At last it was over—the examination which had once seemed to be wellnigh the aim and end of existence; and now, though conscious of having done well, she threw herself on the hearth-rug, in a fit of depression that was almost maddening.
"Oh God," she groaned, "help me! I cannot bear it!"
Once more the lists were posted at the door of the university, and once more a group of eager faces had gathered round to read them. Presently a tall figure came swinging down the street, and, ignoring the Pass-list altogether, made straight for the Honours.
It was all right,—better than he had dared to hope.
ANATOMY.First Class.DUDLEY, RALPH, St Kunigonde's Hospital.Exhibition and Gold Medal.
Ralph's heart gave a great leap of thanksgiving.
"Now," he said almost audibly, "I can go down to Borrowness, and ask Miss Maclean in so many words to be my wife."
As if the paper in front of him had heard the words, his eye caught the name Maclean below his own. He looked again. Yes, there was no imagination about it.
PHYSIOLOGY.First Class.MACLEAN, MONA, Lond. Sch. of Med. for Women.Exhibition and Gold Medal.
Mona Maclean—hername was Margaret. She had told him so that day at Castle Maclean, and he had seen it in a well-worn prayer-book in Mr Ewing's church. But the coincidence was a curious one. He turned sharply round and touched a fellow-student on the arm.
"Who," he said hastily, "is Miss Mona Maclean?"
"Miss Maclean? Oh, she is one of their great dons at the Women's School. She took a First Class in Botany the year I passed my Prel. Sci."
Certainly it was only a coincidence. No doubt this woman was an out-and-out blue-stocking, in spite of her pretty name; and even in the matter of brains he did not believe she was a patch upon his princess.
He knew his old aunt would be delighted to hear of his success, but he would not telegraph, lest by any chance the news should leak round to Mona. He wanted to tell her himself. She had been so interested the day he had told her the story of his life. He had not concealed its failures, and he wanted to tell her with his own lips of this first little bit of success. For, after all, it was a success to be M'Diarmid's medallist. No man who had scamped his work could possibly hold such a position as that; and Miss Maclean was so quick, so sympathetic, she would see in a moment how much it meant. It seemed almost too good to be true, that this time to-morrow he would be sitting with her, alone on her storm-tossed battlements, free to talk of his love, and to draw her secret from half-willing lips—free to build all sorts of castles in the air, and to sketch the bold outline of a perfect future.
He looked at his watch, and wondered how he was to exist till eight o'clock, when the night express left for Edinburgh. He scarcely heard the congratulations that were heaped upon him by one and another of his friends, so eager was he to hear what she would say.
The examination was over now—well over. He was free for the first time to give the reins to his thoughts, and to follow whithersoever they beckoned; and a wild dance they led him, over giddy heights that made his brain reel and his pulse leap high with infinite longing. The dusty streets might have been Elysian fields for all he knew; in so far as he saw outward things at all, he saw them through a rose-hued medium of love. Introspection was almost dead within him—almost, but not quite—enough remained to fill him with intensest gratitude that this complete abandonment should have come to him.
"Oh let the solid ground not fail beneath my feet,Before my life has found what some have found so sweet!"
How often he had uttered those words, scarcely daring to hope that his prayer would be granted; and now he had found what he longed for, and surely no man before had ever found it so sweet.
"Holloa! cutting old friends already?" said a merry voice in his ear. "Some people are very quickly blinded by success."
"Why, Melville, what brings you here?"
"I was on my way to the university to find out how many medals you have got. Your face proclaims four at least."
"I am sorry it is so deceptive. I have only got one."
"Anatomy?"
"Anatomy."
"Played! Anything else?"
"No. A second class in chemistry."
"And that's nothing? We have grown very high and mighty all of a sudden. Who's got the medal in physiology?"
"A woman!"
"Name?"
"Miss—Maclean, I think;" and Dudley was amazed to find himself blushing.
"When do you go down?"
"To-night."
"That's right! But look here, dear boy. Take a word of advice with you. Keep out of the way of thesiren!"
"You go to——!" Dudley stopped short, but his eyes flashed fire.
"It's a curious thing," he observed cynically, "how a man can go through half his life without learning to hold his tongue about his private affairs."
Melville raised his eyebrows, and whistled a few notes of a popular music-hall ditty.
For about a hundred yards the two walked on in silence. Then Ralph put his hand in his friend's arm.
"Don't talk to me about it, Jack," he said, "there's a good fellow, but I have been the most confounded snob that ever lived."
Nothing more was said till they parted at the street corner, and then Melville stood and watched his friend out of sight.
"Another good man gone wrong!" he observed philosophically; and, shrugging his shoulders, he made his way back to the hospital.
The long day and the interminable night were over.
"Even an Eastern Counties trainMust needs come in at last."
And Dudley did actually find himself alighting at the familiar little station on a bright August morning. Never before had his home seemed so attractive to him. The strong east wind was like wine, fleecy clouds chased each other across a brilliant blue sky, and the first mellow glow was just beginning to tinge the billowy acres of corn. The tall trees at the foot of his aunt's garden threw broken shadows across the quiet lawn. The beds were bright with old-fashioned flowers, and the house, with its pillared portico, rose, white and stately, beyond the sweep of the carriage-drive.
"Welcome home, doctor!" said the gatekeeper's wife, curtseying low as Ralph passed the lodge. "You're gey late this year. Jeames cam' through frae Edinbury a fortnight syne."
"I suppose so," said Ralph, smiling pleasantly; "how is he getting on?"
"Vera weel, I thank ye, sir! He's brocht a prize buik wi' him this time;" and the good woman's face beamed with triumph. To the great pride of his family, the gatekeeper's son was studying "to be a meenister."
Mrs Hamilton came out to the door to meet her nephew, and a pang shot through Ralph's heart as he saw how frail she looked.
"Why, I declare," he said, putting his arm round her affectionately, "my old lady has been missing her scapegrace."
"Conceited as ever," she said, returning his caress, but the rare tears stole into her eyes as she spoke.
"You dear old thing! why didn't you send for me? And Burns, too, promised to let me know."
"Nonsense, laddie! There's nothing wrong. I have never been ill. I am getting to be an old woman, that's all; and I'm not so fond of east winds as I once was. Run up-stairs while Dobson infuses the tea, and then come and tell me all about the examination."
The breakfast parlour was bright with flowers, and the table was laden with good things. The window stood open, and the bees hummed in and out in a flood of sunshine.
"Grouse already!" exclaimed Ralph.
"Yes; Lord Kirkhope and Sir Roderick have each sent a brace."
