as to what he would do in the 
 future, and how he would show that the stories 
 that had been told about Eton were all lies, don't 
 you know? and how Kilsyth would go up to
 
 196 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 Cambridge, and show them what the best public 
 school — the only school for English gentlemen, 
 you know — could do ; and Floreat Etona, and all 
 that kind of thing, old fellow. But Ronald Kil- 
 syth, during the whole of his Eton pupilage, 
 never had a chum — never knew what it was to 
 share a confidence, add to a pleasure, or lighten a 
 grief. Did he feel this ? Perhaps more acutely 
 than could have been imagined ; but being, as he 
 was, proud, shy, sensitive, and above all queer, 
 he took care that no one knew what his feelings 
 were, or whether he had any at all on the sub- 
 ject. 
 
 Queer ! that was the word by which they 
 called him at Eton, and which, after all, expressed 
 his disposition better than any other. Strong- 
 minded, clear-headed, generous, and brave, with 
 an outer coating of pride, shyness, reserve, and 
 a mixture of all which passed current for hauteur. 
 With a strong contempt for nearly everything 
 in which his contemporaries found pleasure, — save 
 in the excess of exercise, as that he thoroughly 
 understood and appreciated, — and with a weary-
 
 RONALD. 197 
 
 ing desire to find pleasure for himself; with an 
 impulse to exertion and work, accountable to 
 himself only on the score of duty, but having no 
 definite end or aim ; with a restless longing to make 
 his escape from the thraldom of conventionality, 
 and rush off and do something somewhere far 
 away from the haunts of men. With all the mor- 
 bidness of the hero of Lochsley Ball, without the 
 excuse of having been jilted, and without any of 
 the experience of that sweetly modulated cynic, 
 Ronald Kilsyth, obeying his father's wish, and 
 thereby again following the paths of duty, was 
 gazetted to the Life-Guards — the exact position 
 for a young gentleman in his condition. 
 
 The donning of a scarlet tunic instead of a 
 round jacket, and the substitution of a helmet 
 for a pot-hat, made very little difference in Ron- 
 ald. Several of his brother officers had known 
 hiin personally at Eton, so that the character he 
 had obtained there preceded him, inspiring a 
 wholesome awe of him before he appeared on the 
 scene ; and he had not been two days in barracks 
 before he was voted a prig and a bore. There was
 
 198 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 no sympathy between the dry, pedantic, rough 
 young Scotsman and those jolly genial youths. 
 His hard, dry, handsome clean-cut face, with 
 its cold gray eyes, thin aquiline nose, and 
 tight lips, cast a gloom over the cheery mess- 
 table around which they sat ; their jovial beaming 
 smiles, and curling moustaches, and glittering 
 shirt-studs reflected in the silver e'pergne, with its 
 outposts of mounted sentries and its pleasant 
 mingling of feasting and frays at the Temple of 
 Mars and the London Tavern. His grim pre- 
 sence robbed many a pleasant story of its point, 
 which indeed, in deference to him, had to be 
 softened down or given with bated breath. The 
 young fellows — no younger than him in years, 
 but with, 0, such an enormous gulf between them 
 as regards the real elasticity and charm of youth 
 — were afraid of him, and from fear sprung dis- 
 like. They had not much fear of their elders, these 
 youths of ingenuous countenance and ingenuous 
 modesty. They had a wholesome awe, temper- 
 ing their hearty love, of Colonel Jefferson ; but 
 less on account of the strictness of his discipline
 
 RONALD. 199 
 
 and of a certain noli-me-tangere expression to- 
 wards those whom he did not specially favour, 
 than on account of his age ; and as for the jolly- 
 old Major, who had been in the regiment for 
 ever so many years, — for him they had neither 
 fear nor respect; and when he was in command 
 — which befell him during the cheerful interval 
 between July and December — the lads did as 
 they liked. 
 
 But they could not get on with Ronald Kil- 
 syth; and though they tolerated him quietly for 
 the sake of his people, they never could be in- 
 duced . to regard him with anything like the 
 fraternal good fellowship which they entertained 
 towards each other. As it had been at Eton, 
 so it was at Knightsbridge, at Windsor, in Al- 
 bany-street, in all those charming quarters where 
 the Household Cavalry spend their time for their 
 own and their country's advantage. Ronald 
 Kilsyth was respected by all, loved by none. 
 Charley Jefferson himself, fascinated as ho was 
 by Ronald's devotion to the mysteries of drill 
 and by all the young man's unswerving atten-
 
 200 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 tion to his regimental duties — qualities which 
 weighed immensely with the martinet Colonel — 
 had been heard to confess, with a prolonged 
 twirl at his grizzled moustache, that " Kilsyth 
 was a d — d hard nut to crack," — an enig- 
 matic remark which, from so plain a speaker as 
 the Colonel, meant volumes. The Major, whom 
 Eonald, under strong provocation, had once de- 
 signated a " tipsy old atheist," had, in the ab- 
 sence of his enemy and under the influence of two- 
 thirds of a bottle of brandy, retorted in terms 
 which were held to justify both Konald's epithets ; 
 and the men had a very low opinion of him, 
 who at the time of writing was senior lieute- 
 nant of the regiment. He had no sympathy with 
 the men, no care for them; he would have liked 
 to have made them more domestic, less inclined 
 for the public-house and the music-hall ; he would 
 have subscribed to reading-rooms, to institutes, 
 to anything for their mental improvement; but 
 he never thought of giving them a kind word or 
 an encouraging speech ; and they much preferred 
 Cornet Bosky — who cursed them roundly for their
 
 RONALD. 201 
 
 talking, for their silence, for their going too fast, 
 for their going too slow, for their anything in 
 fact, on those horrible mornings when he hap- 
 pened to be in charge of them exercising their 
 horses, but who off duty always had a kindly 
 word, an open purse at their service — to the senior 
 Lieutenant, who never used a bad expression, and 
 who, as they confessed, was, after the Colonel, 
 the best soldier in the regiment. 
 
 It was like goino; j n ^ a different world to leave 
 the smoky atmosphere, the wild disorder and reck- 
 less confusion of most of the other rooms in bar- 
 racks, and go into Ronald Kilsyth's trim orderly 
 apartment. Instead of tables ringed with stains 
 of long-since-emptied tumblers, and littered with 
 yellow-paper-covered French novels, torn playbills, 
 old gloves, letters, unpaid bills, opera-glasses, pipes, 
 shreds of tobacco, heaps of cigar-ash, rolls of comic 
 songs, trophies from knock'em-downs at race- 
 courses, empty soda-water bottles, scattered packs 
 of cards, and suchlike examples of free living — to 
 find perfect order and decorum ; the walls covered 
 with movable bookcases filled with valuable books,
 
 202 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 Eapliael Morglien prints, proofs before letters after 
 the best modern artists, and charming bits of 
 water-colour sketches, instead of coloured daubs of 
 French tuyeres and lionnes of the Quartier Breda, 
 photographs of Roman temple or Pompeian exca- 
 vation, and Venetian glass and delicate eggshell 
 china, and Chinese carving, and Indian beadwork. 
 They used to look round at these things in wonder, 
 the other young fellows of the regiment, when they 
 penetrated into Ronald's room, and point to the 
 pictures and ask who u that queer old party was," 
 and depreciate the furniture by inquiring "what 
 was that old rubbish ?" They could not understand 
 his friends either ; men asked to the mess by them 
 or seen in their rooms were generally well known 
 in the Household Brigade, other officers in the 
 Blues or the Foot Regiments, or idlers and dawd- 
 lers with nothing to do, men in the Treasury or 
 Foreign Office, people whom they were safe to meet 
 in society at least every other night in the season. 
 But Ronald Kilsyth's guests were of a different 
 stamp. Sometimes he brought Wrencher the no- 
 velist or Scumble the Royal Academician to dinner ;
 
 RONALD. 203 
 
 and the fellows who knew the works of both made 
 much of the guests and did them due honour ; but 
 when occasionally they had to receive Jack Flokes 
 the journalist, who looked on washing as an origi- 
 nal sin, or Dick Tinto the painter, who regarded 
 a dirty brown velvet shooting-coat as the proper 
 costume for the evening, or Klavierspieler the 
 pianist, a fat dirty German in spectacles, who 
 made a perfect Indian juggler of himself in try- 
 ing to swallow his knife during dinner — they were 
 scarcely so much gratified. Innate gentlemanli- 
 ness and entire good-breeding made them receive 
 the gentlemen with every outward sign of hospi- 
 tality ; but afterwards, round the solemn council fire 
 in the little mess-room and midst deep clouds of 
 tobacco-smoke, they delivered a verdict anything 
 but complimentary either to guest or host. 
 
 What possessed him? That was what they 
 could not understand. Nicest people in the world, 
 sir ! father, dear delightful jolly old fellow, give 
 you his heart's blood if you wanted it — but you 
 don't want it, so gives the best glass of claret in 
 London; and at home — at Kilsyth — 'gad, you
 
 204 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 can't conceive it ; no country-house to be named in 
 the same breath with it. Perfect shooting and all 
 that kind of thing, and thoroughly your own mas- 
 ter, by Jove ! do just as you like, I mean to say, 
 and have everything you want, don't you know! 
 Lady Muriel quite charming; holding her own, 
 don't you know, with all the younger women in 
 point of attractiveness and that sort of tiling, and 
 yet respected and looked up to, and the best mis- 
 tress of a house possible. And Miss Kilsyth, Ma- 
 deleine, deuced nice little girl ; very pretty, and no 
 nonsense about her ; meant for some big fish ! Well, 
 yes, suppose so ; but meantime extremely pleasant 
 and chatty, and sings nice little songs and valses 
 splendidly, and all that kind of thing. That was 
 what they said of the Kilsyth menage in the House- 
 hold Brigade, in which pleasant joyous assemblage 
 of gallant freethinkers it would have been difficult 
 to point out one who would not have been delighted 
 at an autumn visit to Kilsyth. Ah ! what we believe 
 and that we know ! The humorous articles of the 
 comic writers, the humorous sketches of the comic 
 artists, lead us to think that the gentlemen officers
 
 RONALD. 205 
 
 of the regiments specially accredited for London 
 service are, in the main, good-looking, handsome 
 dolts, who pull their moustaches, eliminate the 
 "r's" from their speech, and are but the nearest 
 removes from the inmates of Hanwell Asylum. 
 But a very small experience will serve to remove 
 this impression, and will lead one to know that the 
 reading and appreciation of character is nowhere 
 more aptly read and more shrewdly hit upon 
 than in the barrack-rooms of Knightsbridge or the 
 Regent's Park. 
 
