"Old Kilsyth's son," he explained; "a very good fellow in his way, and quite the gentleman, as he ought to be of course, but a queer-tempered one, and a bit of a prig."
"Have you written to your husband, Mabel?" said Mrs. Prendergast with solemn anxiety, when the third week of Wilmot's absence was drawing to a close, and his wife's illness had increased day by day, so that now it was a common topic of conversation among their acquaintance.
"No," returned Mabel, "I have not. I have told you I will not write, but speak to him; and I am resolved."
"But Whittaker? Surely he does not know your husband is ignorant of your state?"
"O, dear no," returned Mrs. Wilmot, with a smile by no means pleasant to see. "He is the jolliest and simplest of men in all matters of this kind. Mrs. Whittaker wouldn't, in fact couldn't, have a finger ache unknown to him; and he never suspects that things are different with me."
"Mabel," said her friend, "you do very, very wrong; but I will not interfere or argue with you. Only, remember, I believe much will depend on your reception of him."
"Don't be alarmed, Henrietta," said Mabel Wilmot. "I promise you, unhesitatingly, that Wilmot will not be dissatisfied with the reception he shall have from me.".
[CHAPTER VIII.]
Kith and Kin.
It was a good thing for Kilsyth that he had a soft, sweet, affectionate being like Madeleine on whom he could vent the fund of affection stored in his warm heart, and who could appreciate and return it. In the autumn of life, when the sad strange feeling first comes upon us, that we have seen the best of our allotted time, and that the remainder of our pilgrimage must be existence rather than life; when the ears which tingled at the faintest whisper of love know that they will never again hear the soft liquid language once so marvellously sweet to them; when the heart which bounded at the merest promptings of ambition beats with unmoved placidity even as we recognise the victories of our juniors in the race; when we see the hopes and cares and wishes which we have so long cherished one by one losing their sap and strength and verdure, one by one losing their hold on our being, and borne whirling away, lifeless and shrivelled, on the sighing wind of time,--we need be grateful indeed if we have anything so cheering and promiseful as a daughter's affection. It is the old excitement that has given a zest to life for so many years; administered in a very mild form indeed, but still there. The boys are well enough, fine gentlemanly fellows, making their way in the world, well spoken of, well esteemed, doing credit to the parent stock, and taking--ay, 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 belong 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 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 Gräfin von Calypso, and that scandalous story which was published in the Ogygian Satirist? But it is Telemachus 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 existence; 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 invest it with, combined with that other utterly indescribable affection of parent to child, which is one of the happiest and holiest mysteries of life.