"Spoilt the whole chance! Maddy's illness spoilt the whole chance, did it? Are you quite sure of that, Mr. Foljambe? Are you quite sure that that illness did not decide Maddy's future?" "That illness!" "That illness. 'Importunity and opportunity,' to quote your own words, Mr. Foljambe, the last if hot the worst--have it how you will." "My dear Mrs. M'Diarmid, you are speaking in riddles; you are a perfect Sphinx, and I am, alas, no OEdipus. Will you tell me shortly what you mean?" "Yes, Mr. Foljambe, I will tell you; I came to tell you, and to ask you, as an old friend of the family, what you thought. More than that, I came to ask you, as an old friend of one whom I think most interested, what you thought. You know well and intimately Dr. Wilmot?" "Know Wilmot? Thoroughly and most intimately, and--why, good God, my dear madam, you don't think that Wilmot is in love with Miss Kilsyth?" "I confess that I have thought--" "Rubbish, my dear madam! Simple nonsense! You have been confounding the attention which a man wrapped up in his own profession, in the study of science, pays to a case, with attentions paid to an individual. Why, my dear madam, if--not to be offensive--if _you_ had had Miss Kilsyth's illness, and Wilmot had attended you, he would have bestowed on you exactly the same interest." "Perhaps while the case lasted, Mr. Foljambe, while his professional duty obliged him to do so; but not afterwards." "Not afterwards? Does Dr. Wilmot still pay attention to Miss Kilsyth?" "The last time I was in Brook-street I saw him there," said the old lady, bridling, "paying Miss Kilsyth great 'attention.'" "Then it was a farewell visit, Mrs. M'Diarmid," replied Mr. Foljambe. "Dr. Wilmot quits town--and England--at once, for a lengthened sojourn on the Continent." "Leaves town--and England?" said Mrs. Mac blankly. "For several months. Devoted to his profession, as he always has been, without the smallest variation in his devotion, he goes to Berlin to study in the hospitals there. Does that look like the act of an ardent _soupirant_, Mrs. M'Diarmid?" "Not unless he has reasons for feeling that it is better that he should so absent himself," said the old lady. "Of that you will probably be the best judge," said Mr. Foljambe. "My knowledge of Chudleigh Wilmot is not such as to lead me to believe that he would 'set his fortunes on a die' without calculating the result." In the "off season," when her fashionable friends were away from town, Mrs. M'Diarmid was in the habit of receiving some few acquaintances who constituted a whist-club, and met from week to week at each other's houses. Amongst this worthy sisterhood Mrs. Mac passed for a very shrewd and clever woman; a "deep" woman, who never "showed her hand." But on turning into Portland-place after her interview with Mr. Foljambe, the old lady felt that she had forfeited that title to admiration, and that too without the slightest adequate result. CHAPTER IV. Madeleine awakes.