 People who knew, or thought they knew, 
 Ronald Kilsyth, declared that he was solitary and 
 oyster-like, self-contained, and caring for no one 
 but himself. They were wrong. Ronald had 
 strong home affections. He loved and reverenced 
 his father more than any one in the world. He 
 saw plainly enough the few shortcomings — the 
 want of modern education, the excessive love of 
 sport, the natural indolence of his disposition, and 
 the intense desire to shirk all the responsibilities 
 of his position, and to shift the discharge of them 
 on to some one else. But equally he saw his 

 
 206 
 
 THE FORLOHN HOPE. 
 
 father's warm-heartedness, honour, and chivalry ; 
 his unselfishness, his disposition to look upon 
 the bright side of all that happened, his cheery 
 bonhomie, and his unfailing good temper. Lady 
 Muriel he regarded with feelings of the highest 
 respect — respect which he had often tried to turn 
 into affection, but had tried in vain. With a 
 woman's quickness, Lady Muriel had seen at a 
 glance, on her first entering the Kilsyth family, 
 that her hardest task would be to win over her 
 stepson, and she had laid herself out for that 
 victory with really far more care and pains than 
 she had taken to captivate his father. With great 
 natural shrewdness, quickened by worldly ex- 
 perience, Lady Muriel very shortly made herself 
 mistress of Ronald Kilsyth's character, and laid 
 her plans accordingly. Never was shaft more 
 truly shot, never was mine more ingeniously laid. 
 Ronald Kilsyth, boy as he was at the time of his 
 father's second marriage, had scarcely had three 
 interviews with his stepmother before she found 
 a corroboration of the fact which had so often 
 whispered itself in his own bosom, that he, and
 
 RONALD. 207 
 
 lie alone, was the guiding spirit of the family ; 
 that he had knowledge and experience beyond his 
 years ; and that if she, Lady Muriel, only got 
 him, Ronald, to cooperate with her, everything 
 would be smooth, and between them the felicity 
 and well-being of all would be assured. It was a 
 deft compliment, and it succeeded. From that 
 time forth Ronald Kilsyth was Lady Muriel's 
 most pliant instrument and doughtiest champion. 
 In the circles in which during the earlier phases 
 of his succeeding life he found himself, there 
 were plenty to carp at his stepmother's conduct, 
 to impugn her motives, — worst of all, to drop 
 side hints of her integrity; but to all of these 
 Ronald Kilsyth gave instant and immediate 
 battle, never allowing the smallest insinuation 
 which reflected upon her to pass unrebuked. 
 He thought he knew his stepmother thoroughly : 
 whether he did or not time must show ; but at 
 all events he thought highly enough of her to 
 permit himself to be guided by her in some of 
 the most important steps in his career. 
 
 And what were his feelings with regard to
 
 208 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 Madeleine? If you wanted to find the key to 
 Ronald Kilsyth's character, it was there that you 
 should have looked for it. Ronald loved Made- 
 leine with all the love which such a heart as his 
 was capable of feeling; but he watched over her 
 with a strictness such as no duenna ever yet 
 dreamed of. Years ago, when they were very- 
 little children, there occurred an episode which 
 Miss 0' Grady — who was then Kilsyth's governess, 
 and now happily married to Herr Ohm, a wine- 
 merchant at Heidelberg — to this day narrates with 
 the greatest delight. It was in Hamilton Gar- 
 dens, where the Kilsyth children and a number of 
 others were playing at Les Graces — a pleasing di- 
 version then popular with youth — and little Lord 
 Claud Barrington, in picking up and restoring 
 her hoop to Madeleine, had taken advantage of 
 the opportunity to kiss her hand. Ronald noticed 
 the gallantry, and at once resented it, asking the 
 youthful libertine how he dared to take such a 
 liberty. "Well, but she liketh it!" said Lord 
 Claud, ingenuously pointing to Madeleine, who 
 was sucking and biting the end of her hoop-stick,
 
 RONALD. 209 
 
 by no* means ill-pleasocl. "Very likely," said 
 Eon aid; " but these girls know nothing of such 
 matters. / am my sister's guardian, and call 
 upon you to apologise." Lord Claud, humiliated, 
 said he was "wewy thorry;" and the three, — • 
 he, Ronald, and Madeleine, — had some bath-pipe 
 and some cough-lozenges as a banquet in honour 
 of the reconciliation. 
 
 This odd watchfulness, never slumbering, al- 
 ways vigilant, perpetually unjust, and generally 
 earigeant, characterised Ronald's relations with 
 his sister up to the time of our story. When 
 she first came out, his mental torture was extra- 
 ordinary; he, so long banished from ball-rooms, 
 accepted every invitation, and though he never 
 danced, would invariably remain in the dancing- 
 room, ensconced behind a pillar, lounging in a 
 doorway, always in some position whence he could 
 command his sister's movements, and throughout 
 the evening never taking his eyes from her. 
 His friends, or rather his acquaintances, who at 
 first watched his rapt attention without having 
 
 the smallest idea of its object, used to chaff him 
 VOL. i. r
 
 210 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 upon his devotion, and interrogate Mm as to 
 whether it was the tall person with the teeth, 
 the stout virgin with the shells in her hair, or 
 the interesting party with the shoulders, who had 
 won his young affection. Ronald stood this chaff 
 well, confident in the fact that hitherto his sis- 
 ter had performed her part in that grand and 
 ludicrous mystery termed " Society," and had 
 escaped heart-whole. He began to realise the truth 
 of the axiom about the constant dropping of water. 
 So long as Madeleine had had sense to compre- 
 hend, he had instilled into her the absolute neces- 
 sity of consulting him before she even permitted 
 herself to have the smallest liking for any man. 
 During the first two months of her first season 
 she had confessed to him twice : once in the case 
 of a middle-aged, well-preserved peer ; and again 
 when a thin, black-bearded attachd of the Brazilian 
 embassy was in question. Ronald's immediate 
 and unmistakable veto had been sufficient in both 
 cases ; and he was flattering himself that the rest 
 of the season had passed without any further call 
 on his self-assumed j adicial functions.
 
 RONALD. 211 
 
 Imagine, then, his state of mind at the receipt 
 of Lady Muriel's letter ! The assault had been 
 made, the mine had been sprung, the enemy was 
 in the citadel, and, worst of all, the enemy was 
 masked and disguised, and the guardian of the 
 fortress did not know who was his assailant, or 
 what measures he should take to repel him !
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 CROSS-EXAMINATION. 
 
 The hall-porter at Barnes's Club in St. James's- 
 street, whose views of life during the last two 
 months had been remarkably gloomy and despond- 
 ing, began to revive and to feel himself again as 
 the end of October drew on apace. He had had a 
 dull time of it, that hall-porter, during August 
 and September, sitting in his glazed box, cutting 
 the newspapers which no one came to read, and 
 staring at the hat-pegs which no one used. He 
 had his manuscript book before him, but he did 
 not inscribe ten names in it during the day ; for 
 nearly everybody was out of town ; and the few 
 members who per force remained, — gentlemen in 
 the Whitehall offices, or officers in the Household 
 Brigade, — found scaffolding and ladders in the hall 
 of Barnes's, and the morning-room in the hands of 
 the white washers, and the coffee-room closed, and
 
 CROSS-EXAMINATION. 213 
 
 the smokers relegated to the card -room, and such 
 a general state of discomfort, that they shunned 
 Barnes's, and went off to the other clubs to which 
 they belonged. But with the end of October 
 came a change. The men who had been shooting 
 in the North, the men who had been travelling on 
 the Continent, the men who had been yachting, 
 and the men who had been lounging on the sea- 
 coast, all came through town on their way to their 
 other engagements ; those who had no other en- 
 gagements, and who had spent all their available 
 money, settled down into their old way of life ; all 
 paid at least a flying visit to the club to see who 
 was in town, and to learn any news that might be 
 afloat. 
 
 It is a sharp bright afternoon, and the morn- 
 ing-room at Barnes's is so full that you might 
 actually fancy it the season. Sir Coke Only's gray 
 cab horse is, as usual, champing his bit just outside 
 the door, and Lord Sumph's brougham is there, 
 and Tommy Toshington's chestnut cob with the 
 white face is being led up and down by the red- 
 jacketed lad, who has probably been out of town
 
 214 THE FORLOKN HOPE. 
 
 too, as he has not been seen since Parliament 
 broke up, and yet is there and to the fore directly 
 he is wanted. Tommy Toshington himself, an 
 apple-faced little man, who might be any age be- 
 tween sixteen and sixty, but who is considerably 
 nearer the latter than the former, gathers his let- 
 ters from the porter as he passes, looks through 
 them quickly, shaking his head the while at two or 
 three written on very blue paper and addressed 
 in very formal writing, and proceeds to the morn- 
 ing-room. Everybody there, everybody knowing 
 Tommy, universal chorus of welcome from all save 
 three old gentlemen reading evening papers, two 
 of whom don't know Tommy, and all of whom 
 hate him. 
 
 " And where have you come from, Tommy?" 
 says Lord Sumph, who is a charming nobleman, 
 labouring under the slight eccentricity of occasion- 
 ally imagining that he is a steam-engine, when he 
 whistles and shrieks and puffs, and has to be se- 
 cluded from observation until the fit is over. 
 
 " Last from East Standling, my lord," says 
 Tommy ; '* and very pleasant it was."
 
 CROSS-EXAMINATION. 215 
 
 " Must have been doosid pleasant, by all I 
 hear/' says Sir Thomas Buffem, K.C.B., and late 
 of the Madras army. " Dook had the gout, hadn't 
 he ? and we all know how pleasant he is then !" 
 
 " That feller was there of course — what's his 
 name? — Bawlindor the barrister," says Sir Coke 
 Only. " Can't bear that feller, dev'lish low-bred 
 feller, was a dancin' -master or something of that 
 sort — can't bear low-bred fellers ;" and Sir Coke, 
 whose paternal grandfather had been a pedlar, and 
 who himself combined the intellect of an Esqui- 
 maux with the manners of a Whitechapel butcher 
 on a Saturday night, cleared his throat, and 
 thumped his stick, and looked ferocious. 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Bawlindor was there," says Tommy 
 Toshington, looking round with a queer twinkle in 
 his little gray eyes ; " and he was very pleasant, 
 very pleasant indeed. I hardly know how the 
 duchess would have got on without him. He 
 said some doosid smart things, did Mr. Baw- 
 lindor." 
 
 " I hate a feller who says smart things," said 
 Sir Coke Only; " making a buffoon of himself."
 
 216 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 "Ha, ha !" said Duncan Forbes, joining the 
 group — " the carrier is jealous of the tumbler ; it's 
 a mere question of pigeons." . 
 
 "What do you mean,- Sir Duncan? I don't 
 understand you," said Sir Coke angrily. 
 
 " Don't suppose you do — never gave you 
 credit for anything of the sort. — How are you, 
 all you fellows ? - What were the smart things 
 that Bawlindor said,.. Tommy ?" 
 
 "Well,. I don't know; perhaps you wouldn't 
 think 'em 'smart, Duncan, because you're a devil- 
 ish clever chap yourself, and — " 
 
 " Yes, yes, we know all about that ; but tell us 
 some smart things that Bawlindor said — tell us one." 
 
 " Well, you know Tottenham ? you know he 
 gives awful heavy dinners? He was bragging 
 about them one day at luncheon at East Stand- 
 ling, and Bawlindor said, ' There's one thing, 
 my lord, I always envy when I'm dining with 
 you.' ' What's that ?' says Tottenham. ' I envy 
 your gas,' says Bawlindor, c and it escapes.'' ' 
 
 " Ye-es ! that was not bad for Bawlindor. I 
 hate the brute though ; 1 daresay he stole it from
 
 CKOSS-EXAMINATION. 217 
 
 somebody clso. Well, how are you all, and 
 what's the news ?" 
 
 " You ought to be able to tell us that," said 
 Lord Sumph. " We're only just back in town, 
 and you've been here all the time, haven't you, 
 in the Tower or somewhere ?" 
 
 " Not I ; I'm only just back too." 
 
 " And where have you come from?" 
 
 "Last from Kilsyth." 
 
