"So far all is progressing favourably. We must look to Providence and our own unremitting attention for the result." "I'm so hot and so thirsty, and these pillows are so uncomfortable! Thanks! Ah, is that you, Dr. Wilmot? I was afraid you had gone. You won't leave me--at least not just yet--will you?" "Not I, my dear. There--that's better, isn't it? The pillow is cooler, and the lemonade--" "Ah, so many thanks! I'm very weak tonight; but your voice is so kind, and your manner, and--" "There; now try and sleep.--Good heavens, how lovely she is! What a mass of golden hair falling over her pillow, and what a soft, innocent, childish manner! And to think that only this morning I--ah, you must never hear the details of this case, my dear old master. When I get back to town I will tell you the result: but the details--never." CHAPTER IV. Mrs. Wilmot. "I wonder what sort of woman Chudleigh Wilmot's wife is," was a phrase very often used by his acquaintances; and the sentiment it expressed was not unnatural or inexcusable. There are some men concerning whom people instinctively feel that there is something peculiar in their domestic history, that their everyday life is not like the everyday life of other people. Sometimes this impression is positive and defined; it takes the shape of certain conviction that things are wrong in that quarter; that So-and-so's marriage is a mistake, a misfortune, or a calamity, just as the grade of the blunder makes itself felt by his manner, or even by the expression of the countenance. Sometimes the impression is quite vague, and the questioner is conscious only that there must be something of interest to be known. The man's wife may be dear to him, with a special dearness and nearness, too sacred, too much a part of his inmost being to be betrayed to even the friendliest eyes; or there may be an estrangement, which pride and rectitude combine to conceal. At all events--and whichever of these may be the true condition of affairs, or whatever modification of them may be true--the man's acquaintance feel that there is something in his domestic story different from that of other men, and they regard him with a livelier curiosity, if he be a man of social or intellectual mark, in consequence.