"Captain Kilsyth!" No time for Chudleigh Wilmot to deny himself, if even he had so wished; no time to recover himself from the excitement which the announcement had aroused. He saw the broad dark outline of his visitor behind the servant.  
"Show Captain Kilsyth in."
 
Captain Kilsyth came in. Wilmot noticed that he was very pale and stern-looking, but that there was no trace of yesterday's excitement about him. It had become second nature to Wilmot to notice these things; and he found himself critically examining Ronald's external appearance, as he would that of a patient who had sought his advice.
 
The men bowed to each other, and Ronald spoke first. "You will be surprised to see me here, Dr. Wilmot," he said; "but be assured that it is business of importance that brings me."
 
Wilmot bowed again. He was fast recovering from his agitation, but scarcely dared trust himself to speak just yet.
 
"I see your carriage is at the door, and I will detain you but a very few moments. You can give me, say, ten minutes?"
 
Wilmot muttered that his time was at Captain Kilsyth's disposal; an avowal which apparently annoyed his visitor, for he said testily, "You, and I should be above exchanging the polite trash of society, Dr. Wilmot. I am come here to speak on a matter which concerns me deeply, and those very near and dear to me even more deeply still. Are you prepared to hear me?"
 
Those very near and dear to him! O yes; Wilmot was prepared to hear him fully and said as much. Would Captain Kilsyth be seated?
 
"I have come to talk to you, Dr. Wilmot, as a friend," commenced Ronald, dropping into a chair. "I daresay you are scarcely prepared for that avowal, considering my conduct at our interview yesterday in Brook-street. Then I was hasty and inconsiderate; and for my conduct then I beg to tender my apologies frankly and freely. I trust they will be received?" There was an odd square blunt honesty even in the manner in which he said this that prepossessed Wilmot.
 
"As frankly and freely as they are offered," he replied.
 
"So far agreed," said Ronald. "Now, look here. I am a very bad hand at beating about the bush; and I have come here to say things the mere fact of saying which is, where men of honour are not concerned, compromising to one of the person spoken of I have every belief that you are a man of honour, and therefore I speak."
 
Dr. Wilmot bowed again, and said that Captain Kilsyth complimented him.
 
"No. I think too highly of you to do that. I simply speak what I believe to be true, from all I have heard of your doings at Kilsyth."
 
Of his doings at Kilsyth? A man of honour, from his doings at Kilsyth? Though perfectly conscious that Ronald was watching him, narrowly, Chudleigh Wilmot's cheeks coloured deeply at this point, and he was silent.
 
"Now, Dr. Wilmot, I must begin by talking to you a little about myself--an unprofitable subject, but one necessary to be touched upon in this discourse between us. The men who are supposed to know me intimately--my own brother officers, I mean--will tell you that I am an oddity, an extraordinary fellow, and that they know nothing about me. Nothing is known of my likes or dislikes. I am believed not to have any of either. Now this is an exaggerated view of the question. I don't know that I dislike anyone in particular; but I have my affections. I am very fond of my father; I adore my sister Madeleine."
 
He spoke with such earnestness and warmth, that Wilmot looked up at him, half in pleasure, half in wonder. Ronald noticed the glance, and said, "If you have heard me mentioned at all, Dr. Wilmot, you have probably heard it said that I am a man with a stone instead of a heart, with the Cavalry Officer's Instructions instead of a Bible; and therefore I cannot wonder at your look of astonishment. But what I have stated to you is pure and simple fact. I love these two infinitely better than my life."
 
Wilmot bowed again. He felt ashamed of his reiterated acquiescence, but had nothing more satisfactory to proffer.
 
"Now, I don't see much of my family," pursued Ronald. "Their ways of life are different from mine; and except when they happen to be in London we are seldom thrown together. This may be to be regretted, or it may not; at all events the fact is so. But whether I see them or not, my interest in them never slackens. There are people, I know--most people, I believe--to whom propinquity is a necessary ingredient for affection. They must be near those they love--must be brought into constant communication, personal communication with them, or their love dies out. That is affection of a type which I cannot understand; it is a great deal too spaniel-or ivy-like for my comprehension. I could go on for years without seeing those I love, and love them all the same. Consequently, although when the eight or nine weeks' whirl which my family calls the London season is at an end, and I scarcely see them until it begins again, I do not take less interest in their proceedings, nor is my keen affection for those I love one whit diminished. You follow me?"
 
"So far, perfectly."
 
"I was detained here on duty in London during last August and September; and even if I had been free, I doubt whether I should have been with my people at Kilsyth. As I have just said, their ways of life, their amusements and pursuits are different from mine, and I should probably have been following my own fancies somewhere else. But I always hear from some of them with the greatest regularity; and I heard, of course, of my sister's illness, and of your being called in to attend upon her. Your name was thoroughly familiar to me. What my friends call my 'odd ways' have made me personally acquainted with several of the leading members of your profession; and directly I heard that you had arrived at Kilsyth, I knew that Madeleine could not possibly be in better hands."
 
To anyone else Wilmot would have said that she could not have been under the charge of anyone who would have taken greater interest in her case; but he had not forgotten the interview of yesterday, and he forbore.
 
"I was delighted to hear of your arrival at Kilsyth," continued Ronald, "and I was deeply grateful to you for the unceasing care and anxiety which, as reported to me, you bestowed upon my sister. The accounts which I received vied with each other in doing justice to your skill and your constant attention; and I believe, as I know all at Kilsyth believed, that, under Providence, we owe Madeleine's life to you."
 