 " Devil you have !" growled Sir Thomas 
 Buffem, edging away. " They've had jungle-fever 
 — not jungle, scarlet-fever there, haven't they?" 
 
 "0, ah, Duncan," said Clement Walkinshaw 
 of the Foreign Office, u tell us all about that ! 
 It was awful, wasn't it ? Towcester cut and run, 
 didn't he? Mrs. Severn said he turned pea- 
 green, and sent such a stunning caricature of 
 him to her sister, who was staying at Claverton ! 
 We stuck it up in the smoking-room, and had 
 no end fun about it." 
 
 " I'm glad you were so much amused. It 
 wasn't no end fun for Miss Kilsyth, however, as 
 she was nearly losing her life."
 
 218 . THE FORLORN HOPE.- 
 
 " Was she, by Jove !" said Walkinshaw, wlio 
 was a " beauty boy," examining himself in the 
 glass, and smoothing his little moustaches, — u was 
 she, by Jove ! What ! our dear little Maddy ?" 
 
 " Our dear little Maddy," said Duncan Forbes 
 calmly, " if you are on sufficient terms of inti- 
 macy with the young lady to speak of her in 
 that manner in a public room. i~ call her Miss 
 Kilsyth; but then we were only brought up to- 
 gether as children, whereas you had the advan- 
 tage of having been introduced to her last season, 
 I think, Walkinshaw." 
 
 " That was a hot 'un for that d — d little des- 
 patch-box !" said Sir Thomas BufFem, as Walkin- 
 shaw walked off discomfited. " Serve him quite 
 right — conceited little brute !" 
 
 "Well, but what was it, Duncan?" asked 
 Lord Sumph. " It wasn't only the gal, heaps of 
 p>eople were down with it, eh ? — regular hospital, 
 and that kind of thing ? I saw the Northaller- 
 tons on then' way south, and the duchess said it 
 was awfully bad up there." 
 
 " The duchess is a — very nice person," said
 
 CROSS-EXAMINATION. 219 
 
 Forbes, cheeking himself, " and, like Sir Thomas 
 here, an old soldier." 
 
 u But it was a great go, though, Duncan, — 
 infection and all that, eh?" asked Captain Hether- 
 ington, who had joined the talkers. " There's no 
 such thing as getting Poole's people to make you 
 a coat ; the whole resources of the establishment 
 are concentrated on building a new rig-out for 
 Towcester, who has sacrificed his entire get-up, and 
 had his hair cut close, and taken no end of Turk- 
 ish baths, for fear of being refused admittance at 
 places where he was going to stay." 
 
 "All I can say is, then — is, that it's a capital 
 thing for Towcester's man, or whoever gets his 
 wardrobe," said Forbes ; " Charley Jefferson might 
 have made a good thing by buying his tunics, 
 only there's a slight difference in their size — he 
 wouldn't have feared the infection." 
 
 " No, jiot in that way perhaps," said Hetlier- 
 iugton. " Charley's like the Yankee in Dickens's 
 book, 4 fever-proof and likewise ague ;' but he can 
 be got at, we all know. How about the widow ? 
 She bolted too, didn't she ?"
 
 220 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 " She did — more shame for her. No ! the 
 fact was, that at Kilsyth " 
 
 " Cave caneml" said Tommy Toshington, hold- 
 ing up a monitory finger — " Cave caiiem, as we 
 used to say at school. Here's Ronald Kilsyth just 
 come into the room and making towards us !" 
 
 You can get a good view of Ronald Kilsyth 
 now as he advances up the room. Rather under 
 than over the middle height, with very broad 
 shoulders betokening great muscular strength, and 
 square limbs. His head is large, and his thick 
 brown hair is brushed off his broad forehead, and 
 hangs almost to his coat-collar. He has a well- 
 moulded but rather a stern face, with bushy eye- 
 brows, piercing gray eyes, and close thin lips. 
 He is dressed plainly but in good taste, and his 
 whole appearance is perfectly gentlemanlike. It 
 would have been as hard to have mistaken Ron- 
 ald for a snob as to have passed him by with- 
 out notice ; and there was something about him 
 that infallibly attracted attention, and made those 
 who saw him for the first time wonder who he 
 was. It would have been quite impossible to
 
 CROSS-EXAMINATION. 221 
 
 divine liis profession from his appearance ; neither 
 in look or bearing was there the smallest trace 
 of the plunger. He might have been taken for 
 a deep-thinking Chancery barrister, had it not 
 been for his moustache ; or, more likely still, a 
 shrewd long-headed engineer, a man of facts and 
 figures and calculation ; but never a dragoon. Ho 
 had been the innocent cause of extreme disap- 
 pointment to many young ladies in various parts 
 of the country where he had stayed — quiet unso- 
 phisticated girls, whose visits to London had been 
 very rare, and who knew nothing of its society, 
 and who hearing that a Life- Guards' officer was 
 coming to dinner, expected to see a gigantic crea- 
 ture, all cuirass and jack-boots, an enlarged and 
 ornamental edition of the sentries in front of the 
 Horse-Guards. Ronald Kilsyth in his plain 
 evening dress was a great blow to them ; in bye- 
 gone days his moustache would have been some 
 consolation ; but now the young farmers in the 
 neighbourhood, the sporting surgeon, and all the 
 volunteers wore moustaches ; and though in subse- 
 quent conversation they found Ronald very pica-
 
 222 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 sant, he neither drawled,, nor lisped, nor made 
 love to them ; all of which proceedings they had 
 believed to be necessary attributes of his branch of 
 the military profession. 
 
 And many persons who were not young ladies 
 in the country were disappointed in Ronald Kil- 
 syth, more especially old friends of his father, who 
 expected to find his son resembling him. Ronald 
 inherited his father's love of honour, truth, and 
 candour, his keen sense of right and wrong, his 
 manliness and his courage ; but there the likeness 
 between the men ceased. Kilsyth's warmth cf 
 heart, warmth of temper, and largeness of soul 
 were not reflected by Ronald, who never lost . his 
 self-control, who never gave anybody credit for 
 more than they deserved, and who — save per- 
 haps for his sister Madeleine, and his love for her 
 was of a very stern and Spartan character — had 
 never entertained any particularly warm feelings 
 for any human being. 
 
 Ronald Kilsyth is not popular at Barnes's, 
 being decidedly an unclubbable man. The mem- 
 bers, if ever they speak of him at all, want to
 
 CROSS-EXAMINATION. 223 
 
 know what lie joined for. He belonged to the 
 Rag, didn't lie, and some other club, where he 
 could sit niumchance over his mutton, or stare 
 at the lads from Aldershott drinking five-guinea 
 Heidzeck champagne. "What did he want among 
 this sociable set? He always looked straight 
 down his nose when Guffoon came up with a sad 
 story, and he never cared about any scandal that 
 was foreign. But he was not disliked, at least 
 openly. It was considered that he was a doosid 
 clever fellow, with a doosid sharp tongue of his 
 own ; and at Barnes's, as at other clubs, they 
 are generally polite to fellows with doosid sharp 
 tongues. And his father was a very good fellow, 
 and gave very good dinners during the season ; and 
 Kilsyth was a very pleasant house to stop at in the 
 autumn ; so that, for these various reasons, Ronald 
 Kilsyth, albeit in himself unpopular at Barnes's, 
 was never suffered to hear of his unpopularity. 
 
 Not that if he had, it would have troubled him 
 one jot. No man in the world was more careless 
 of what people thought of him, so long as he had 
 the approval of his own conscience ; and by dint of
 
 224 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 a long course of self-schooling and the presence of 
 a certain amount of self-satisfaction, he could gene- 
 rally count upon that. He could not tell himself 
 why he had joined Barnes's Club, unless it was that 
 Duncan Forbes was a member, and had asked him 
 to join ; and he liked Duncan Forbes in his way, 
 and wanted some place where he could be pretty 
 certain of finding him when in town. There were 
 few points of resemblance between Ronald Kil- 
 syth and Duncan Forbes ; but perhaps their very 
 dissimilarity was the bond of the union, such as 
 it was, that existed between them. Ronald knew 
 Duncan to be weak, but believed him, and rightly, 
 to be thorough. Duncan Forbes would assume a 
 languid haw-hawism, an almost idiotic rapidity, a 
 freezing hauteur to any one he did not know and 
 did not care for, for the merest caprice ; but he 
 would stand or fall by a friend, and not Charley 
 Jefferson himself would be firmer and truer under 
 trial. Ronald knew this ; and knowing it, was not 
 disposed to be hard on his friend's less stable quali- 
 ties — was rather amused indeed " by Duncan's 
 nonsense," as he phrased it, and showed more
 
 CROSS-EXAMINATION. 225 
 
 inclination for his society than that of any other 
 of his acquaintance. 
 
 The group of talkers in the window opened as 
 Ronald approached, and he shook hands with its 
 various members ; Tommy Toshington, who always 
 had something pleasant to say to anybody out of 
 whom there was any possibility of his ever getting 
 anything, complimenting him on his appearance. 
 
 " Look as fresh as paint, Ronald, my boy — 
 fresh as paint, by Jove ! Where have you been to 
 pick up such a colour and to get yourself into such 
 focus, eh?" 
 
 " The marine breezes of Knightsbridge have 
 contributed to my complexion, Toshington, and the 
 vigorous exercise of walking four miles a day on 
 the London flags has brought me into my present 
 splendid condition." 
 
 "What! not been away from town at all?" 
 asked Sir Coke Only, who would almost as soon 
 have acknowledged his poor relations as confessed 
 to having been in London in September. 
 
 " Not at all. In the first place, I was on duty, 
 
 and could not get away ; not that I think I should 
 vol. I. y
 
 226 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 have moved under any circumstances. London is 
 always good enough for me." 
 
 " But not when it's quite empty," said Lord 
 Sumph. 
 
 " It can't be quite empty with two millions and 
 a half of people in it, Sumph," said Ronald. 
 
 u 0, ah, cads and tradesmen, and all that sort 
 of thing, — devilish worthy people in their way, of 
 course; but I mean people that one knows." 
 
 u I know several of those 6 devilish worthy 
 people,' Sumph," said Ronald, with a smile ; 
 " and besides, country-house life is not much in 
 my way." 
 
 6 i Don't meet those d — d radical fellows that 
 he thinks so much of, there," growled Sir Thomas 
 Buffem to Sir Coke Only. 
 
 " No, nor those painters and people that my 
 boy says this chap's always bringing to mess," 
 replied Sir Coke. 
 
 " There, he's gone away with Duncan now," 
 said Toshington, f • and they'll be happy. They're 
 too clever, those two are, for us old fellows ! Not 
 that you're an old fellow, Sumph, my boy."
 
 CROSS-EXAMINATION. 227 
 
 "You're old enough for several, ain't you, 
 Tommy?" said Lord Sumph; "and I'm old 
 enough to play you a game of billiards before 
 dinner, and give you fifteen; so come along." 
 
 Meanwhile Ronald Kilsyth and Duncan Forbes 
 had walked away to the far end of the room, 
 which happened to be deserted at the time ; and 
 seating themselves on an ottoman, were soon en- 
 gaged in earnest conversation. 
 
 " What on earth made you remain in town, 
 Ronald?" asked Duncan. "I heard what you 
 said to those fellows; but I know well enough 
 that you could have got leave if you had wished. 
 Why did you not come up to Kilsyth ?" 
 
 " Principally because there was no particular 
 inducement for me to do so, Duncan." 
 
