"Rubbish, my dear madam! Simple nonsense! You have been confounding the attention which a man wrapped up in his own profession, in the study of science, pays to a case, with attentions paid to an individual. Why, my dear madam, if--not to be offensive--if you had had Miss Kilsyth's illness, and Wilmot had attended you, he would have bestowed on you exactly the same interest."
"Perhaps while the case lasted, Mr. Foljambe, while his professional duty obliged him to do so; but not afterwards."
"Not afterwards? Does Dr. Wilmot still pay attention to Miss Kilsyth?"
"The last time I was in Brook-street I saw him there," said the old lady, bridling, "paying Miss Kilsyth great 'attention.'"
"Then it was a farewell visit, Mrs. M'Diarmid," replied Mr. Foljambe. "Dr. Wilmot quits town--and England--at once, for a lengthened sojourn on the Continent."
"Leaves town--and England?" said Mrs. Mac blankly.
"For several months. Devoted to his profession, as he always has been, without the smallest variation in his devotion, he goes to Berlin to study in the hospitals there. Does that look like the act of an ardent soupirant, Mrs. M'Diarmid?"
"Not unless he has reasons for feeling that it is better that he should so absent himself," said the old lady.
"Of that you will probably be the best judge," said Mr. Foljambe. "My knowledge of Chudleigh Wilmot is not such as to lead me to believe that he would 'set his fortunes on a die' without calculating the result."
In the "off season," when her fashionable friends were away from town, Mrs. M'Diarmid was in the habit of receiving some few acquaintances who constituted a whist-club, and met from week to week at each other's houses. Amongst this worthy sisterhood Mrs. Mac passed for a very shrewd and clever woman; a "deep" woman, who never "showed her hand." But on turning into Portland-place after her interview with Mr. Foljambe, the old lady felt that she had forfeited that title to admiration, and that too without the slightest adequate result.