"What it is to live with the belle of the country-side, as they say in the story-books!"
"What it is to live with a spoilt and impertinent nephew! Very well done, Ralph! I have no patience with a man who does not know how to carve."
"Carving ought to come easy to the Gold Medallist in Anatomy, oughtn't it?" he said mischievously.
"Are you really that?"
"At your service."
"And you have not shown it to me yet!"
"Bless the old darling! I shall not see it myself till May. The object of the medal is to remind a man of the mountain of learning he has contrived to—forget!"
Mrs Hamilton laughed.
"How long a holiday can you take, Ralph?" she asked presently.
"A month. I ought to get back to hospital then, if you are—sick of my company."
"Oh, I'll be that, never fear! and I suppose you would have no objection to spending a few weeks with me up in the Highlands, when you get a little rested. It's not like me, but I've a great longing for a change."
"I daresay it would be a good plan," he answered very gravely; and, quick as she was, she did not guess the throb of dismay that shot through his heart.
"You do look tired, Ralph, in spite of yourself," she said a moment later. "Your room is all ready. Go and lie down for a few hours."
"No, no," he said restlessly. "I can't sleep during the day. Let us have a drive; and this afternoon, while you have your nap, I will go and smool on the beach. That rests me more than anything."
Smool! Oh Ralph!
He never doubted that he would find Mona at Castle Maclean. She went there so often, and now she must know well that any day might bring him, and that he would seek her there. He had rehearsed the meeting so often in his mind; and unconsciously he rehearsed it again this afternoon, as he strode down the little footpath that led through the fields to the sea. The tide was out. That was disappointing. Sun-lit waves, rocking festoons of Fucus on their bosom, had always formed part of his mental picture; but now the great brown trails hung dry and motionless, from the burning rocks, in the strong afternoon sun.
Never mind! It was of no consequence after all. Two minutes hence, he and she would have little thought to spare for the tide and the Fucus. Ralph quickened his steps and leapt up the side of the rock.
But Castle Maclean was empty.
"I need not have been in such a confounded hurry," he muttered irritably, as he looked at his watch. "Miss Simpson's mid-day dinner won't be over yet."
But two hours passed away, and no one came.
Miss Simpson's mid-day dinner must certainly be over now. Ralph was bitterly disappointed. Miss Maclean had always shown herself so much quicker, more perceptive, than he had dared to hope. Why did she fail him now, just when he had depended on her most? It took half the poetry out of their relationship, to think that she had not understood, that she had not counted on this meeting as he had.
He made up his mind to go home; but he overrated his own resolution; and in an incredibly short space of time, the bell of Miss Simpson's shop rang as he opened the door.
The shop was disappointing too. Everything was disappointing to-day! There was no lack of new goods, but they were displayed with a want of design and harmony that jarred on his over-strained nerves; and, to crown all, an "air with variations" was being very indifferently played on a cracked piano up-stairs. The music stopped at the sound of the bell, and a young woman came down-stairs.
"Genusminx, speciesvulgaris." A moment was sufficient to settle that question. Ralph was so taken aback that it did not even occur to him to ask for india-rubber.
"Is Miss Simpson in?" he said at last.
"Oh lor'! no, sir. Miss Simpson sailed for America nearly a week ago. My pa bought the business, and he means to conduct it on quite a different scale. What is the first thing I can show you to-day, air?"
He tried to ask for Miss Maclean, but he could not bring her name over his lips; so, lifting his hat, he hastily left the shop.
He emptied his first glass of wine at dinner, before he ventured to broach the subject to his aunt.
"You did not tell me Miss Simpson had emigrated," he said suddenly.
"Miss Simpson! What Miss Simpson? Bless the boy! he's developing quite a taste for local gossip. I only heard it myself three or four days ago. It seems that niece—whom you thought such a genius, by the way—went to America some time ago, and now her aunt has gone to join her."
"Nonsense!I mean"—Ralph laughed rather nervously—"I can't conceive of any one sending across the Atlantic for old Simpson. And, besides—that—young lady—wasn't her niece at all, auntie mine. She was a distant cousin."
"I think you are mistaken, dear. Theyoung womantold me herself she was Miss Simpson's niece, and I suppose she ought to know."
Dimly it occurred to Ralph that he and his aunt must be talking of two different people; but his mind was in such a whirl of bewilderment that reflection was impossible, and as soon as dinner was over, he escaped to his own room, on the true plea of a racking headache.
What had happened? Was it all a hideous nightmare, from which he would awake with infinite relief; or was some evil genius really turning his life upside down? What an infernal idiot he had been not to speak out plainly six months ago! And to think that he had waited only for this examination,—this trumpery bit of child's-play! Perhaps she had expected him to write, perhaps she had gone to America in despair; at all events, she had vanished out of his life like the heroine of a fairy tale, and he had not the vaguest notion where to look for her.
Then saner thoughts began to take form in his mind. He was living, after all, in the latter part of the nineteenth century. People could not vanish now-a-days and leave no trace. There must be many in Borrowness who could tell him where she was.
Yes; but who were they? He knew few people in the place, and he could not go round from door to door making enquiries.
At last, with a rush of thankfulness, he bethought himself of Mr Stuart and Matilda Cookson. Both of them were sure to know where Miss Maclean had gone. He looked at his watch—yes, it was past his aunt's bedtime, and not too late to drop in on Stuart. He told the servants not to sit up if he should be late, and then he walked along the highroad to Kirkstoun, at a pace few men could have equalled.
Once more disappointment awaited him. Mr Stuart was away for a month's holiday, and the manse was occupied by his "supply." Dudley was certainly not intimate enough with the Cooksons to pay them a visit at this hour; so he was forced, sorely against his will, to postpone his enquiries until the next day.
"I suppose the Cooksons will be away for August too," he said to himself many times during that restless night; but Fortune favoured him at last. When he opened the garden-gate next day, he found Matilda and her father on the lawn.
"Come away, doctor!" cried Mr Cookson heartily. "I have got some cigars here that you won't get a chance to smoke every day of your life. Come and tell us your news!"
Fully half an hour passed before Dudley contrived to bring the conversation round to Rachel Simpson's departure.
"And has Miss Maclean gone to America too?" he said indifferently, with his eyes fixed on the curling wreaths of tobacco-smoke.
"Oh, bless my soul, no!" cried Mr Cookson, slapping his visitor on the knee. "Did you never hear that story? It was excellent,—excellent! Where do you think I saw Miss Maclean last? Driving in Hyde Park in as elegant a carriage as ever I wish to see. There was another lady with her—leaning back, you know, with their lace and their parasols,"—Mr Cookson attempted somewhat unsuccessfully to demonstrate the attitude of the ladies in question,—"and a young man riding alongside. A tip-top turn-out altogether, I warrant you."