 " You always were polite, Ronald — " 
 
 " Ah, you were there ! No, no ; you know 
 perfectly well what I mean, Duncan. With you 
 and the governor and Madeleine I'm always per- 
 fectly happy ; and her ladyship is very friendly, 
 and we cot on very well together. But then I 
 like you all quietly and by yourselves ; I'm sel-
 
 228 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 fish enough to want the entire enjoyment of your 
 society. And the life at Kilsyth would not have 
 suited me at all." 
 
 " Well, I don't know : it was very jolly — " 
 
 " Yes, of course it was, and — By the way, 
 Duncan, tell me all ahout it ; who were there, and 
 what you did." 
 
 " 0, heaps of people there — the Northallertons, 
 and the Thurlows, and — " 
 
 " Yes, yes ; but what men — younger men, I 
 mean ?" 
 
 " Let me see : there was Towcester — " 
 
 " No, not he ; her ladyship would not have 
 thought him objectionable, whatever I might." 
 
 "What? what the deuce are you muttering, 
 Ronald?" 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Duncan — thinking aloud 
 only ; it's a horrible habit I've fallen into. Well, 
 who besides Towcester ?" 
 
 " 0, Severn, and Roderick Douglas, and 
 Charley Jefferson — " 
 
 " Ah, Charley Jefferson ; he's just the same, 
 of course ?"
 
 CROSS-EXAMINATION. 229 
 
 " yes, he's as jolly as ever." 
 
 " Yes ; but I mean, is lie as devoted as lie was 
 to Lady Fairfax?" 
 
 "0, worse ; most desperate case of — no, by the 
 way, though, I forgot ; I think he has cooled off — " 
 
 " Cooled off! since when ?" 
 
 " Since your sister's illness." 
 
 " Since my sister's illness ! What, what could 
 that have to do with them ?" 
 
 " Well, you see, some of the people in the house 
 got frightened at the notion of infection and that 
 kind of thing, and bolted off. Lady Fairfax was 
 one of the first to rush away ; and Charley, who 
 is loyalty itself in everything, as you know, was 
 deucedly annoyed about it. My lady had been 
 leading him a pretty dance for a few days pre- 
 viously, playing off little Towcester against him, 
 and—" 
 
 " All, yes. No doubt Charley was right, quite 
 right. And that was all about him, eh ? And so 
 the people were frightened at poor Madeleine's 
 illness, were they?" 
 
 " Gad, they were, and not without reason too.
 
 230 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 The poor child was awfully bad ; and indeed, if it 
 had not been for Wilmot, I much doubt whether 
 she would have pulled through." 
 
 "Hadn't been for Wilmot ? Wilmot! 0, 
 yes, the London doctor who was staying some- 
 where near, and who was telegraphed for. Tell 
 me about Dr. Wilmot — a clever man, isn't he ?" 
 
 "Clever! He's wonderful ! Keen, clear-headed 
 fellow; sees his way through a brick wall in a 
 minute. Not that at Kilsyth he did not do as 
 much by his devotion to his patient as by Ins 
 skill." 
 
 " Devotion ? 0, he was devoted to his patient, 
 eh?" said Ronald, biting his nails. 
 
 " Never saw such a thing in all your life. 
 Went in a regular perisher," said Duncan Forbes, 
 dropping his hands to emphasise his words. " Put 
 himself in regular quarantine ; cut himself off 
 from all communication with anybody else, anil 
 shut himself up in the room with his patient for 
 days together. It's the sort of thing you read of 
 in poems, and that kind of thing, don't you know, 
 but very seldom meet with in real life. If Wilmot
 
 CROSS-EXAMDs T ATION. 231 
 
 had been a young man, and your sister had had 
 any chance of making him like her, I should have 
 said it was a case of smite. But Wilmot is an 
 old married man ; and these doctors don't indulge 
 much in being captivated, specially by patients 
 in fevers, I should think !" 
 
 "No; of course not, of course not. Now, 
 this Wilmot— what's he like ?" 
 
 " Well, he's rather a striking-looking man ; 
 looks very earnest, and speaks with a very effec- 
 tively modulated voice." 
 
 " Ah ! And he's gentlemanly, eh ?" 
 
 " 0, perfectly gentlemanly. No mistake in 
 that." 
 
 "And he was wonderfully devoted to Made- 
 leine, eh? Very kind of him, I'm sure. Shut 
 himself up in her room, and — What did Lady 
 Muriel think of him, by the way?" 
 
 " I scarcely know. I never heard 'her say ; 
 and yet I gathered somehow that Lady Muriel 
 was not so much impressed in the doctor's favour 
 as the rest of us." 
 
 " That's curious, for there are few keener
 
 232 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 readers of character than Lady Muriel. And the 
 doctor was not a favourite of hers ?" 
 
 " Well, no ; I should say not. But the rest 
 of the party were so strongly in his favour that 
 we looked with some suspicion on all who did not 
 shout as loudly as ourselves." 
 
 " And Madeleine, was she equally enthusi- 
 astic?" 
 
 " Poor Miss Kilsyth, she was not well enough 
 to have much enthusiasm on any subject, even on 
 her doctor. Gratitude is, I imagine, the strongest 
 sentiment one is capable of after a long and severe 
 illness." 
 
 " Exactly — yes — I should suppose so. And 
 what aged man is Dr. Wilmot ?" 
 
 " 0, what we should have called some years 
 ago very old, but what we now look upon as the 
 commencement of middle age — just approaching 
 forty, I should think." 
 
 " He is married, you say?" 
 
 " Yes ; so we all understood. yes, I heard 
 him once mention his wife to Lady Muriel. — I 
 say, Ronald, what an unconscionable lot of ques-
 
 CROSS-EXAMINATION. 233 
 
 tions you are asking about Wilmot; one would 
 think that—" 
 
 " Gentleman waiting to speak to you, sir," 
 said a servant, handing a card to Ronald ; " says 
 lie won't detain you a moment, sir." 
 
 Ronald took the card, and read on it " Dr. 
 Wilmot." 
 
 u I will come to the gentleman at once," said 
 he ; and the servant went away. 
 
 " Who is it? Anyone I know?" asked Duncan 
 Forbes. 
 
 " He is a stranger to me," said Ronald, blink- 
 ing the question. 
 
 He found Dr. Wilmot in that wretched little 
 waiting-room about the size of a warm bath, and 
 having for its furniture a chair, a table, and a 
 map of England, which is dedicated at Barnes's to 
 the reception of " strangers." The gas was low, 
 and the Doctor was heavily wrapped up, and had 
 a shawl round the lower part of his face ; but 
 Ronald made him out to be a gentlemanly-looking 
 man, and specially noticed his keen flashing eyes.
 
 234 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 The Doctor was sorry to disturb Captain Kilsyth, 
 but his father had sent up to him just before he 
 started a parcel which he wished delivered per- 
 sonally to the Captain ; so he had brought it on 
 his way from the Great Northern, by which he had 
 just arrived. It was some law-deed, about the 
 safety of which Kilsyth was a little particular. 
 It would have been delivered two days since, but, 
 passing through Edinburgh, the Doctor had found 
 his old friend Sir Saville Eowe staying at the 
 same hotel, and had suffered himself to be per- 
 suaded to accompany him to see the new experi- 
 ments in anaesthetics which Simpson had just 
 made, and which — Ah ! but the Captain did not 
 care for medical details. The Captain was very 
 sorry that he had not a better room to ask the 
 Doctor into ; but the regulations at Barnes's about 
 strangers were antediluvian and absurd. He 
 should take an early opportunity of thanking Dr. 
 "Wilmot for his exceeding kindness in p*oinor to 
 Kilsyth, and for the skill and attention which he 
 had bestowed on Miss Kilsyth. The Doctor appa- 
 rently to Ronald, even in the dull gas-light, with a
 
 CROSS-EXAMINATION. 235 
 
 heightened colour disclaimed everything, assert- 
 ing that he had merely done his duty. Exchange 
 of bows and of very cold hand-shakes, the Doctor 
 jumping into the cab at the door, Ronald turning 
 back into the hall, muttering, " That's the man ! 
 Taking what Duncan Forbes said, and that fel- 
 low's look when I named Madeleine — taking them 
 together, that's the man that Lady Muriel meant. 
 That's the man, for a thousand pounds !" 
 
 In the cab Dr. Wilmot is thinking about Ron- 
 ald. A blunt rough customer rather, but with a 
 wonderful look of his sister about him ; not trace- 
 able to any feature in particular, but in the general 
 expression. His sister! — now a memory and a 
 dream — with the bit of blue ribbon as the sole 
 tangible reminiscence of her. She is anion g her 
 friends now; and probably at this moment some 
 one is sitting close by her, close as he used to sit, 
 and he is forgotten already, or but thought of as — 
 Not a pleasant manner, Captain Kilsyth's. Studi- 
 ously polite, no doubt, but with an undercurrent 
 of badly-veiled suspicion and reserve. What 
 could that mean? Dr. Wilmot knew that Ins
 
 236 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 conduct towards the Kilsyth family, so far at 
 least as its outward expression was concerned, 
 had merited nothing but gratitude from every 
 member of it. Why, then, was the young man 
 embarrassed and suspicious ? Could he — pshaw ! 
 how could he by any possible means have become 
 aware of the Doctor's secret feelings towards Miss 
 Kilsyth — feelings so secret that they had never 
 been breathed in words to mortal ? Perfectly 
 absurd ! It is conscience that makes cowards of 
 us all ; and the Doctor decides that it is conscience 
 which has made him pervert Captain Kilsyth's 
 naturally cold manner so ridiculously. 
 
 Well, it is all over now ! He is just back 
 again at his old life, and he must give up the day- 
 dreams of the past month and fall back into his 
 professional habits. Looking out of the cab win- 
 dow at the long monotonous row of dirty-brown 
 houses, at the sloppy street, at the pushing crowds 
 on the foot-pavement, listening to the never-ceas- 
 ing roar of wheels, he can hardly believe that he 
 has only just returned from mountain, and heather, 
 and distance, and fresh air, and comparative soli-
 
 CROSS-EXAMINATION. 237 
 
 tude ! Back again ! The reception at home from 
 " ten till one," the old ladies' pulses and the old 
 gentlemen's tongues, the wearied listening to the 
 symptoms, the stethoscopical examination and the 
 prescription-writing ; then the afternoon visits, 
 with the repetition of all the morning's details ; 
 the hospital lecture ; the dull cold formal dinner 
 with Mabel ; and the evening's reading and writ- 
 ing, — without one bright spot in the entire daily 
 round, without one cheering hope, one — 
 
 A smell of tan ! — the street in front of his door 
 strewed with tan ! Some one ill close by. What 
 is this strange sickness that comes over him — this 
 sinking at Ins heart — this clamminess of his brow 
 and hands ? The cab has scarcely stopped before 
 he has jumped out, and has knocked at the door. 
 Not his usual sharp decisive knock, but feebly and 
 hesitatingly. He notices this himself, and is won- 
 dering about it, when the door opens, and his 
 servant, always solemn, but now preternaturally 
 grave, appears. 
 
 " Glad to see you at last, sir," says the man, 
 " though you're too late!"
 
 238 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 "Too late!" echoes Wilmot vacantly; " too 
 late!— what for?" 
 
 " For God's sake, sir," says the man, startled 
 out of his ordinary quietude ; "you got the tele- 
 gram ?" 
 
