THE FORLORN HOPE. A NOVEL. BY EDMUND YATES, AUTHOR OF "LAND AT LAST," "BROKEN TO HARNESS," ETC. _COPYRIGHT EDITION_. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. LEIPZIG BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ. 1867. _The Right of Translation is reserved_. CONTENTS OF VOLUME. II. CHAPTER I. Nothing like Wilmot. II. Another Turn of the Screw. III. A Coup manqué. IV. Madeleine awakes. V. At our Minister's. VI. The Gulf fixed. VII. Henrietta. VIII. Mrs. Ramsay Caird at Home. IX. Inquisitorial. X. Against the Grain. XI. Iconoclastic. XII. Too Late. XIII. Quand même! XIV. Forlorn. THE FORLORN HOPE. CHAPTER I. Nothing like Wilmot. Mr. Foljambe did not easily throw off the painful impression which his interview with Chudleigh Wilmot had made upon him. The old gentleman had always found Wilmot, though not an expansive, a singularly frank person; he had not indeed ever spoken much to him concerning his wife or his domestic affairs generally; but men do not do so habitually; and the men to whom their wives are most dear and important rarely mention them at all. The circumstance had therefore made no impression upon Mr. Foljambe, himself a confirmed old bachelor, who, though very kind and considerate to women and children, regarded them rather as ornamental trifles, with a tendency to degenerate into nuisances, than otherwise. He began by wondering why Wilmot should have been so thoroughly upset by his wife's death, and went on to speculate how long that very unexpected and undesirable result might be likely to last. Becoming sanguine and comparatively cheerful at this point, he made up his mind that Chudleigh would get over it before long. Perhaps all had not gone very smooth with the Wilmots. Not that he had any particular reason to think so; but Wilmot was not a remarkably domestic man, and there might be perhaps a little spice of self-reproach in his sorrow. At all events, it would not last; _that_ might be looked upon as certain. In the mean time, and in order that the world might not think Wilmot's conduct silly, sentimental, or mysterious, Mr. Foljambe would be beforehand with the gossips and the curious, and, by assigning to his absence from England a motive in which the interests of his profession and those of his health should be combined, prevent the risk of its being imputed to anything so _rococo_ as deep feeling.