"When you entered this room, you told me you had come here to speak to me as a friend. I am bound to say that you have perfectly fulfilled that implicit promise. No one could have been more frank, more candid, and, I may say, more tender than you have been with me. My profession," said Wilmot with a dreary smile,--"my profession teaches us to touch wounds tenderly, and you seem to be thoroughly imbued with the precept. You will do me the justice to allow that I have listened to you patiently; that I have heard without flinching almost, certainly without complaint." Ronald bowed his head in acquiescence. "Now, then, I must ask you to listen to me. What I have to say to you is as sacred as what you have said to me, and will not, could not be mentioned by me to another living soul. When I received your father's telegram summoning me to your sister's bedside, there was no more heart-whole man in Britain than myself. When I use the word 'heart-whole,' I do not intend it to convey the expression of a perfect content in the affections I possessed, as you, knowing I was married and settled, might understand it. I was heart-whole in the sense that, while I was thoroughly skilled in the physical state of my heart, its mental condition never gave me a thought. I had, as long as I could recollect, been a very hard-working man. I had married, when I first established myself in practice, principally, I believe, because I thought it the most prudent thing for a young physician to do; but certainly not from any feeling that ever caused my heart one extra pulsation. You must not be shocked at this plain speaking. Recollect that you are listening to an anatomical lecture, and go through with it. All the years of my married life passed without any such feeling being called into existence. My--my wife was a woman of quiet domestic temperament, who pursued her way quietly through life; and I, thoroughly engrossed in my professional pursuits, never thought that life had anything better to engage in than ambition, better to offer than success. I went to Kilsyth, and for weeks was engaged in constant, unremitting attendance upon your sister. I saw her under circumstances which must to a certain extent have invested the most uninteresting woman in the world with interest; I saw her deserted and shunned, by everyone else, and left entirely to my care; I saw her in her access of delirium, and afterwards, when prostrate and weak, she was dependent on me for everything she wanted. And while she and I were thus together--I now combating the disease which assailed her, now watching the sweet womanly patience, the more than womanly courage, with which she supported its attacks--I, witnessing how pure and good she was, how soft and gentle, and utterly unlike anything I had ever seen, save perhaps in years long past, began to comprehend that there was, after all, something to live for beyond the attainment of success and the accumulation of fees."