That evening Wilmot 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 hopefulness than he actually felt. He was conscious too of a strange sort of relief--a consciousness which should have shown him how he had deceived himself--as the conviction that his presence 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 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 murmuring 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. 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 difficult 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.
"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."