A letter was brought in by his servant--an oblong note, sealed with black wax, in an unfamiliar handwriting. He turned it over two or three times, then opened it, and read as follows: "_Brook-street, Thursday_. "DEAR DR. WILMOT,--We have heard with very great regret of your sad loss, and we all, Lady Muriel, papa, and myself, beg you to receive our sincere condolence. I know how difficult it is at such a time to attempt to offer consolation without an appearance of intrusion; but I think I may say that we are especially concerned for you, as it was your attendance on me which kept you from returning home at the time you had originally intended. I can assure you I have thought of this very often, and it has given me a great deal of uneasiness. Pray understand that we can none of us ever thank you sufficiently for your kindness to us at Kilsyth. With united kind regards, dear Dr. Wilmot, your grateful patient, "MADELEINE KILSYTH. "P.S. I have a rather troublesome cough, which worries me at night. You recollect telling me that you knew about this?" So the Kilsyths were in town. His grateful patient! He could fancy the half-smile on her lips as she traced the words. No; he would give up his notion of going away--at least for the present! CHAPTER XV. Family Relations. When the Kilsyths were in London, which, according to their general practice, was only from February until June, they lived in a big square house in Brook-street,--an old-fashioned house, with a multiplicity of rooms, necessary for their establishment, which demanded besides the ordinary number of what were known in the house-agent's catalogue as "reception rooms," a sitting-room for Kilsyth, where he could be quiet and uninterrupted by visitors, and read the _Times_, and Scrope's _Salmon Fishing_, and Colonel Hawker on _Shooting_, and _Cyril Thornton_, and Gleig's _Subaltern_, and Napier's _History of the Peninsular War_, and one or two other books which formed his library; where he could smoke his cigar, and pass in review his guns and his gaiters and his waterproofs, and hold colloquy with his man, Sandy MacCollop, as to what sport they had had the past year, and what they expected to have the next--without fear of interruption. This sanctuary of Kilsyth's lay far at the back of the house, at the end of a passage never penetrated by ordinary visitors, who indeed never inquired for the master of the house. Special guests were admitted there occasionally; and perhaps two or three times in the season there was a council-fire, to which some of the keenest sportsmen, who knew Kilsyth, and were about to visit it in the autumn, were admitted,--round which the smoke hung thick, and the conversation generally ran in monosyllables.