Dudley's face darkened, but he waited for his host to go on.
"I had got wind of it before she left us," Mr Cookson continued complacently, "from something Colonel Lawrence let drop, and we had her here to dinner; a fine girl, a fine girl! I remember when I was a boy hearing what a successful man her grandfather was; but her people had been out of the place so long, one never thought of one of them coming back. Matilda knew about it all along, it seems; and she and Miss Maclean were fast friends, but she kept it very close."
"I found it out by accident," Matilda said with dignity; "but no one with any perception could see Miss Maclean and question that she was a lady."
"I quite agree with you," Dudley said gravely; "but did Miss Maclean confide to you what induced her to come masquerading down here?"
He regretted the words the moment they were spoken, but it was too late to recall them.
Matilda's face flushed.
"If you knew Miss Maclean at all," she said, "you would be ashamed to say that. She was not always wondering what people would think of somebody's cousin, or somebody else's niece; she was her very own self. The fact that she had grand relations did not make Miss Simpson any the less her cousin. It was as easy to Miss Maclean to claim kindred with a vulgar woman in a shop as with a fine lady in a ballroom."
This was hyperbolical, no doubt; but as Dudley listened to it, he wondered whether Mona could safely be judged by the influence she had had on Matilda Cookson.
One question more he had to ask. "Is she a medical student?"
"Bless my soul, no!" laughed Mr Cookson. "She has no need to do anything for herself. In a small way she is an heiress."
This was rash; but, after acting the part of the one who knows, Mr Cookson was unwilling to own his ignorance; and, his idea of medical women being vague and alarming in the extreme, it never crossed his mind that an attractive, well-to-do young lady like Miss Maclean could possibly belong to their ranks.
Ralph turned to Matilda.
"Do you know where Miss Maclean is now?" he said. "In London?"
"I had a letter from her yesterday," Matilda answered proudly, drawing an oft-perused document from her pocket. "She is just starting with a party of friends to travel in Switzerland."
"What a magnificent araucaria that is!" Dudley said suddenly.
"It would need be," replied Mr Cookson. "It cost me a pretty penny, I can tell you."
Then Dudley rose to go. His manner was playful, but his heart was welling over with bitterness. He did not realise the position in which he had placed the woman he loved; it did not occur to him to think how much worse it would have been if she had run after him, instead of appearing to run away. He could not believe that she was false, and yet—how she had deceived him! What madness it was ever to trust to the honesty of a woman's eyes!
"Well, old boy!" he said to himself cynically, as he walked back to Carlton Lodge, "are we going to write our 'Sorrows of Werther'once again?"
The last sodden leaves had fallen from the London trees, and autumn was fast merging into winter. Mona sat alone in her study, deep in a copy ofBalfour On the Heart, which she had picked up second-hand, on her way from hospital, and had carried home in triumph. It was the height of her ambition at this time to be "strong on the heart and lungs"; and as she read she mechanically percussed the arm of her big chair, with a lightness of touch which many doctors might have envied.
There was a knock at the door, and Miss Lascelles entered the room.
"That's right," said Mona, holding out her hand, "sit down."
"Thanks," was the reply, in Miss Lascelles's cultured, musical drawl. "I am not going to stay. I came to ask if you would lend me your notes of that leucocythæmia case. I am working up the spleen just now."
"I will, with pleasure. But don't be in such a hurry, now that you have come so far. I never get a chance to speak to you in hospital. Sit down and tell me what the scientist thinks of it all."
Miss Lascelles pulled off her hat unceremoniously, and passed her hand through her dark hair.
"Oh, reform it altogether!" she cried. "There is a deal of humbug in the profession, and I don't know that the women have lessened it."
Mona laughed.
"What a born reformer you are!" she said admiringly.
"I suppose I am. In other words, I shall never be a successful doctor.Kismet!I don't see how any honest man can live in this world and not be a reformer."
"Don't you? Oh, I do."
Miss Lascelles glanced round the pretty room.
"I almost envy you," she said. "It must be very pleasant to be able to shut one's eyes to abuses, and eat one's pudding in comfort."
"Ay, or to shut one's eyes to one's father's shortcomings, and make the best of them."
"It is not the shortcomings I object to, it is the false pretensions. Give me honesty at all costs. Let everything be open and above-board."
"Honesty—honesty—honesty!" said Mona. "I sometimes think I hate honesty; it is so often another name for ingratitude and brutality. I care more for loyalty than for all the other virtues put together. It is the loyal souls who prepare the way for the reformer. His actual work is often nothing more than the magnificent thrust with which a child knocks down a castle of cards."
"I believe in loyalty, too; but let us be loyal to the right, not loyal to the wrong."
"With all my heart, if you can contrive to separate the right from the wrong. I never could. I am always brought back to that grand bold line—
'Mit ihm zu irren ist dir Gewinn.'
You don't believe that?"
Miss Lascelles laughed, and shook her head. "I don't mean to go astray with anybody, if I can help it. I had no idea, Miss Maclean, that you were so desperately—mediæval."
Mona smiled.
"I think it is rather Greek than mediæval to shut one's eyes to abuses, and eat one's pudding in comfort. The mediæval spirit renounces the pudding, and looks beyond the abuses."
Miss Lascelles sprang to her feet, and carelessly threw on her broad picturesque hat.
"I am neither Greek nor mediæval, then," she said, involuntarily drawing up the sleeves from her plump pretty wrists as she spoke; "for I choose to share my pudding, and wage war to the death against the abuses."
"Brava!" said Mona. "You are one of the sort that live in history."
"For knocking down a castle of cards?"
"Nay, nay; I did not say that of all reformers."
"Well, Miss Maclean, whatever your theories may be, you have worked a grand reformation in Miss Reynolds."
"Now that is precisely a case of the wrong man getting the credit. That, at least, was the work of her own loyal self."
"If only she would be quite natural, and not treat the doctors with that half-coquettish air!"
"But that is natural to her, and I can't say I altogether object to it. Perhaps I am partial. Here are the notes in the meantime."
"Many thanks. Good-bye."
"Au revoir!Come back again—when you want another chapter out of theMiddle Ages."
Mona returned to her books, but she had not read a page before another visitor was announced.
"I really shall have to sport my oak," she said; but when she took the card from the salver, her whole face beamed.
"Show him in," she said, wheeling an arm-chair up to the fire. "Mr Reynolds, there are not three people in the world whom I should be so glad to see. What lucky wind blows you here now?"