"You will pardon my interrupting you, Captain Kilsyth," said Wilmot, speaking almost for the first time; "but you give me more credit than I deserve. Miss Kilsyth was very ill; but what she required most was constant attention and watching. The excellent doctor of the district--I forget his name, I'm ashamed to say--Joyce, Dr. Joyce, would have been thoroughly efficient, and would have doubtless restored Miss Kilsyth to health as speedily as I did; only unfortunately others had a claim upon him, and he could not devote his time to her."
 
"Exactly what I was saying. I presume it will not be doubted that Dr. Wilmot, of Charles-street, St. James's--in his own line the principal physician of London--had as many calls upon his time even as the excellent doctor of the district, and yet he sacrificed all others to attend on Miss Kilsyth."
 
"Dr. Wilmot was away from his patients on a holiday, and no one had a claim upon his time."
 
"And he made the most of his holiday by spending a great portion of it in the sick-room of a fever-stricken patient! No, no, Dr. Wilmot; you made a great sacrifice undoubtedly. Now, why did you make it?"
 
He turned suddenly upon Wilmot as he spoke, and looked him straight in the face. Wilmot's colour came again; he moved restlessly in his chair, pressed his hands nervously together, but said nothing.
 
"I told you, Dr. Wilmot, that I was about to speak of things the mere mention of which, were we not men of honour, would be compromising to some of the persons spoken of. I ask you why you made that sacrifice of your professional time. I ask you not for information, because I know the reason. Before you left Kilsyth, I heard that my sister was receiving attention from a most undesirable quarter--from a quarter whence it was impossible that any good could arise. My sister is, as I have told you, dearer to me than my life, and the news distressed me beyond measure. I turned it over and over in my mind; I made every possible kind of inquiry. At length, on the evening on which you arrived in London and called on me at my club, I knew that you were the man alluded to by my informant."
 
No change in Chudleigh Wilmot. His cheek is still flushed, his eyes still cast down; still he moves restlessly in his chair, still his hands pluck nervously at each other.
 
"I knew it, and yet I hardly could believe it. I knew that men of your profession, specially men of such eminence in your profession, were in the habit of being received and treated with the utmost confidence; which confidence was never abused. I knew that bystanders and lookers-on, unaccustomed to illness, might very easily misconstrue the attention which a physician would pay to a young lady whose case had excited his strong professional interest. I--well, constrained to take the worst view of it--I knew that you were a married man, and I thought that you might have admired Miss Kilsyth, and that--that when you left her--there--there would be an end of the feeling."
 
No change in Chudleigh Wilmot. His cheek is still flushed, his eyes still cast down; still he moves restlessly in his chair, still his hands pluck nervously at each other. Something in his appearance seemed to touch Ronald Kilsyth as he looked at him earnestly, for he said:
 
"I wish to God I could think so now, Dr. Wilmot! I wish to God I could think so now! But though I don't pretend to be versed in these matters, I have a certain amount of insight; and when I saw you standing by my sister's side in the drawing-room in Brook-street yesterday, I knew that the information I had received was correct." He paused for an instant, and passed his hand across his forehead, then resumed. "I am a blunt man, Dr. Wilmot, but I trust neither coarse nor unsympathetic. I want to convey to you as quietly as possible that you have made a mistake; that for everyone's sake--ours, Madeleine's, your own--this thing cannot, must not be."
 
A change in Chudleigh Wilmot now. He does not look up; he covers his brow with his left hand; but he says in a deep husky voice:
 
"There is--as you are aware--a change in my circumstances: I am--I am free now; and perhaps--in the future--"
 
"In no future, Dr. Wilmot," interrupted Ronald gravely, but not unkindly. "Listen to me. If, as I half suspected you would, you had flung yourself into a rage,--denied, stormed, protested,--I should simply have said my say, and left you to make the best or the worst of it. But you have not done this, and--and I pity you most sincerely. You are, as you say, free now. You think probably there is no reason why, at some future time, you should not ask my sister to become your wife. You would probably urge your claims upon her gratitude--claims which you think she might possibly be brought to allow. It can never be, Dr. Wilmot. I, who am anything but, in this sense, a worldly man, even I know that your presence at Kilsyth, your long stay there, to the detriment of your home interests, your devotion to my sister, have already given matter for talk to the gossips of society, and received the usual amount of malicious comment. And if you have real regard for Madeleine, you would give up anything to shield her from that, indorsed as would be the imputation and intensified as would be the malice, if your relations with her were to be on any other footing than--they ought to have been."
 
Quite silent now, Chudleigh Wilmot; his hand still covering his brow, his head sunk upon his breast.
 
"I said I pitied you; and I do," continued Ronald. "And here, understand me, and let me explain one point in our position, Dr. Wilmot. What I have to say, though it may pain you in one way, will, I think, be satisfactory to you in another. You may think that Madeleine may be destined by her family for some--I speak without the least offence--some higher destiny; that her family would wish for her a husband higher in social rank. I give you my honour that, as far as I am concerned, I could not, from all I have heard of you, wish my sister's future confided to a more honourable man. Social rank and dignity weigh very little with me. My life is passed generally with those who have won their spurs, rather than inherited their titles; and I would infinitely sooner see my sister married to a man whose successful position in life was due to himself than to one who merely wore the reflected glory of his ancestors. So far you would have been a suitor entirely acceptable to me, had there not been the other unfortunate element in the matter."
 
Ronald ceased speaking, and for some minutes there was a dead silence. Then Chudleigh Wilmot raised his head, rose from his chair, and commenced pacing the room with long strides; Ronald, perfectly understanding his emotion, r............