Very different were Lady Muriel's meditations. To her this resolve on the part of Wilmot was peculiarly welcome. In the first place, she was a thorough woman of the world, and free from the impetuosity of youth. She was quite willing to be deprived of Wilmot's society for the present, if, as she calculated would be the case, he should return under circumstances which would enable her to reckon with increased security upon gaining the influence over him to which she ardently aspired, to which she aspired more and more ardently as each day proved to her how strong an impulse her life had taken from this new source. She cared little from what motive Wilmot's resolve had sprung. If indeed he had deeply loved, and if indeed he did desperately mourn his wife, the very power and violence of the feeling would react upon itself, and force him to accept consolation all the sooner that he had proved the greatness of his need of it. He would be absent during the dark time when grief forms an eclipse, and he would emerge from its shadow into the brightness which she would cause to shine upon his life. She did not anticipate that his absence would be greatly prolonged, but she did not shrink, even supposing it should be, from the interval. She had enough to do within its duration. Lady Muriel was as thoroughly acquainted with Madeleine's love for Wilmot as the girl was ignorant that she loved him. There was not a corner of her innocent heart which the keen experienced eye of her stepmother had not scanned and examined narrowly.
In Madeleine's perfect ignorance of the real nature of her own feelings Lady Muriel's best security for the success of her wishes and designs lay. As she had no notion that her love was aught but liking, she would be the more easily persuaded that her liking was love. She had a liking for Ramsay Caird. The gay, careless, superficial good-nature of the young man, his easy gentlemanly manners, and the familiarity with which his intercourse with the Kilsyth family was invested in consequence of his relationship to Lady Muriel, were all pleasing to the young girl; and probably, "next to Ronald," she preferred Ramsay Caird to any man of her acquaintance. Of late, too, an unexplained something had come between Madeleine and her brother--a certain restraint, a subtle sense of estrangement--which Lady Muriel thoroughly understood, but for which Madeleine could not have accounted, and shrunk from acknowledging to herself. This unexplained something, which made her look forward to Ronald's visits with greatly decreased pleasure, and made her involuntarily silent and depressed in his presence, told considerably in Ramsay Caird's favour; for it led to Madeleine's according him an increased share of her attention. The young man was a constant visitor at the Kilsyths'; and there was so much decision in Madeleine's liking for him, that she missed him if by any chance he was absent of an evening, and occasionally was heard to wonder what could have kept Mr. Caird away.
Madeleine's delicate health furnished Lady Muriel with a sufficient and reasonable pretext for keeping her at home in the evenings; and she contrived to make it evident that Ramsay Caird's presence constituted a material difference in the dulness or the pleasantness of the little party which assembled with tolerable regularity in the drawing-room. Ronald would come in for an hour or so, and then Madeleine would be particularly prévenante towards Ramsay Caird; an innocent and unconscious hypocrisy, poor child, which her stepmother perfectly understood, and which she saw with deep though concealed satisfaction.
On the evening of the day when Mr. Foljambe had discussed Wilmot's departure with Lady Muriel and Madeleine, the elder lady was a little embarrassed by the manifest effect on the looks and the spirits of the younger which the intelligence had produced. At dinner Kilsyth perversely chose to descant on the two themes with all a single-minded man's amiable pertinacity, and, of course, without the smallest conception that any connection existed between them. He was quite aggrieved at Wilmot's departure, and called on everyone to take notice of Madeleine's looks in confirmation of the loss he and his in particular must sustain by his absence. Ronald was of the party; and he preserved so marked and ungracious a silence, that at length even Kilsyth could not avoid noticing it, and said:
"I suppose you are the only man who knows him, Ronald, who underrates Wilmot; and I really believe you think we make quite an unnecessary fuss about him."
"I by no Means underrate the abilities of your medical attendant, sir," Ronald answered in his coldest and driest tone, and, as Madeleine felt in all her shrinking nerves, though she dared not look up to meet it, with a moody searching glance at her; "but, admirable as he may be in his proper capacity and his proper place, I cannot quite appreciate his social importance."
"Just listen to him, Muriel," said Kilsyth in a provoked but yet good-humoured tone. "What wonderful fellows these young men are! He actually talks of a man like Wilmot as if he were a general practitioner or an apothecary's apprentice!"
Lady Muriel interposed, and turned off this somewhat perilous and peace-breaking remark with one of the graceful, skilful generalities of which she always had a supply ready for emergencies. Ronald contented himself with a half smile of contempt at his father's enthusiastic misrepresentation; Madeleine talked energetically to Ramsay Caird; and the matter dropped.
To be resumed in the drawing-room, however. Madeleines looks were not improved when her father and the two young men joined her and Lady Muriel. She was dreaming over a book which she was pretending to read, when Kilsyth came up to her, took her chin in his hand, and turned up her face to his and to the light.
Tears were trembling in her blue eyes.