"I have come partly to look after my two daughters," said the old man, smiling. "Let me have a good look at this one. Lucy tells me you are working yourself to death."
"One of Lucy's effective statements." But Mona flushed rather nervously under his steady gaze. "I suppose you have just come from her now."
"Yes."
"She is working splendidly if you will."
"So I gather." He smiled. "She is very indignant to-night about the rudeness of the doctor under whom she is working at hospital."
"I don't think it is very serious. They are excellent friends in the main, and you cannot expect all men to be gentlemen. The fact is"—Mona drew down her brows in earnest consideration—"we women are excellent, really excellent, at taking a good hard blow when we are convinced that we deserve it. That is where our metal comes in. But if we really mean to share men's work, we have got to learn within the next generation to take a little miscellaneous knocking about from our superiors, without enquiring too closely whether we have deserved it or not. That is where our ignorance of the world comes in."
"I should think that was extremely true," Mr Reynolds said reflectively, "especially in a busy life like a doctor's, where there is so little time for explanations. There must be a good deal of give and take. But, my dear girl, don't let your common-sense run away with one atom of your womanliness. One would not think it necessary to say so, if one had not been disappointed in that respect, once and again."
"I know," Mona answered hurriedly. "It is a case of Scylla and Charybdis. We don't want to be mawkish and sentimental, and in the first swing of reaction we are apt to go to the other extreme and treat the patients in hospital as mere material. But you know, Mr Reynolds, if one realises that the occupant of each bed is a human soul, with its own rights and its own reserves—if one takes the trouble to knock at the door, in fact, and ask admission instead of leaping over the wall—life becomes pretty intense; a good deal gets crowded into a very few hours."
"I know. That is quite true. But all things become easier by practice. It may be the view of a half-informed outsider, but I cannot help thinking that, if you take the trouble, when you first begin ward-work, as Lucy calls it, to gain admission with the will of the patient, you will in time become the possessor of a magicpasse-partout, which will make entrance not only infinitely more satisfactory and complete, but also even easier than by leaping over the wall."
"You should preach a sermon to women-doctors," Mona said, smiling; "and have it printed. I would lay it to heart for one."
"You will do far more good by preaching it yourself in your daily life, as indeed I believe you are doing now. But in any case, I did not come here to preach to you."
"You don't know how much I stand in need of it."
"I want you to talk to me. Do you know it is more than a year since I saw you?"
Mona sighed. "It seems five to me sometimes."
"I suppose it has been very full of events?"
Mr Reynolds had not forgotten the man whose presence at Borrowness made "all the difference" in Mona's life there.
"Yes. There was first my life with my cousin; and then the examination; and then Switzerland with the Munros; and then hospital. Four different Mona Macleans,—each living as hard as ever she could."
"And enjoying life?"
"I don't know. I have been so restless, so unsettled."
"I fancied I could read that in your face, but it is passing over now."
"I hope so. I don't know. Don't let us talk of it."
"You enjoy your hospital work?"
Mona was sitting opposite him on the corner of the tiled fender. She looked into the fire now, with an amount of expression in her face that was almost painful.
"Hospital," she said, "is—salvation! All one's work apart from that tends to make one self-centred. It is a duty to think much ofmyknowledge,mymarks,mysuccess,myfailure. Hospital work gives one a chance to 'die to live.'"
She laughed softly.
"It must seem incredible to you, but I actually thought once that I had died to live,—I, with my books and my pictures, and my pretty gowns, and my countless toys! I thought I held them with so light a hand, that I valued them only for the eternal that was in them."
She paused and went on without much logical sequence. "It is so easy to die to live, when the life one dies to is something vague and shadowy and unknown; but let one brilliant ray of promised happiness cross one's path, and then it becomes a very different thing to die to that—to nothing abstract, nothing vague, but just tothat! One realises what one's professions are worth.
"All the time I was at Borrowness I hardly once said a cross word to my cousin, and I suppose I took great credit to myself for that; but I see now that there was no true selflessness in it at all. It was simply because she was so unlike me that she never came into my real life. I conquered my hardships in a sense, by escaping them. I thought I had attained, and I have only learned now that I have attained nothing. The whole lesson of self-renunciation has still got to be learned."
"You are thinking much of the duty of self-renunciation; what of the duty of self-realisation?"
"Is there such a duty?"
"You have acted instinctively up till now on the theory that there is. Have you any reason to distrust your instincts?"
"I don't know. I seem to have got into a muddle about everything. How can they both be duties when they are so absolutely incompatible?"
"One can only unite them certainly by seeking for a higher truth that combines them both. It may seem a strange thing for a Christian minister to say, but it has always seemed to me that those words, 'die to live,' were an admirable expression of a philosophy, but a very poor maxim for daily life; partly because they ignore that duty of self-realisation, in which I for one believe, and partly because, so long as a man says, 'Am I dying to live?' he cannot possibly do it. The maxim accentuates the very element we want to get rid of. If we are indeed to die to live, we must cease to think about it; we must cease to know whether we live or die."
"But the higher truth, Mr Reynolds, what is that?"
"Nay, I should be doing you a poor service by telling you."
"There is only one higher truth conceivable," Mona said boldly, "and that is—God in all."
"And is not that enough? God in me. God to have His way in me, and to find the fullest possible expression there. God in all men—in the church, the ball-room, the Blum. If we see all things through the medium of God, what becomes of the strife between self-renunciation and self-realisation?"
Mona pressed his hand in silence. "You knew all that before, dear child," he said; "you had only got confused for the moment."
Mona shook her head. "I knew it vaguely," she said, "but you must not think I am living up to that level. I thought, in my infinite conceit, that I had risen above happiness and attained to blessedness; and now—and now—I want the happiness too."
He laid his hand on her shoulder. "And so you are wearing yourself out at hospital," he said quietly, as though that were the natural outcome of what she had said; "but don't forget the friends who love you, and who are depending on you."
Mona looked up gratefully into his face. The advice was almost the same as that which she herself had given to Lucy some months before; but the value of advice is rarely intrinsic—we think far less of its substance than we do of the personality of the giver. The words that are empty platitudes on the lips of one man, become living inspiration on those of another.
To-night, however, even Mr Reynolds had not the power to raise Mona above the longing for happiness. As the months went on, the strain of uncertainty was becoming almost unendurable. Never, since that night when he drove her home in his gig from Colonel Lawrence's Wood, had she heard anything from Dr Dudley; never, since the chance glimpses at Burlington House, had she even seen him. It seemed incredible that he could have failed to find her, if he had really tried; and yet—and yet——
"Oh, my friend, my friend!" she said wearily, "I have waited so long.Where are you?"
