"Exactly--yes--I should suppose so. And what aged man is Dr. Wilmot?"
"O, 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. O yes, I heard him once mention his wife to Lady Muriel.--I say, Ronald, what an unconscionable lot of questions 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 he won't detain you a moment, sir."
Ronald took the card, and read on it "DR. WILMOT."
"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, blinking 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. 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 personally 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 Rowe staying at the same hotel, and had suffered himself to be persuaded to accompany him to see the new experiments 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 going to Kilsyth, and for the skill and attention which he had bestowed on Miss Kilsyth. The Doctor apparently to Ronald, even in the dull gas-light, with a heightened colour disclaimed everything, asserting 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 fellow'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!"