 "Telegram! no — what telegram? What did 
 it say ? What has happened ?" 
 
 "Mrs. Wilmot, sir! — she's gone, sir! — died 
 yesterday morning at eight o'clock!"
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 IRRE PARABLE. 
 
 Ohudleigh WlLMOT was a strong man, and lie 
 possessed much of the pride and reticence which 
 ordinarily accompany strength of character. Hi- 
 therto he can hardly be said to have suffered much 
 in his life. Affliction had come to him, as it 
 comes to every man bom of woman ; but it had 
 come in the ordinary course of human life, unat- 
 tended by exceptional circumstances, above all not 
 intensified, not warped from its wholesome pur- 
 poses by self-reproach. His life had been com- 
 monplace in its joys and in its griefs alike, and 
 he had never suffered from any cause which was
 
 240 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 not as palpable, as apparent, to all who knew Mm 
 as to himself. His had been the sorrows, chiefly 
 his parents' death, which are rather gravely ac- 
 knowledged and respected, than whispered about 
 in corners with dubious head-shaking and suor- 
 gestive shoulder-shrugging. So far the experi- 
 ence of the rising man had in it nothing dis- 
 tinctive, nothing peculiarly painful. 
 
 But there was an end of this now. A new 
 phase of life had begun for Chudleigh Wilmot, 
 when he recoiled, like one who has received a 
 deadly thrust, and whose life-blood rushes forth in 
 answer to it, from the announcement made to him 
 by his servant. He realised the truth of the man's 
 statement as the words passed his lips ; he was 
 not a man whose brain was ever slow to take any 
 impression, and he knew in an instant and tho- 
 roughly understood that his wife was dead. A 
 very few minutes more sufficed to show him all 
 that was implied by that tremendous truth. His 
 wife was dead ; not of a sudden illness assailing 
 the fortress of life and carrying it by one blow, 
 but of an illness that had had time in which to
 
 IRREPARABLE. 241 
 
 do its deadly work. His wife was dead ; had died 
 alone, in the care of hirelings, while he had been 
 away in attendance upon a stranger, one out of 
 his own sphere, not even a regular patient, one for 
 whom he had already neglected pressing duties — 
 not so sacred indeed as that which he could now 
 never fulfil or recall, but binding enough to have 
 brought severe reflections upon him for their ne- 
 glect. The thought of all this surged up within 
 him, and overwhelmed him in a sea of trouble, 
 while yet his face had not subsided from the look 
 of horror with which he had heard his servant's 
 awful announcement. 
 
 He turned abruptly into his consulting-room 
 and shut the door between him and the man, who 
 had attempted to follow him, but who now turned 
 his attention to dismissing the cab and £ettinor in 
 
 O Oct 
 
 his master's luggage, during which process he in- 
 formed cabby of the state of affairs. 
 
 " I thought there were something up," re- 
 marked that individual, " when I see the two- 
 pair front with the windows open and the blinds 
 
 down, and all the house shut up; hut he didn't 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 notice it." An observation which the servant 
 commented upon later, and drew certain conclu- 
 sions from, considerably nearer the truth than 
 Wilmot would have liked, had he had heart or 
 leisure for any minor considerations. Presently 
 Wilmot called the man ; who entered the consult- 
 ing-room, and found his master almost as pale as 
 the corpse upstairs in " the two-pair front," where 
 the windows were open and the blinds were down, 
 but perfectly calm and quiet. 
 
 " Is there a nurse in the house ?" 
 "Yes, sir; a nurse has been here since this 
 day week, sir." 
 
 "Send her here — stay — has Dr. Whittaker 
 been here to-day ?" 
 
 " No, sir ; he were here last night, a half an 
 hour after my missus departed, sir ; but he ain't 
 been here since. He said he would come at 
 one, sir, to see your answer to the telegraft, 
 sir." 
 
 " Very well ; send the nurse to me ;" and Wil- 
 mot strode towards the darkened window, and 
 leaned against the wire-blind which covered the
 
 IRREPARABLE. 243 
 
 lower compartment. He had not to wait long. 
 Presently the man returned. 
 
 " If you please, sir, the nurse has gone homo 
 to fetch some clothes, and Susan is a-watehin' the 
 body." 
 
 Chudleigh Wilmot started, and ground his 
 teeth. It was perfectly true ; the proper phrase 
 had been used by this poor churl, who had no 
 notion of fine susceptibilities and no intention of 
 wounding them, who would not have remained 
 away from his own wife if she had been ill, 
 not to say dying, for the highest wages and the 
 best perquisites to be had in any house in Lon- 
 don, but to whom a corpse was a corpse, and 
 that was all about it. The phrase did not make 
 the dreadful truth a bit more dreadful or more 
 trug, but it made Wilmot wince and quiver. 
 
 " Is there no one else — upstairs ?" he asked. 
 
 u No, sir. Mrs. Prendergast were here all 
 night, sir, and she is coming again to meet Dr. 
 Whittaker ; but there's no one but Susan a-watch- 
 in' now, sir. We was waiting for orders from 
 you."
 
 244 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 Wilmot turned away from the man, and spoke 
 without permitting him to see his face. 
 
 " Tell Susan to leave the room, if you please ; 
 I am going upstairs." 
 
 The man went away, and returned in a few 
 minutes with a key, which he laid upon the table, 
 and then silently withdrew. His master was still 
 standing by the window, his face turned away. 
 A considerable interval elapsed before the silent 
 group of listeners, comprising all the servants of 
 the establishment, upon the kitchen -stairs, heard 
 the widower's slow and heavy step ascending the 
 iront staircase. 
 
 The sight which Chudleigh Wilmot had to see, 
 the strife of feeling which he had to encounter, 
 were none the less terrible to him that death was 
 familiar to him in every shape, in every prelimi- 
 nary of anguish and fear, in all that distorts its 
 repose and renders its features terrible. It is an 
 error surely to suppose that the familiarity of the 
 physician with suffering and death, with all the 
 ills that render the pilgrimage of life burdensome 
 and the earthy vesture repulsive, makes the expe-
 
 IRREPARABLE. 245 
 
 rience of these things when brought home to him 
 easier to bear. The sickness that defies his skill, 
 the life that eludes his grasp, is as dark an enigma, 
 as terrible a defeat to him as to the man who 
 knows nothing about the dissolving frame but 
 that it holds the being he loves and is doomed 
 to lose. 
 
 If Chuclleigh Wilmot had had a deadly, vin- 
 dictive, and relentless enemy, — one of those crea- 
 tures of romance, but incredible in real life, who 
 gloat over the misery of a hated object, and would 
 increase it by every fiendish device within their 
 ingenuity and power, — that fabulous being might 
 have been satisfied with the mental torture which 
 he endured when he found himself within the 
 room, so formally arranged, so faultlessly orderly, 
 so terribly suggestive of the cessation of life, in 
 which his dead wife lay. As he turned the key 
 in the lock, for the first time a sense of unreality, 
 of impossibility came over him, with a swift be- 
 wildering remembrance — rather a vision than a 
 recollection — of the last time he had seen her. He 
 saw her standing in the hall, in the low light of
 
 246 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 the autumn evening, her pretty fresh dinner-dress 
 lifted daintily out of the way of the servant carry- 
 ing his portmanteau to the cab; her head, with 
 its coronet of dark hair, held up to receive her 
 husband's careless kiss, as he followed the man to 
 the door. He remembered how carelessly he had 
 kissed her, and how — he had never thought of it 
 before — she had not returned the caress. When 
 had she kissed him last ? This was a trifling thing, 
 that he had never thought about till now — a ques- 
 tion he could not answer, and had never asked till 
 now ; and in another moment he would be looking 
 at her dead face ! 
 
 The window-blinds fluttered in the faint au- 
 tumn wind as Wilmot opened the door, then 
 quickly closed and locked it ; and the rustling 
 sound added to the impressiveness of the great 
 human silence. The hands of the stern woman 
 who loved her had ordered all the surroundings 
 of the dead tenderly and gracefully ; and the 
 tranquil form lay in its deep rest very fair and 
 solemn, and not terrible to look upon, if that 
 can ever be said of death, in its garments of
 
 1HREPARABLE. 247 
 
 linen and lace. The head was a little bent, the 
 face turned gently to one side, and the long dark 
 eyelashes lay on the cheek, which was ^hardly 
 at all sunken, as if they might be lifted up again 
 and the light of life seen under them. Death was 
 indeed there, but the sign and the seal were not 
 impressed upon the face yet for a little while. 
 Wilmot looked upon the dead tearless and still 
 for some minutes, and then a quick short shudder 
 ran through him, and he replaced the covering 
 which had concealed the features, and sat down 
 by the bedside, hiding his face with his hands. 
 
 Who could put on paper the thoughts that 
 swept over him then, and swept his mind away 
 in their turmoil, and tossed him to and fro in 
 a tempest of anguish which even the majestic 
 tranquillity of death in presence was powerless to 
 quell? Who could measure the punishment, the 
 tremendous retribution of those hours, in which, 
 if the world could have known anything about 
 them, the world would have seen only the na- 
 tural, the praiseworthy grief of bereavement? 
 Who shall say through what purifying fires of
 
 248 THE FORLOKN HOPE. 
 
 self-knowledge and self-abasement the nature of 
 the erring man passed in that dreadful vigil? 
 And yet he did not know the truth. His con- 
 science had been rudely awakened, but his com- 
 prehension had not yet been enlightened. He 
 did not yet know the terrible depths of meaning 
 which he had still to explore in the words which 
 were the only articulate sounds that had formed 
 themselves amid the chaos of his grief — " Too 
 late ; too late !" The failure in duty, the poverty, 
 the niggardliness in love, the negligence, the dal- 
 lying with right, in so far as his wife had been 
 concerned, w^ere all there, keeping him ghastly 
 company, as he sat by the side of the dead ; 
 but the grimmest and the ghastliest phantoms 
 which were to swarm around him were not yet 
 evoked. 
 
 To do Chudleigh Wilmot justice, he had no 
 notion that his wife had been unhappy. That 
 he had never rightly understood her character 
 or read her heart, was the soundest proof that 
 he had not loved her ; but he had never taken 
 himself to task on that point, and had been quite
 
 IRREPARABLE. 249 
 
 satisfied to impute such symptoms of discontent 
 as he could not fail to notice to her sullenness of 
 temper, of -which he considered himself wonder- 
 fully tolerant. So little did this wise, rising man 
 understand women, that he actually believed that 
 indifference to his wife's moods was a good- 
 humoured sort of kindness she could not fail to 
 appreciate. She had appreciated it only too truly. 
 The source of much of the remorse and self- 
 condemnation which tortured him now was to 
 be traced to his own newly-awakened feelings, 
 to the fresh and novel susceptibility which the 
 experience of the past few weeks had aroused, 
 and in which lay the germs of some terrible 
 lessons for the man whose studies in all but the 
 lore of the human heart had been so deep, whose 
 knowledge of that had been so strangely shallow. 
 And now no knowledge could avail. The harm, 
 the wrong, the cruel ill that had been done, 
 was gone before him to the judgment; and he 
 must live to learn its extent, to feel its bitter- 
 ness with every day of life, which could never 
 avail to lessen or repair it.
 