"You are late," said Lady Munro. "Had you forgotten that you were going to take us to the theatre?"
She was sitting alone in the firelight, one dainty slippered foot on the burnished fender.
Sir Douglas looked sharply round the room without replying. "Is Mona here?" he said.
"No; she could not spare enough time to come to dinner. We are to call for her."
Sir Douglas frowned.
"That's always the way. Upon my soul, for all we see of her, she might as well be at—Borrowness!"
"Where in the world is that?" asked Lady Munro languidly. Then, with a sudden change of tone, "I have got such a piece of news for you," she said. "Another of our friends is engaged to be married."
"Not Dickinson?" he said, glancing at the foreign letter in her hand.
"Yes; the Indian mail came in to-day. Guess who the lady is?"
"You know I hate guessing. Go on!"
"Miss Colquhoun!"
"What an extraordinary thing!"
"Isn't it? It seems he wanted the thing settled before he sailed, but it took the exchange of a few letters to decide the question. I must say it is a great disappointment to me. I am quite sure the Sahib cared for Mona, and I did think she would take pity on him in the long-run."
"How ridiculous!" said Sir Douglas testily.
He wanted Mona to marry, because that was the natural and fitting destiny for a young and attractive woman; but it was quite another thing to think of her as the wife of any given man.
"Of course we all know that Mona ought to marry a duke," said Evelyn quietly. She had entered the room a moment before, looking very fair and sweet in her white evening dress. "But even if the duke could be brought to see it, which is not absolutely certain,—I suppose even dukes are sometimes blind to their best interests—oh, father,don't!"
For Sir Douglas was pinching her ear unmercifully.
"You little sauce-box!" he said indignantly, but he did not look displeased. Evelyn had learned that approaching womanhood gave her the right to take liberties with her father which his wife would scarcely have ventured upon.
"Well, whatever may be the cause of it," said Lady Munro, "Mona is not half so bright as she was a year ago."
Evelyn laughed.
"Do you remember what Sydney Smith said? 'Macaulay has improved of late,—flashes of silence!' Lucy told her yesterday that, to our great surprise, we find we may open our lips now-a-days, without having our heads snapped off with an epigram."
"It's all nonsense," said Sir Douglas loftily. "Mona is not changed a bit. You did not understand her, that is all."
But in truth no one had wondered over the change in Mona so much as he. He was perfectly certain that she did not care for the Sahib, and he had come at last to the conclusion that, with a girl like Mona, incessant hospital work was quite sufficient to account for the alteration. To his partial mind Mona's increased womanliness more than made up for her loss of sparkle. When friendship and affection are removed alike from all danger of starvation and of satiety, they are very hard to kill.
At this moment Nubboo announced dinner, and an hour or so later the carriage stopped at the door of Mona's rooms in Gower Street.
Much as Sir Douglas spoiled his niece, she "knew her place," as Lucy expressed it, better than to keep him waiting; and the reverberations of the knocker had not died away when she appeared.
Sir Douglas ran his eye with satisfaction over the details of her toilet. It was an excellent thing for her, in this time of hard work and heart-hunger, that she felt the bounden necessity of living up to the level of Sir Douglas's expectations. She cared intensely for his approbation; partly for her own sake, partly because to him she represented the whole race of "learned women"; and she could not well have had a more friendly, frank, and fastidious critic.
The theatre was crowded when they entered their box. Like many habitual theatre-goers Sir Douglas hated boxes, but he had applied for seats too late to get anything else. It was the first night of a new melodrama,—new in actual date, but in all essentials old as the history of man. A noble magnificent hero; a sweet loyal wife; a long period of persecution, separation, and mutual devotion; a happy and triumphant reunion.
Judged by every canon of modern realistic art, it was stagey and conventional to the point of being ridiculous; but the acting was brilliant, and even Sir Douglas and Mona found it difficult to escape the enthusiasm of that crowded house. Evelyn and her mother were moved almost to tears before the end. The one saw in the play the ideal that lay in the shadows before her, the other the ideal that her own life had missed.
"Have you heard the news about the Sahib?" Lady Munro enquired in the pause that followed the first act.
"Yes," said Mona, flushing slightly; "I had a few lines from him by to-day's mail."
"Do you think the match a desirable one?"
"Ideal, so far as one can foresee. They won't water down each other's enthusiasms, as most married people do."
"Douglas remembers Miss Colquhoun as a quaint, old-fashioned child—not at all pretty. I suppose she has improved?"
"I suppose she has," Mona answered reflectively: "she is certainly immensely admired now."
"It was such an odd coincidence; we heard this morning of the engagement of another of our friends—Colonel Monteith's son; I forget whether you have met him?"
"No; I have met the Colonel. Who is the son engaged to?"
"Nobody very great. A Miss Nash, a girl with plenty of money. George inherits a nice little estate from his uncle, and he had to marry something to keep it up on. By the way, Lucy Reynolds must have mentioned him to you. She saw a good deal of him at Cannes." And Lady Munro looked somewhat anxiously at her niece.
"I rather think she did," Mona answered, pretending to stifle a yawn. "But Lucy met so many people while she was with you——"
The rise of the curtain for the second act obviated the necessity of finishing the sentence, and Lady Munro did not resume the subject.
As soon as Sir Douglas had left the box for the second time, it was entered by a stout man, with a vast expanse of shirt front, and a bunch of showy seals.
"I thought I could not be mistaken," he said with a marked Scotch accent, holding out his hand to Mona. "I have been watching you from the dress circle ever since the beginning of the play, Miss Maclean; and I thought I must just come and pay my respects."
Lady Munro looked utterly aghast, and the ease of Mona's manner rather belied her feelings, as she took his outstretched hand.
"That was very kind of you," she said simply. "Mr Cookson, my aunt, Lady Munro,—Miss Munro."
Mr Cookson gasped, and there was an awkward pause. Rachel Simpson had not taken with her, across the Atlantic, all the complications in her cousin's life.
Fortunately, at this moment two young men came in, and Mona was able to keep Mr Cookson pretty much to herself.
"I hope you are all well at Borrowness," she said cordially.
"Thanks, we are wonderful, considering. It'll be great news for Matilda that I came across you."
"Please give her my love."
There was another pause. Mona was longing to ask about Mrs Hamilton and Dr Dudley, but she did not dare.
"It was a great thing for Matilda getting to know you," Mr Cookson went on. "We often wish you were back among us. If ever you care to renew the homely old associations a bit, our spare room is always at your disposal, you know."
