The doctor evaded the question.
"What do you propose to do?" he asked, in a low voice.
"I will resign the name of Hadfield, lest—lest I bring further shame upon it. I will leave here for London; I will work for my living: I will try to win a good name for myself, and to make that name respected; I will toil heart and soul—with my intellect if I can—with this right arm should that fail me."
"Why these are the strange schemes you entertained before your illness," exclaimed the doctor, gravely.
"Yes, the same."
"I thought to have cured all that."
"Do you think that, during my long suffering upstairs, I have not thought of these things over and over again? Do you fancy I was lying there mindless—a mere log? Do you think I have not thoroughly worked out these plans in my mind? If they were founded on error surely I had time and opportunity then to detect it. They have been thoroughly winnowed, trust me. Had they been wholly worthless you should have heard no more of them—indeed, there would have been no more to tell of them. But they are right and true. You know it, good friend."
"No, no, I know nothing of the kind; I think them all stuff and nonsense, and egregious folly, and I'm sorry the medicine I have given you hasn't done you more good. I thought it would have cleared your brain of these mad cobwebs. I little thought while you were safe in bed upstairs that you were damaging your mind by turning over all these absurdities in it."
"Was I to learn nothing from the past, or the present? But," he added, with a strange nervousness, and the colour flushing his face, "if there should be another reason, a most powerful reason, for my leaving you—"
"I'll hear no more," said the doctor, running away, "or by heaven the boy will convince me against my will! Why, he's as obstinate as all the Hadfields put together. He's the worst of the lot—the Hadfields? Bah! as the old gentleman himself added to the sum of them."
"If he knew that I loved his daughter!" cried Wilford passionately; "would he not rather drive me from his door than press me to remain? And I do love her! How good, how pure, how beautiful she is! Violet! dear Violet!" Then, after a pause, "And she—does she love me? Can it be? Oh, how unworthy I am of such happiness. Love me? Oh, God, if I thought that—but I must go, at once, and for ever. I must never see her more," and he buried his face in his hands, trembling very much.
Madge burst noisily, breathlessly, into the drawing-room, where Violet was busily at work with her needle.
"Oh, Vi! what do you think is going to happen? I was passing the parlour-door, and I couldn't help hearing. No, I wasn't listening on purpose, indeed I wasn't; only, of course, I ran off when papa came out, for I thought he might think I had been."
"What's the matter, Madge?"
"Wait a moment, I'm rather out of breath. But Wilford—"
"What of him?" asked Violet, in an eager voice.
"I heard him say that—"
"Make haste, Madge dear."
"Well, then, he's going away, going to leave us!"
"To leave us?" Vi almost screamed.
"Yes. Oh, isn't it a shame!"
"But when—when?"
"Immediately—as soon as he can—as soon as papa will let him. Why, what's the matter, Vi? Don't look like that! Speak, Vi, say something! Oh, how white she is!"
Violet had dropped her work to place her hands upon her heart, there was a strange look of suffering in her face, the colour quitted her cheeks—her lips; half fainting, she was supported by her sister.
"Oh, Madge, if he should go!" she moaned in a very troubled voice.
Poor Madge was terribly puzzled at all this. She had never dreamt of her news, important although she had judged it, creating effects so marvellous. Vi moved in this way; Vi, her elder sister, so little susceptible of emotion as she had deemed her, who always checked demonstration of feeling as much as possible; who, as a rule, received her younger sister's important communications with a calmness that had been only too provoking; Vi quivering like a lily in a tempest, and clutching Madge's arm to save herself from falling! Why, it was like a dream—quite like a dream, and Madge was almost frightened at it!
"What is the matter, Vi dear?" she cried, as she assumed the rôle of protectress, playing it with much grace and with great heartiness, it must be admitted, hugging her elder sister closely and kissing her impetuously as though to bring the colour back to her pallid face.
"If he should leave me!" poor Violet continued to falter.
A new light seemed to shine upon bewildered Madge. Her child-heart seemed to be possessed of a new intelligence. It was as though she had by chance made a new and great discovery. Could it be really what she thought it was—what she had read of in books, and heard of from others, and sometimes pictured hazily and wonderingly to herself? Was this really what she fancied it must be? It was like—and yet it was quite different! How strange! And Madge felt herself indeed a woman, as she put her red lips to Violet's ear—her heart beating terribly the while; her face a bright crimson—and murmured in soft, fond accents:
"Oh, Vi, you love him!"
And Violet buried her face on her sister's shoulder; and then, how silly, how absurd, how tender, how feminine, why then of course the two dear creatures cried copiously, their arms twined tightly round each other!
They indulged with abandonment in that female panacea for a troubled state of the nerves and the sensibilities, "a good cry," and emerged from it, a little tumbled it may be, with a decided crimson upon their eyelids, and yet a hint of it—it seems harsh