 250 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 When Dr. Whittaker arrived, he found Wil- 
 mot in his consulting-room, quite calm and steady, 
 and prepared to receive his professional account 
 of the " melancholy occurrence," on which he 
 condoled with the bereaved husband after the 
 most approved models. He did not attempt to 
 disguise from Wilmot that he had been disagree- 
 ably surprised by his non-return under the cir- 
 cumstances. "Also," he added, "by yoiu* not 
 sending me any instructions ; though indeed at 
 that stage nothing could have availed, I am con- 
 vinced." 
 
 Wilmot received these observations with such 
 unmistakable surprise that an explanation ensued, 
 which elicited the fact that he had never received 
 any letter from Dr. Whittaker, and indeed had 
 had no intimation of his wife's illness, beyond 
 that conveyed in a letter from herself a fortnight 
 previous to her death, and in which she treated 
 it as quite a trifling matter. 
 
 " Very extraordinary indeed," said Dr. Whit- 
 taker in a dry and unsatisfactory tone. " I can 
 only repeat that I sent you the fullest possible
 
 IRREPARABLE. 251 
 
 report, and entreated you to return at once. I 
 was particularly anxious, as Mrs. Wilmot con- 
 fassed to me that you were unaware of her situ- 
 ation." 
 
 "I never had the letter," said Wilmot; "I 
 never heard of or from you, beyond the memo- 
 randa enclosed in my wife's letters." 
 
 11 Very extraordinary," repeated Dr. Whit- 
 taker still more drily than before. u She took 
 the letter at her own particular request, saying 
 she would direct it, that the sight of her hand- 
 writing on the envelope, she being unable to 
 write more, might reassure you." 
 
 Wilmot coloured deeply and angrily under 
 his brother physician's searching gaze. He had 
 not looked for his wife's infrequent letters with 
 any anxiety ; he had had no quick, love-inspired 
 apprehension to be assuaged by her womanly 
 considerateness. He felt an uneasy sort of glad- 
 ness that she had thought he had had such ap- 
 prehension — better so, even now, when all mis- 
 takes were doomed to be everlasting, — or when 
 they were quite cleared up. Which was it ? He
 
 252 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 did not know ; he did not like to think. All 
 was over ; all was too late. 
 
 " I never received any such letter," he said 
 again ; u and I am astonished you did not write 
 again when you got no answer." 
 
 " I did not write again, because Mrs. Wilmot 
 gave me so very decidedly to understand that you 
 had told her you could not, under any circum- 
 stances, leave Kilsyth ; and danger was not immi- 
 nent until Monday, when I telegraphed, just too 
 late to catch you." 
 
 No more was said upon the point; but on 
 Wilmot's mind was left a painful and disagreeable 
 impression that Dr. Whittaker had received his 
 explanation with distrust. The colloquy between 
 the two physicians lasted long ; and Wilmot was 
 further ensrao-ed for a lono; time in giving- the 
 necessary attention to the distressing details winch 
 claim a hearing just at the time when they most 
 disturb and jar with the tone of feeling. A sense 
 of shock and hurry — a difficulty of realising the 
 event which had occurred, quite other than the 
 stunned feeling of conviction which had come
 
 IRREPARABLE. 253 
 
 with the first reception of the intelligence — beset 
 him, while the nameless evidences of death were 
 constantly pressed upon his attention. He sat 
 in his consulting-room, receiving messages and 
 communications of every kind, hearing the sub- 
 dued voices of the servants as they replied to in- 
 quiries, feeling as though he were living through 
 a terrible feverish dream, conscious of all around 
 him, and yet strangely, awfully conscious too of 
 the dead white face upstairs growing, as he knew, 
 more stiff and stark and awful as the hours, so 
 crowded yet so lonely, so busy yet so dreary, 
 flew, no, dragged — which was it ? — along. 
 
 Many times that day, as Chudleigh Wilmot 
 sat cold and grave, and, although deeply sad, 
 more composed, more like himself than most 
 men would have been in similar circumstances — 
 a vision rose before his mind. It was a vision 
 such as has come to many a mourner — a vision 
 of what might have been. For it was not only 
 his wife's death that the new-made widower had 
 learned that day ; he had learned that which had 
 made her death doubly sad, far more untimely.
 
 254 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 The vision that Chudleigh saw in his day-dream 
 was of a fair young mother and her child, a 
 happy wife in the summer-time of her beauty 
 and her pride of motherhood — this was what 
 might have been. What was, was a dead white 
 face upstairs upon the bed, waiting for the coffin 
 and the grave, and a blighted hope, a promise 
 never to be fulfilled, which had never even been 
 whispered between the living and the dead. 
 
 Mrs. Prendenrast had been in the darkened 
 house for many hours of that long day. "Wilinot 
 knew she was there ; but she had sent him no 
 message, and he had made no attempt to see her. 
 He shrank from seeing her ; and yet he wished to 
 know all that she, and she alone, could tell him. 
 If he had ever loved his wife sufficiently to be 
 jealous of any other sharing or even usurping her 
 confidence, to have resented that any other should 
 have a more intimate knowledge of Mabel's senti- 
 ments and tastes, should have occupied her time 
 and her attention more fully than he, Henrietta 
 Prendergast's intimacy with her might have eli-
 
 IRREPARABLE. 255 
 
 cited such feeling. But Chudleigh Wilmot had not 
 loved his wife enough for jealousy of the nobler, 
 and was too much of a gentleman for jealousy 
 of the baser kind. No such insidious element of 
 ill ever had a place in his nature; and, except 
 that he did not like Mrs. Prendergast, whom he 
 considered a clever woman of a type more objec- 
 tionable than common — and Wilmot was not an 
 admirer of clever women generally — he never re- 
 sented, or indeed noticed, the exceptional place she 
 occupied among the number of his wife's friends. 
 But there was something lurking in his thoughts to- 
 day ; there was some unfaced, some unquestioned 
 misery at work within him, something beyond 
 the tremendous shock he had received, the deep 
 natural grief and calamity which enshrouded him, 
 that made him shrink from seeing Henrietta 
 until he should have had more time to get accus- 
 tomed to the truth. 
 
 When the night had fallen, he heard the light 
 tread of women's feet in the hall and a gentle 
 whispering. Then the street-door was softly shut,, 
 and carriage-wheels rolled away. The gas had
 
 256 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 been lighted in Wilmot's room, but he had turned 
 it almost out, and was sitting in the dim light, 
 when a knock at the door aroused his attention. 
 The intruder was the " Susan" already mentioned. 
 Mrs. Wilmot had not boasted an " own maid ;" but 
 this girl, one of the housemaids, had been in fact 
 her personal attendant. She came timidly to- 
 wards her master, her eyes red and her face pale 
 with grief and watching. 
 
 " Well, what is it now ?" said Wilmot impa- 
 tiently. He was weary of disturbance ; he wanted 
 to be securely alone, and to think it out. 
 
 " Mrs. Prendergast desired me to give you 
 this, sir," the girl replied, handing him a small 
 packet, " and to say she wants to see you, sir, to- 
 morrow — respecting some messages from missus." 
 
 He took the parcel from her, and Susan left 
 the room. Before she reached the stairs, her 
 master called her back. 
 
 " Susan," he said, " where's the seal-ring 
 your mistress always wore ? This parcel contains 
 her keys and her wedding-ring ; where is the seal- 
 rin£? Has it been left on her hand ?"
 
 IRREPARABLE. 257 
 
 u No, sir," said Susan ; " and I can't think 
 where it can have got to. Missus hasn't wore it, 
 sir, not this fortnight ; and I have looked every- 
 where for it. You'll find all her things quite 
 right, sir, except that ring ; and Mrs. Prender- 
 gast, she knows nothing about it neither; for 
 I called her my own self to take off missus's 
 weddinff-rinff, as it was missus's own wish as she 
 should do it, and she missed the seal-ring there 
 and then, sir, and couldn't account for it no more 
 than me." 
 
 "Very well, Susan, it can't be helped," re- 
 plied Wilmot ; and Susan again left him. 
 
 He sat long, looking at the golden circlet as it 
 lay in the broad palm of his hand. It had never 
 meant so much to him before ; and even yet he 
 was far from knowing all it had meant to her 
 from whose dead hand it had been taken. At 
 last, and with some difficulty, he placed the ring 
 upon the little finger of his left hand, saying as 
 he did so, "I must find the other, and always 
 wear them both." 
 
 vol. r. s
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE LEADEN SEAL. 
 
 When Cliudleigh Wilmot arose on the following 
 morning, with the semi-stupefied feeling of a man 
 on whom a great calamity has just fallen, not the 
 least painful portion of the task, not the least diffi- 
 cult part of the endurance that lay before him was 
 the inevitable interview with his dead wife's friend. 
 Mrs. Prendergast had requested that he would 
 receive her early. This he learned from the ser- 
 vant who answered his bell ; and he had directed 
 that she should be admitted as soon as she arrived. 
 He loitered about his room ; he dallied with the 
 time ; he dared not face the cold silent house, the 
 servants, who looked at him with natural curiosity, 
 and, as he thought, avoidance. If the case had 
 not been his own, Wilmot would have remem- 
 bered that the spectacle of a new-made widow or
 
 THE LEADEN SEAL. 259 
 
 widower always has attractions for the curiosity 
 of the vulgar : strong, if the £rief in the case be 
 very violent, and stronger, if it be mild or non- 
 existent. YVilmot was awfully shocked by his 
 wife's death, terribly remorseful for his own ab- 
 sence, and perhaps for another reason — at which, 
 however, he had not yet had the hardihood to 
 look — almost stunned by the terrible sense, the 
 conviction of the irrevocable ill of the past, the 
 utterly irreparable nature of the wrong that had 
 been done. But all these warring: feelings did 
 not constitute grief. Its supreme agony, its utter 
 sadness, its unspeakable weariness were wanting 
 in the strife which shook and rent him. The 
 thought of the dead face had terror and regret for 
 him ; but not the dreadful yearning of separation, 
 not the mysterious wrenching asunder of body and 
 spirit, almost as powerful as that of death itself, 
 which comes with the sentence of parting, which 
 makes the possibility of living on so incomprehen- 
 sible and so cruel to the true mourner. Not the 
 fact itself, so much as the attendant circumstances, 
 caused Wilmot to suffer, as he undoubtedly did
 
 260 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 suffer. He knew in his heart that had there been 
 no self-reproach involved in this calamity, he 
 would not have felt it as he felt it now ; and in 
 the knowledge there was denial of the reality of 
 grief. 
 
 No such thought as " How am I to live with- 
 out her?" the natural utterance of bereavement, 
 arose in Wilmot's heart ; though neither did he 
 profane his wife's memory or do dishonour to his 
 own higher nature by even the most passing re- 
 ference to the object which had so fatally en- 
 grossed him. The strong hand of death had 
 curbed that passion for the present, and his 
 thoughts turned to Kilsyth only with remorse 
 and regret. But the wife who had had no absorb- 
 ing share in his life coidd not by her death make 
 a blank in it of wide extent or long duration. 
 
 He was still lingering in his room, when he 
 was told that Mrs. Prendergast had arrived and 
 was in the drawing-room. The closely-drawn 
 blinds rendered the room so dark that he could 
 not distinguish Henrietta's features, still further 
 obscured by a heavy black veil. She did not rise,
 
 THE LEADEN SEAL. 261 
 
 and she made no attempt to take his hand, which 
 he extended to her in silence, the result of agita- 
 tion. She bowed to him formally, and was the 
 first to speak. Her voice was low and her words 
 were hurried, though she tried hard to be calm. 
 