Care to renew the old associations! What else in life did she care so much about? In her eagerness she forgot even the presence of her aunt.
"I should like very much to see the old place again," she said. "You are very kind."
Mr Cookson's good-natured face beamed with delighted surprise.
"It isn't looking its best now," he said; "but any time you care to come, we shall be only too delighted."
"Thank you. If it would not be too much trouble to Mrs Cookson, I could come for a day or two at the beginning of January. I shall never forget the fairy frost we had at that time last winter."
Mr Cookson laughed.
"We will be proud to see you at any time," he said; "but I am afraid we have not enough interest with the clerk of the weather to get up a frost like that again. I never remember to have seen the like of it."
He turned to Lady Munro with a vague idea that he ought to be making himself agreeable to her.
"My girls were wishing they could carry the leaves and things home," he said; "it seemed such a waste like."
Mona inwardly blessed her aunt for the gracious smile with which she listened to these words; but, whatever Lady Munro's feelings might be, it was extremely difficult for her to be ungracious to any one.
The Fates, after all, were kind. Mr Cookson left the box before Sir Douglas returned.
"MydearMona!" was all Lady Munro could say the first moment they were left alone.
"Poor dear Aunt Maud!" Mona said caressingly; "it is a shame that she should be subjected to such a thing. But never mind, dear; he lives hundreds of miles away from here, and you are never likely to see him again."
Lady Munro groaned. Fortunately, she had heard nothing of the invitation, and in another minute she was once more absorbed in the interest of the play.
The party drove back to Gower Street in silence. Sir Douglas alighted at once, and held out his hand to help Mona.
"Many thanks," she said warmly; "good night."
"No; I am coming in for ten minutes. I want to speak to you. Home, Charles!"
Mona opened the door, and led the way up the dimly lighted staircase to her cheerful sitting-room.
"Now, Mona," he said, as soon as the door was closed, "I want the whole truth of this Borrowness business."
Mona started visibly. Had he met Mr Cookson in the corridor, seized him by the throat, and demanded an account of his actions? No, that was clearly impossible.
"Who has been talking to you?" she said resignedly.
"I met Colonel Lawrence at the club to-day."
Mona threw herself into the rocking-chair with a sigh of capitulation.
"If you have heardhisstory," she said, "you need not come to me for farther details. He knows more than I do myself. They say down at Borrowness that he is 'as guid as an auld almanac.'"
But Sir Douglas declined to be amused.
"How long were you there?" he said severely.
"Six months."
"And you have kept me in the dark about it all this time? I think I deserved greater confidence from you."
"I think you did," she said frankly; "but you see, Uncle Douglas, I promised to go at a time when I only knew you by name, and I had not the least idea then that you would be so kind to me. I felt bound to keep my word, and I did not feel quite sure that you would approve of it."
"Approve of it!" he exclaimed indignantly.
"But I always meant to tell you about it sooner or later."
Mona sighed. She had expected the whole story to come out in connection with her engagement to Dr Dudley. And now that engagement seemed to be becoming more and more problematical.
"Particularly later," said Sir Douglas sarcastically. "It is nearly a year now since you left."
"Yes; but that isn't exactly due to intentional secrecy on my part. The fact is, my visit has some painful associations for me now."
"So I should think," he said. "Is it really true, Mona, that you stood behind a counter?—that youkept a shop?"
"Perfectly true," said Mona, meeting his gaze without flinching. "I confess I had no special training for the work, but I did not do it so badly, after all."
The least suspicion of a smile played about the corners of his mouth, but he suppressed it instantly.
"And when," he asked, "may we expect your next attack of shopkeeping?"
"Oh, did Colonel Lawrence not tell you? My cousin sailed for America months ago."
He looked relieved.
"To your infinite regret, no doubt."
"I am afraid it is a great weight off my mind."
"And is that the end of the affair, or have you any more cousins down there?"
"I have one or two friends; no relatives."
"Then there is nothing to take you back again?"
Poor Mona!
"I met a Borrowness acquaintance in the theatre to-night," she said, "and promised to go down for a day or two at Christmas. Uncle Douglas, you did not ask to see my genealogical tree before you took me to Norway. I am proud of the fact that my grandfather rose from the ranks; and, even if I were not, I could not consent to draw all my acquaintances from one set. There are four links in the chain—your world, you, me, my world. Your world won't let you go, and I can't let my world go. If you must break the chain, you can only do it in one place."
"I don't believe you would care a straw if I did."
"I should care intensely," said Mona, her eyes filling with tears. "It seems like a fairy tale that a brilliant man of the world like you should be so good to commonplace me; and, besides—you know I love you almost as if you were my father. But, indeed, now that I know you and Aunt Maud, you may trust me in future always to think of what is due to you."
She had risen from her chair as she spoke, and he strode across the hearth-rug and kissed her affectionately.
"There, there," he said, "she shall dictate her own terms! Thank heaven at least that that old frump is well across the Atlantic!"
He went away, and Mona was left alone, to think over the events of the day. Doris and the Sahib, Monteith and Lucy,—it was the old tale over again,—"The one shall be taken, and the other left." How strange it seemed that life should run smoothly for Doris, with all her grand power of self-surrender; and that poor little Lucy, with her innocent, childlike expectation of happiness, should be called upon to suffer!
"——so horribly," Mona added; but in her heart she was beginning to hope that Lucy had not been so hard hit after all.
And for herself, how did the equation run? As the Sahib is to Doris, so is somebody to me? or, as Monteith is to Lucy, so is somebody to me? No, no, no! That was impossible. Monteith had never treated Lucy as Dr Dudley had treated her.
During all these months what had caused Mona the acutest suffering was an anguish of shame. It never remained with her long, but it recurred whenever she was worn out and depressed. She had long since realised that, from an outsider's point of view, her experience that winter night was in no way so exceptional as she had supposed,—that there were thousands of men who would give such expression to a moment's transient passion. But surely, surely Dr Dudley was not one of these, and surely any man must see that with a woman like her it must be everything or nothing! If he had indeed torn her soul out and given her nothing in return, why then—then—— But she never could finish the sentence, for the recollection of a hundred words and actions and looks came back, and turned the gall into sweetness. And she always ended with the same old cry—"If only I had told him about my life, if only I had given him no shadow of a reason to think that I had deceived him!"
But to-night it seemed as if the long uncertainty must be coming to an end at last. If she went to Borrowness at Christmas, as she had promised, she could not fail to hear something of her friend, and she might even see him.
