"I suppose you are the only man who knows him, Ronald, who underrates Wilmot; and I really believe you think we make quite an unnecessary fuss about him." "I by no Means underrate the abilities of your medical attendant, sir," Ronald answered in his coldest and driest tone, and, as Madeleine felt in all her shrinking nerves, though she dared not look up to meet it, with a moody searching glance at her; "but, admirable as he may be in his proper capacity and his proper place, I cannot quite appreciate his social importance." "Just listen to him, Muriel," said Kilsyth in a provoked but yet good-humoured tone. "What wonderful fellows these young men are! He actually talks of a man like Wilmot as if he were a general practitioner or an apothecary's apprentice!" Lady Muriel interposed, and turned off this somewhat perilous and peace-breaking remark with one of the graceful, skilful generalities of which she always had a supply ready for emergencies. Ronald contented himself with a half smile of contempt at his father's enthusiastic misrepresentation; Madeleine talked energetically to Ramsay Caird; and the matter dropped. To be resumed in the drawing-room, however. Madeleines looks were not improved when her father and the two young men joined her and Lady Muriel. She was dreaming over a book which she was pretending to read, when Kilsyth came up to her, took her chin in his hand, and turned up her face to his and to the light. Tears were trembling in her blue eyes. "Hallo, Maddy," said her father, "what's this? You're nervous, my darling! I knew you were not well. Has anything fretted you?--Has anything vexed her, Muriel?" "No, papa, nothing; nothing at all," said Madeleine, making a strong effort to recover herself. "I have got hold of a sorrowful book, that's all." "Have you, my dear? then put it away. Let's look at it. Why, it's _Pickwick_, I declare! Maddy, what can all you? How could you possibly cry over anything in _Pickwick?_" "I don't know that, sir," said Ramsay, jauntily and jovially coming to Madeleine's assistance, without the faintest notion of anything beyond her being "badgered by the governor." "There's the dying clown, you know, and the queer client. I've cried over them myself; or at least I've been very near it," And he sat down beside Madeleine, and applied himself with success to rousing and amusing her. Ronald said nothing, and very soon went away. "I'm determined on one thing, Muriel," said Kilsyth to his wife when they were alone; "I'll have a long talk with Wilmot before he goes, and get the fullest instructions from him about Madeleine. I have no confidence in anyone else in her case, and I'll write to Wilmot about it, and ask him to come here professionally, as soon as he can, the first thing to-morrow morning." CHAPTER II. Another Turn of the Screw.