 " I was with your wife during her illness and 
 at her death, Dr. Wilmot," she said; " and I am 
 here now not to offer you ill-timed condolences, 
 but to fulfil a trust." 
 
 Her tone surprised AYilmot, and affected him 
 
 disagreeably. There had never been any dis- 
 
 aoreement between himself and Mrs. Prendemast; 
 
 he was not a man likely to interfere or quarrel 
 
 with his wife's friends; and as he was wholly 
 
 unconscious of the projects she had entertained 
 
 towards him, he had not any suspicion of hidden 
 
 malice on her part. Emotion he was prepared 
 
 for — would indeed have welcomed ; he was ready 
 
 also for blame and reproaches, in which he would 
 
 have joined heartily, against himself; but the 
 
 calm, cold, rooted anger in this woman's voice he 
 
 was not prepared for. If such a thing had been 
 
 possible — the thought flashed lightning-like across
 
 262 THE FOELOEN HOPE. 
 
 his mind before she had concluded her sentence 
 — lie might have had in her an enemy, biding 
 her time, and now at length finding it. 
 
 He did not speak, and she continued : 
 
 "I presume you have heard from Dr. Whit- 
 taker the particulars of Mabel's illness, its cause, 
 and the means used to avert — what has not been 
 averted ?— " 
 
 " I have," briefly replied the listener. 
 
 " Then I need not enter into that — beyond 
 this : a portion of my trust is to tell you that 
 Dr. Whittaker is not to blame." 
 
 " I have not blamed him, Mrs. Prendergast." 
 
 " That is well. When Mabel knew, or thought, 
 I fear hoped, that her life was in danger, her 
 strongest desire was that you should be kept in 
 ignorance of the fact." 
 
 " Good God! why?" exclaimed Wilmot. 
 
 " I think you must know why better than I 
 can tell you," replied Henrietta pitilessly. " But, 
 at all events, such was the case. Dr. Whittaker 
 wrote to you, but she suppressed the letter. She 
 gave it to me on the night she died. Here it is."
 
 THE LEADEN SEAL. 263 
 
 Cliuclleigli Wilmot took the letter from her 
 hand silently. Astonishment and distress over- 
 whelmed him. 
 
 " She bade me tell you that she laid her life 
 down gladly ; that she had nothing to leave, 
 nothing to regret ; that she was glad she had suc- 
 ceeded in keeping you in ignorance of her danger 
 — for she knew, for the sake of your reputation, 
 you would have left even Miss Kilsyth to be here 
 at her death. But she preferred your absence ; she 
 distinctly bade me tell you so. She left no dying 
 charge to you but this, that you should allow me 
 to see her coffin closed on the second day after her 
 death, and that you should wear her wedding- 
 ring. I sent it to you last night, Dr. Wilmot. I 
 hope you got it safely." 
 
 "I did; it is here on my finger," answered 
 Wilmot; "but, for God's sake, Mrs. Prendergast, 
 tall me what all this means. Why did my wife 
 charge you with such a message for me ; how have 
 I deserved it ? Why did she, how should she, so 
 young, and to all appearance not unhappy, wish 
 to die, and to die in my absence ? Did she perse-
 
 264 THE FORLOBN HOPE. 
 
 vere in that wish, or was it only a whim of her 
 illness, which, had there been any one to remon- 
 strate with her, would have yielded later ?" 
 
 " It was no whim, Dr. Wilmot. A wretched 
 truth, I grant you, but a truth, and persisted in. 
 So long as consciousness remained, she never 
 changed in that." 
 
 A dark and angry look came into Wilmot'fl 
 face, and he raised his voice as he asked the next 
 question : 
 
 " Do you mean to explain this extraordinary 
 circumstance, Mrs. Prendergast ? Are you going 
 to give me the clue to this mystery? My wife 
 and I always lived on good terms ; we parted on 
 the same. No man or woman living can say with 
 truth that I ever was unkind to her, or that she 
 had cause given her by me to wish her life at an 
 end, to welcome death. I believe the communi- 
 cation you have just made to me is utterly without 
 example. I never heard, I don't believe anyone 
 ever heard of such a thing. I ask you to explain 
 it, if you can/' 
 
 " You speak as though you asked, or desired
 
 THE LEADEN SEAL. 265 
 
 me to account for it too," said Henrietta in a cold 
 and cutting tone, which rebuked tlie vehemence 
 of his manner, and revealed the intense, unsleep- 
 ing egotism of her disposition. " I could do so, 
 I daresay ; but I cannot see the profitableness of 
 such a discussion between you and me. It is too 
 late now ; nothing can undo the wrong, no matter 
 what it was, or how far it extended. It is all over, 
 and I have nothing more to do than to carry out 
 the last wishes of my dear friend. Have I your 
 permission to do so?" she asked, in the most 
 formal possible tone, as she rose and stood oppo- 
 site him. 
 
 Wilmot put his hands up to his face, and 
 walked hurriedly about the room. Then he came 
 suddenly towards Henrietta, and said with in- 
 tense feeling : 
 
 " I beg your pardon ; I did not mean to speak 
 roughly : but I am bewildered by all this. I am 
 sure you must feel for me ; you must understand 
 how utterly I am unable to comprehend what lias 
 occurred. To come home and receive such a 
 shock as the news of my wife's death, was surely
 
 266 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 enough in itself to try me severely. And now to 
 hear what you tell me, and tell me too so calmly, 
 as if you did not understand what it means, and 
 what it must be to me to hear it ! You were with 
 her, her chosen friend. I think you knew her 
 better than anyone in the world." 
 
 "And if I did," said Henrietta, — all her 
 assumed calm gone, and her manner now as 
 vehement as his own, — "if I did, is not that an 
 answer to all you ask me ? If I am to explain her 
 motives, to lay bare her thoughts, to tell her 
 sorrows, to you, her husband, is that not your 
 answer? Surely you have it in that fact! They 
 are not true husband and true wife who have closer 
 friends. You never loved her, and you never 
 knew or cared what her life was ; and so, when 
 she was leaving it, she kept you aloof from her." 
 
 Wilmot made no sound in reply. He stood 
 quite still, and looked at her. His eyes had 
 grown accustomed to the gloom, and she had 
 raised her veil. He could see her face now. Her 
 pale cheeks, paler than usual in her grief and 
 passion, her deep angry sorrowful eyes, and her
 
 THE LEADEN SEAL. 267 
 
 trembling lips, made her look almost terrible, as 
 she stood there and told him out the truth. 
 
 "No," she went on, "you did not know her, 
 and you were satisfied not to know her ; you went 
 complacently on your way, and never thought 
 whether hers was lonely and wearisome. You 
 never were unkind to her, you say ; no, I daresay 
 you never were. She had all the advantages to 
 which your wife was entitled, and she did you 
 and them due honour. Why, even I, who did, 
 as you say, know her best, had suspected only 
 recently, and learned fully only since her illness 
 began, all she suffered ; no, not all — that one heart 
 can never pour into another — but I have only read 
 the story of her life lately, and you have never 
 read it at all. You were a physician, and you 
 did not see that your own wife, a dweller under 
 your own roof, whose life was lived in your sight, 
 had a mortal disease." 
 
 " What do you mean ?" he said ; " she had no 
 such thing." 
 
 " She had /" Henrietta repeated impetuously; 
 " she had a broken heart. You never ill-treated
 
 268 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 her — true ; yon never neglected lier — true, — until 
 she was dying, that is to say ; — but did you ever 
 love her, Dr. Wilmot? Did you ever consider 
 her as other or more than an appendage of your 
 position, an ornament in your house, a condition 
 of your social success and respectability ? What 
 were her thoughts, her hopes, her disappointments 
 to you ? Did you ever make her your real com- 
 panion, the true sharer of your life ? Did you 
 ever return the love, the worship which she gave 
 you ? Did you ever pity her jealous nature ; did 
 you ever interpret it by any love or sensitiveness 
 of your own, and abstain from wounding it ? Did 
 you know, did you care, whether she suffered 
 when you shut yourself up in your devotion to a 
 pursuit in which she had no share ? All women 
 have to bear that, no doubt, and are fools 'if they 
 quarrel with the bread-winner's devotion to his 
 work. Yes ; but all women have not her silent, 
 brooding, jealous, sullen nature ; all women are 
 not so little frivolous as she was ; all women, 
 Dr. Wilmot, do not love their husbands as Mabel 
 loved you.''
 
 THE LEADEN SEAL. 269 
 
 She paused in the torrent of her words, and 
 then he spoke. 
 
 " All this is new and terrible to me ; as new 
 as it is terrible. Mrs. Prendergast, do me the 
 justice to believe that." 
 
 " It is not for me to do you justice or injus- 
 tice," she made answer; u your punishment must 
 come from your own heart, or you must go un- 
 punished." 
 
 "But" — he almost pleaded with her — "Ma- 
 bel never blamed me, never tried to keep me more 
 with her ; rarely indeed expressed a wish of any 
 kind. I declare, before God, I never dreamed, it 
 never occurred to me to suspect that she was un- 
 happy." 
 
 "No," she said ; " and Mabel knew that. She 
 interested you so little, you cared so little for her, 
 that you never looked below the surface of her 
 life ; and her pride kept that surface fair and 
 smooth. She would have died before she would 
 have complained, — she has died, in fact, and made 
 pa." 
 Ye?," said Wilmot suddenly and bitterly ;
 
 270 THE FOELOEN HOPE. 
 
 u but she has left me this legacy, brought me by 
 your hands, of miserable regret and vain repent- 
 ance. She has insured the destruction of my 
 peace of mind ; she has taken care that mine shall 
 be no ordinary grief, sent by God and to be dis- 
 pelled by time; she has added bitterness to the 
 bitter, and put me utterly in the wrong by her 
 unwarrantable concealment and reticence." 
 
 " How truly manlike your feelings are, Dr. 
 Wilmot ! She has hurt your pride, and you can't 
 forgive her even in death ! She has put you in 
 the wrong, — and all her own wrongs, so silently 
 borne, sink into nothing in comparison !" 
 
 " I deny it !" Wilmot said vehemently; " she 
 had no wrongs, — no woman of her acquaintance 
 had a better husband. What did I ever deny her ?" 
 
 " Only your love, only a wife's true place in 
 your life, only all she longed for, only all she died 
 for lack of." 
 
 " All this is absurd," he said. u If she really 
 had these romantic notions, why did she conceal 
 them ? Have I nothing to complain of in this ? 
 Was she just to me, or candid with me ?"
 
 THE LEADEN SEAL. 271 
 
 " What encouragement did you give lier ? Do 
 you think a proud, shy, silent woman like Mabel 
 was likely to lay her heart open to so cold and 
 careless a glance as yours ? No ; she loved you 
 as few women can love ; but if she had much love, 
 so she had much pride and jealousy ; and all three 
 had power with her." 
 
 " Jealousy !" said Wilmot in an angry tone ; 
 "in God's name, of whom did she contrive to be 
 jealous." 
 
 " Her jealousy was not of a mean kind," said 
 Henrietta. " Ever since your marriage it had 
 nourished itself, so far as I understood the matter, 
 upon your devotion to your profession, upon the 
 complacent ease with wliich you set her claims 
 aside for those which so thoroughly engrossed you, 
 that you had no heart, no eyes, no attention for 
 her. Of late — " she paused. 
 
 " Well ?" said Wilmot ;— " of late ?" 
 