The weeks passed very slowly till the Christmas holidays came round; but, on the whole, life had become more bearable for Mona. The future was as uncertain as ever, but she had at least one definite event to look forward to. There was a light of some kind before her, though it might be only a Will-o'-the-wisp.
And a Will-o'-the-wisp it was destined to prove.
She arrived at Borrowness late in the evening, and immediately after breakfast next morning, Matilda begged her to come to Castle Maclean. Mona assented the more readily, as the walk led them past the gates of Carlton Lodge; but at the first glance she saw that the house was shut up.
It was some minutes before she could measure the full force of the blow.
"What has become of Mrs Hamilton?" she said at last, with averted face.
"Oh, didn't you know? She was awfully ill last autumn. Dr Dudley had some great gun down from London to see her,—as if Edinburgh doctors were not a great deal better!—and she was ordered abroad for the winter. Dr Dudley took her away at once, to Cairo, or Algiers, or some such place. We don't hear anything about them now. By the way, Miss Maclean, the very last time that I saw Dr Dudley he was asking about you."
Mona could not trust herself to speak.
"He wanted to know if you had gone to America with Miss Simpson, and Pa gave him a glowing account of how he had seen you in London."
"At the theatre?"
"No, no. Pa saw you once, long before that, one day in Hyde Park, with a lady—and a young gentleman. I thought it would be Lady Munro, but I never said so to Pa."
It was contrary to all Mona's instincts to ask what any one had said of her, but the opportunity was too precious to be lost. Her dignity must go.
"And what did Dr Dudley say to that?" she asked, as carelessly as she could.
Matilda hesitated; but she felt a pardonable longing to repeat her own brave words.
"I don't know whether I ought to tell you," she said. "You see—Dr Dudley doesn't know you as well as I do. He said in that horrid sneering way of his, 'And do you know what induced her to come masquerading down here?' I gave him a piece of my mind, I can tell you." And Matilda repeated the retort which she had so often gone over with keen satisfaction in her own mind.
"You loyal little soul!" said Mona; but her face had turned very white.
"Dr Dudley asked such an extraordinary thing," Matilda went on. "He wanted to know whether you were—amedical student!"
Ah! so he had noticed her name in the lists. Then why had he not written to her at the School?
"Fancy his imagining such a thing! Pa told him you had no need to do anything for yourself."
Mona was too preoccupied to think of it at the time; but, before she left Borrowness, she broke to the Cooksons the astounding fact that, although she had no need to do anything for herself, she was a medical student.
When she came to think calmly over the incident which Matilda had narrated to her, she did not know whether to draw from it comfort or despair. She was not sorry that Dudley should have been angry,—angry enough to forget himself before little Matilda Cookson; but had he been content to condemn her unheard? Surely he could in some way have got a letter to her. Algiers and Cairo were far off, but they were not on the astral plane.
No, certainly Mona did not despair of her friend. It might have been better for her physically if she had. If she had been sure that he had forgotten her, she would have turned the key with a will on the suite of enchanted rooms; but the suspense, the excitement of uncertainty, was wearing out her strength.
When spring came round she was thoroughly ill. She went about her work as usual, but even her lecturers and fellow-students saw that something was wrong; and Sir Douglas implored her to give up medicine altogether.
"I ought to have trusted my own instincts," he said. "The very first day I saw your face, I felt sure that you were not the sort to make a doctor. That kind of work wants women of coarser fibre. There us no use trying to chop wood with a razor."
In vain Mona protested that medical work had nothing to do with it; that she could not live without her hospital. She was not prepared to suggest any other explanation, and Sir Douglas stuck to his point.
"Don't fret, dear," she said at last. "If you like, I will go and see Dr Alice Bateson to-morrow."
"Do!" he said emphatically. "I have a great mind to go and see her myself."
So next evening Mona found herself in a pleasant, airy consulting-room. Dr Bateson rose as her patient entered, and looked at her steadily, with the penetrating brown eyes.
"I am not ill," Mona said apologetically. "But I can't sleep much, and things get on my nerves; so I thought I would allow myself the luxury of consulting you."
"You do look seedy," was the frank reply, and the brown eyes kept firm hold of the white, sensitive face. "Over-working?"
"No."
"When is your next examination?"
"Not for eighteen months."
"So it isn't that?"
"No, it isn't that."
Dr Bateson put her fingers on the girl's pulse. Her manner could not be called strictly sympathetic—certainly not effusive—but there was something very irresistible in her profound and unassumed interest in her patients.
"Is something particular worrying you?" she said shortly.
Mona smiled drearily.
"There you have me," she said. "Something is worrying me. It lies entirely out of my power, so I cannot control it; and it is still uncertain, so I cannot make up my mind to it."
"And you can't shake it off, and wait?"
"I am afraid it is because I have failed in that, that I have come to you. I suppose I am demanding the impossible—asking you to 'minister to a mind diseased.'"
"I don't mind ministering to a mind diseased at all—if it is not too diseased to carry out my instructions. In this age of worry and strain one laughs at the stories of the old doctors, who declined to undertake a case if the patient had anything on his mind. They would not have a very flourishing practice now-a-days. Thousands of worries and not a few suicides might be prevented by the timely use of a simple tonic. Prosaic, isn't it?"
"Prove it true in my case, and I shall be grateful to you all my life. I don't play the part of invalidcon amore."
"That I believe. What are you going to do with your Easter holiday?"
"I am not going to leave town,—at least not for more than a few days."
"Why not?"
Mona's appearance did not suggest the lack of means, to which Dr Alice Bateson was pretty well accustomed in her practice.
"I want to get on with my hospital work; and besides, it is work that keeps one sane."
"That is quite true up to a certain point. I suppose you have friends that you can go to?"
"Yes. My aunt wants me to go to Bournemouth with her," Mona admitted unwillingly.
"And is she a congenial companion?"
"Thoroughly; but I should mope myself to death."
"Not if you follow my advice. Live on the cliffs the whole day long, read what will rest you, and take a tonic that will make you eat in spite of yourself."
She asked a few more questions, and then consulted Mona very frankly about the ingredients of her prescription. Dr Bateson did not at all believe in making a mystery of her art, nor in drawing a hard-and-fast line between students and doctors.
"Thank you very much indeed," Mona said, rising and tendering her fee.
"Nonsense! we are none of us cannibals, as your great Scotch Æsculapius says. I don't take fees from students and nurses."
"But I am not studying in order to support myself."
"I can't help that. Now I wonder if you mean to take my advice as well as my tonic?" She asked the question quite dispassionately, as if it only interested her in an abstract way.
