"Telegram! no--what telegram? What did it say? What has happened?" "Mrs. Wilmot, sir!--she's gone, sir!--died yesterday morning at eight o'clock!" CHAPTER XI. Irreparable. Chudleigh Wilmot was a strong man, and he possessed much of the pride and reticence which ordinarily accompany strength of character. Hitherto he can hardly be said to have suffered much in his life. Affliction had come to him, as it comes to every man born of woman; but it had come in the ordinary course of human life, unattended by exceptional circumstances, above all not intensified, not warped from its wholesome purposes by self-reproach. His life had been commonplace in its joys and in its griefs alike, and he had never suffered from any cause which was not as palpable, as apparent, to all who knew him as to himself. His had been the sorrows, chiefly his parents' death, which are rather gravely acknowledged and respected, than whispered about in corners with dubious head-shaking and suggestive shoulder-shrugging. So far the experience of the rising man had in it nothing distinctive, nothing peculiarly painful. But there was an end of this now. A new phase of life had begun for Chudleigh Wilmot, when he recoiled, like one who has received a deadly thrust, and whose life-blood rushes forth in answer to it, from the announcement made to him by his servant. He realised the truth of the man's statement as the words passed his lips; he was not a man whose brain was ever slow to take any impression, and he knew in an instant and thoroughly understood that his wife was dead. A very few minutes more sufficed to show him all that was implied by that tremendous truth. His wife was dead; not of a sudden illness assailing the fortress of life and carrying it by one blow, but of an illness that had had time in which to do its deadly work. His wife was dead; had died alone, in the care of hirelings, while he had been away in attendance upon a stranger, one out of his own sphere, not even a regular patient, one for whom he had already neglected pressing duties--not so sacred indeed as that which he could now never fulfil or recall, but binding enough to have brought severe reflections upon him for their neglect. The thought of all this surged up within him, and overwhelmed him in a sea of trouble, while yet his face had not subsided from the look of horror with which he had heard his servant's awful announcement. He turned abruptly into his consulting-room and shut the door between him and the man, who had attempted to follow him, but who now turned his attention to dismissing the cab and getting in his master's luggage, during which process he informed cabby of the state of affairs.