 "Of late," repeated Henrietta, speaking now 
 with some more reserve of manner, " she believed 
 you devoted — to a degree which conquered your 
 devotion to your profession and to the interests of
 
 272 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 your own advancement — to the patient who de- 
 tained you at Kilsyth." 
 
 " What madness! what utter folly!" said 
 Wilmot ; but his face turned deeply red, and he 
 felt in his heart that the arrow had struck home. 
 
 " Perhaps so," said Henrietta, and her voice 
 resumed the cutting tone from which all through 
 this painful interview Wilmot had shrunk. u But 
 Mabel was not more reasonable or less so than 
 other jealous women. You had never neglected 
 your business for her, remember, or been turned 
 aside by any sentimental attraction from your 
 course of professional duty. Friendship, grati- 
 tude, and interest alike required you to attend to 
 Mr. Foljambe's summons. You did not come, and 
 people talked. Mr. Foljambe himself spoke of the 
 attractions of Kilsyth, and joked, after his incon- 
 siderate manner." 
 
 "In her presence?" said Wilmot incautiously. 
 
 " Yes, in her presence," said Henrietta, who 
 perfectly appreciated the slip he had made. {i She 
 knew some people who knew the Kilsyths, and 
 she heard the remarks that were made. I daresay
 
 THE LEADEN SEAL. 273 
 
 she imagined more than she heard. No matter. 
 Nothing matters any more. She was not sorry to 
 die when her time came; she would not have you 
 troubled, — that is all. And now I will leave you. 
 I am £roino; to her." 
 
 The last sentence had a dreadful effect on Wil- 
 mot. In the agitation, the surprise, the pain of 
 this interview, he had almost forgotten time ; the 
 present reality had nearly escaped him. He had 
 been rapt away into a world of feeling, of pas- 
 sion ; he had been absorbed in the sense of a dis- 
 covery, and of something which seemed like an 
 impossible injustice. With Henrietta's words it 
 all vanished, and he remembered, with a start, 
 that his wife lay dead upstairs. They were not 
 talking of a life long extinguished, which in 
 former years might have been made happier by 
 him, but of one which had ended only a few hours 
 ago ; a life whose forsaken tenement was still un- 
 touched by " decay's effacing fingers." With all 
 this new knowledge fresh upon him, with all this 
 bewildering conviction of irreparable wrong, he 
 might look upon the calm young face again. Not 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 as he had looked upon it yesterday ; not with the 
 deep sorrow and the irresistible though unjustified 
 compassion with which death in youth is always 
 regarded, but with an exceeding and heart-rend- 
 ing bitterness, in comparison with which even that 
 repentant grief was mild and merciful. The fix- 
 edness, the blank, the silence, would be far more 
 dreadful, far more reproachful now, when he 
 knew that he had never understood, never appre- 
 ciated her — had unwittingly tortured her; now 
 when he knew that, in all her youth and beauty, 
 she had been glad to die. Glad to die ! The 
 words had a tremendous, an unbearable meaning 
 for him. If even the last month could have been 
 unlived ! If only he had not had that to reproach 
 himself with, to justify her! In vain, in vain. In 
 that one moment of unspeakable suffering Wilmot 
 felt that his punishment, however grave his offence, 
 was greater than he could bear. 
 
 He turned away from Henrietta with the air of 
 a man to whom another word would be intolerable, 
 and sat down wearily. She stood still, looking at 
 him, as if awaiting an answer or a dismissal.
 
 THE LEADEN SEAL. 275 
 
 At length she said, " Have you forgotten, Dr. 
 Wilmot, that I asked your permission to carry out 
 Mabel's wish ?" 
 
 " No," he said drearily, " I remember. Of 
 course do as you like ; I should say, as she directed. 
 I suppose the object of her request was, that I 
 should see her no more, in death either. Well, 
 well — it is fortunate that did not succeed too." 
 He spoke in a patient, broken tone, which touched 
 Henrietta's heart. But her perverted notion of 
 truth and loyalty to the dead held her back from 
 showing any sign of softening. Just as she was 
 leaving the room he said : 
 
 " Such a course is very unusual, is it not?" 
 
 " I believe so," she replied ; " but the servants 
 know it was her desire." 
 
 Then Henrietta Prendergast went away; and 
 presently he heard a slight sound in that awful 
 room overhead, and he knew she had taken her 
 place beside the dead. He felt, as he sat for 
 hours of that day quite alone, like a banished 
 man. His wife was doubly dead to him now. 
 All his married life had grown on a sudden
 
 276 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 unreal ; and when he thought of the still white- 
 face which he was to see once, and only once 
 more, for ever, it was with a strange sense of 
 dread and avoidance, and not with the tender sor- 
 row which, even amid the shock and self-reproach 
 of yesterday, had come to his relief. 
 
 Somehow, he could not have told how, with the 
 inevitable interruptions, the wretched necessary 
 business of such a time, the hours of that day 
 passed over Chudleigh Wilmot's head, and the 
 night came. He had looked his last upon his wife, 
 had taken his solemn leave of the death-chamber. 
 She lay now in her coffin, sealed, hidden from 
 sight for evermore, and there was nothing now 
 but the long dreary waiting. In its turn that 
 too passed, and in due time the funeral day ; and 
 Chudleigh Wilmot was quite alone in his silent 
 house, and had only to look back into the past. 
 Forward into the future he did not dare, he had 
 not heart to look. A kind of blank, the reaction 
 from intense excitement, had set in with him, and 
 for the first time in his life his physical strength 
 flagged. The claims of his business began to press
 
 THE LEADEN SEAL. 277 
 
 upon him ; people sent for him, respectfully and he- 
 sitatingly, but with some confidence that he would 
 come, nevertheless. And Wilmot went ; and was 
 received with condoling looks, which he affected 
 not to see, and compassionating tones, of which he 
 took no notice. 
 
 He had no more to do with the past — he had 
 buried it; his sole desire was that others should aid 
 him in this apparent oblivion ; how far from real it 
 was, he alone coulcHiave told. He had written to 
 Kilsyth a few indispensable lines, and had had a 
 formal report of Madeleine's health, which he had 
 conscientiously tried to range with other profes- 
 sional documents, and lay by with them. It was 
 certainly a dark and dreary time, endless in length, 
 and so hopeless, so final, that it seemed to have no 
 outlet ; a time than which Chudleigh Wilmot be- 
 lieved life could never bring him a darker. But 
 trouble was new to him. He learned more about 
 it later on in his day. 
 
 When a fortnight had elapsed after Wilmot's 
 return to London, and the tumult of his mind had 
 subsided, though the bitterness of his feelings was
 
 278 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 not yet allayed, lie clianced one morning to re- 
 quire a paper, which he knew was to be found in 
 a certain cabinet which filled a niche in the wall 
 of his consulting-room. The cabinet in question 
 was one he rarely opened; and the moment he 
 attempted to turn the key, he felt confident that 
 the lock had been tampered with. The conviction 
 was singularly unpleasant ; for the cabinet was a 
 repository of private papers, deeds, letters, and 
 professional notes. It also contained several poi- 
 sons, which Wilmot kept there in what he sup- 
 posed to be inviolable security. Closer inspec- 
 tion confirmed his suspicions. The lock had been 
 opened by the simple process of breaking it ; and 
 the doors, merely laid together, had caught on a 
 jagged piece of metal, and thus presented the 
 slight obstacle they had offered. With a mere 
 shake they unclosed. < 
 
 This circumstance puzzled Wilmot exceedingly. 
 He made a careful examination of the contents of 
 the cabinet. All was precisely as he had left it ; 
 not a paper missing or disturbed. 
 
 "Who can have been at the cabinet?" he
 
 THE LEADEN SEAL. 279 
 
 thought, "and with what motive? Nothing has 
 been taken ; nothing, so for as I can discover, has 
 been touched. Mere curiosity would hardly tempt 
 anyone to run such a risk ; and no one knew that 
 there was anything of value here. Stay," he 
 reflected ; " one person knew it. She knew it ; 
 she knew that I kept private papers here. No 
 doubt it was she who opened the cabinet. But 
 with what motive ? What can she possibly have 
 wanted which she could have hoped to find here ?" 
 No answer to this query presented itself to 
 Wilmot's mind. He thought and thought over it, 
 painfully recurring to all Mrs. Prendergast had 
 told him, and trying to help himself to a solution 
 of this mystery by the aid of those which had 
 preceded it. For some time he thought in vain ; at 
 length the idea struck him that the jealous woman, 
 restless and miserable in her unhappy curiositv — 
 he could understand now what she had felt, he 
 could pity her now — had opened the cabinet to 
 seek for letters from some fancied rival in his affec- 
 tions. Nothing but his belief in the perversion 
 of mind which comes of the indulgence of such a
 
 280 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 passion as jealousy could have led "Wilmot to sus- 
 pect his wife of such an act for a moment. But 
 he was a wise man, now that it was too late, in 
 that lore which he had never studied while he 
 might have read the book, and he recognised the 
 transforming power of jealousy. Yes, that was it 
 doubtless; she had sought here for the material 
 wherewith to feed the flame that had tortured her. 
 Chudleigh Wilmot took the paper he wanted 
 from the place where it had lain, and was about to 
 close the doors of the cabinet once more — restoring 
 them, until he could have the lock repaired, to 
 their deceptive appearance of security — when his 
 attention was caught by a dark-coloured spot, about 
 the size of a shilling, upon the topmost sheet of a 
 packet of papers which lay beside a small maho- 
 gany case containing the before-mentioned poisons. 
 He took the packet out and examined it. The 
 spot was there, and extended to every paper in the 
 packet. A sudden flush and expression of vague 
 alarm crossed Wilmot' s face. He took up the case 
 and examined the exterior. A dark mark, the 
 stain of some glutinous fluid, ran down the side of
 
 THE LEADEN SEAL. 281 
 
 the box next which the papers had lain. For a 
 moment he held the case in his hands, and literally 
 dared not open it. Then in sickening fear he 
 did so, and found its contents apparently undis- 
 turbed. The box was divided into ten little com- 
 partments, in each of which stood a tiny bottle, 
 glass-stoppered and covered with a leaden capsule. 
 To the neck of each was appended a little leaden 
 seal, the mark of the French chemist from whom 
 Wilmot had purchased the deadly drugs. He took 
 the bottles out one by one, examined their seals, 
 and held them up to the light. All safe for nine 
 out of the number ; but as he touched the tenth, the 
 capsule with the leaden seal attached to it fell off, 
 and Wilmot discovered, with ineffable horror, that 
 the bottle, which had contained one of the dead- 
 liest poisons known to science, was half empty. 
 
 He set down the case, and reeled against the 
 corner of the mantelshelf near him, like a drunken 
 man. He could not face the idea that had taken 
 possession of him ; he could not collect his thoughts. 
 He gasped as though water were surging round 
 him. Once more he took up the bottle and looked 
 
 VOL. I. U
 
 282 THE FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 at it. It was only too true ; one half the contents 
 was missing. He closed the case, and pushed it 
 back into its place. It struck against something 
 on the shelf of the cabinet. He felt for the object, 
 and drew out his wife's seal-ring I 
 
 And now Chudleigh Wilmot knew what was 
 the terror that had seized him. It was no longer 
 vague ; it stood before him clear, denned, uncon- 
 querable ; and he groaned : 
 
 " My God ! she destroyed herself!" 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
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