"If you don't accept a fee," Mona said, in an injured tone, "you bind me over to take your advice."
"Ah! if that's the case, I wish I could afford to refuse fees from all my patients. Good-bye. Send me a line from Bournemouth to tell me how you get on. I wish I could be of more use to you!" And for the first time a look of very genuine sympathy shot from the honest brown eyes.
"Well?" said Sir Douglas, when he saw Mona next day.
"Dr Bateson says I am to go to Bournemouth with Aunt Maud."
"Nonsense! Did she really?"
Warmly as Sir Douglas approved of women-doctors, it was a source of great surprise to him that they should recommend anything sensible.
And so it came to pass that Mona began by degrees to pick up fresh health and strength in spite of everything. She could not shake off her worry; but day by day, to her own surprise, it weighed on her more bearably.
One morning near the end of April she took up a copy of theTimes, and her eye fell on the following notice—"On the 23d inst., at Carlton Lodge, Borrowness, Eleanor Jane, relict of the late George Hamilton, Esq., J.P. and D.L. of the County, in her 79th year."
"So she came home to die," Mona thought; "and now—now I suppose he will come up to London and go on with his work. I wonder if he will present himself at Burlington House for his medal next month? For, if he does, I shall see him."
And it was well that Presentation Day was so near, or Dr Bateson might have been disappointed, after all, in the results of her prescription.
The eventful day dawned at last, clear and bright, with a summer sky and a fresh spring breeze.
"One would think I was a bride at the very least," Mona said, laughing, when Lucy and Evelyn came in to help her to dress.
"If you think we would take this amount of trouble for a common or garden bride," said Lucy loftily, "you are profoundly mistaken. Bride, indeed!"
Sir Douglas had insisted on giving Mona an undergraduate's gown, heavy and handsome as it could be made; and the sight of her in that, and in a most becoming trencher, did more to reconcile him to her study of medicine than any amount of argument could have done.
"Distinctly striking!" was Mona's comment, when Lucy and Evelyn stopped dancing round her, and allowed her to see herself in the pier-glass. And she was perfectly right. Never in all her bright young life had she looked so charming as she did that Presentation Day.
"You will go to the function to day, Ralph?" said Melville to his friend the same morning.
"Not I! God bless my soul! when a man has graduated at Edinburgh and Cambridge, he can afford to dispense with a twopenny-halfpenny function at Burlington House."
"I thought you admitted that, even in comparison with Cambridge and Edinburgh, London had its points?"
"So I do. But the graduation ceremony is not one of them. Ceremonial does not sprout kindly on nineteenth-century soil. One misses the tradition, the aroma of faith, the grand roll of theIn nomine Patrix. Call it superstition, humbug, what you will, but materialism is confoundedly inartistic."
"Spoken like a book with pictures. But without entering fully into the question of Atheism versus Christianity, the point at issue is briefly this: I have got a ticket for the affair, for the first time in my life, and I want to applaud somebody I know. Sweet girl-graduates are all very well, but I decline to waste all my adolescent enthusiasm on a physiologist in petticoats."
"By the way, a woman did get the Physiology Medal, did not she?" And Dudley felt a faint, awakening curiosity to see that other Miss Maclean.
"Oh, if it is going to make you sigh like that," said Melville, "I withdraw all I have said. I have no wish to sacrifice you on the altar of friendship."
"Did I sigh?" said Ralph very wearily. "It was not for that. Oh yes, dear boy, I'll go. It won't be the first time I have made a fool of myself for your sake."
And he did feel himself very much of a fool when, a few hours later, he went up on the platform of the crowded theatre to receive the pretty golden toy. The experience reminded him of his brilliant schoolboy days, and he half expected some kindly old gentleman to clap Him on the shoulder as he went back to his seat. He was thankful to escape into insignificance again; and then, adjusting his gold-rimmed spectacles, he proceeded to watch for Miss Mona Maclean.
It was well that he had ceased to be the centre of attraction in the theatre. Ralph was not a blushing man, but a moment later his face became as red as the cushioned seats of the hall, and when the wave of colour passed away, it left him ashy pale. At the first sight of that dear familiar face, beautiful to-day with excitement, as he had seen it at Castle Maclean, his hard, aggrieved feeling against her vanished, and he thought only how good it would be to speak to her again. He was proud of her beauty, proud of the ovation she received, proud of his love for her.
But while the tedious ceremony went on, the facts of the case came back to him one by one, like common objects that have been blotted for the moment out of view by some dazzling light. His face settled into a heavy frown.
"I will walk along Regent Street with her," he thought, "and ask her what it all meant."
At last the "function" was over. Mona seemed to be surrounded by congratulating friends, and so indeed was he; but before many minutes had passed he found himself following her out of the hall,—gaining on her. She was very pale. Was it reaction after the excitement of the ceremony? or did she know that he was behind her?
In another moment he would have spoken, but during that moment a bluff, elderly professor, who had been looking at Mona with much interest and perplexity, suddenly seized her hand.
"Why, I declare it is Yum-Yum!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "No wonder she took us by surprise on a deserted coast, when she wins an ovation like this at Burlington House!"
Mona stopped to speak, and Dudley passed on.
No wonder, indeed! What a blind bat, what an utter imbecile, he had been! and how he had babbled to her of his past, present, and future, while she had sat looking at him, with infinite simplicity and frankness in her honest eyes!
His lip curled with a cynical smile.
"Bravo, old chap!" said Melville's friendly voice. "It was a genuine consolation to my misanthropic mind to reflect that one of those medals was well earned."
Ralph stopped for a minute or two to speak to his friend, and then went down the steps. Most of the carriages had gone, but, a few yards from the door, a pair of fine bays were pawing the ground. Ralph looked up and recognised his Anglo-Indian friend, Sir Douglas Munro; but Sir Douglas was waiting for a lady, and had no eyes for the clever young doctor. Ralph's glance wandered on to the next carriage, and when it came idly back to the bays, he saw that the lady had arrived. Nay, more, the lady was looking at him with a very eloquent face.
"Dr Dudley," she said, almost below her breath.
For an instant Dudley hesitated,—then gravely lifted his hat and walked on. He could not speak to her now; he must have time to think. It seemed to him that his very soul was torn in two. One half loved Mona, clamoured for her, stretched out blind hands that longed to take her on any terms, unquestioning; but the other half refused to be carried away by glamour and mere blind impulse, the other half was outraged by this trivial motiveless deception, the other half had dreamed of an ideal marriage and would not be put off with anything short of its ideal. How little he knew of her, after all! He had not met her a dozen times—what wonder if he had been mistaken!