Page:Braddon--Wyllard's weird.djvu/199

Rh evening mail. We shall have plenty of help. Fortunately it is Julian's own wish to go back to Cornwall."

"Is there any improvement in his state today?"

"I dare not say there is improvement. He is very calm, quite resigned. The physicians told him the nature of his malady; but they did not tell him that it is hopeless. They left his own intelligence to discover that; and I fear he knows the truth only too well already. Would you like to see him, if he is inclined to receive you?"

"Yes, I should much like to see him."

Dora went into the adjoining room, and closed the door behind her. She reopened it almost immediately, and beckoned to Heathcote, who went in with careful footstep and bated breath, almost as he might have entered the chamber of death.

Julian Wyllard was reclining on a sofa, his head and shoulders propped up by pillows, his legs covered with a fur rug. There was something in the very position of the body, so straight, so rigid a line from the waist downwards, which told of that death in life that had fallen upon the strong man; the man whom Edward Heathcote had last seen erect, in all the vigour of manhood, tall, broad-shouldered, powerful.

"Well, Heathcote, you have come to see the wreck of proud humanity," he said, with a half-sad, half-cynical smile. "You did not know when you were with us the other night that my race was so nearly run, that I was to break down in the middle of the course. I have had my warnings, but I made light of them, and the blow came unexpectedly at last. But it has left the brain clear. That is some comfort. Sit down; I want to talk to you—and Dora—seriously."

He was very pale—white even to the lips, and his wife was watching him anxiously, surprised at the signs of profound agitation in him who had been so calm after the physicians had left him.

"I am very sorry for you, Wyllard; sorry with all my heart," said Heathcote earnestly, as he took the chair nearest the sofa, while Dora seated herself on the other side, close to her husband.

"You are more than good. I am assured that everybody will—pity me," this with a smile of bitterest meaning. "But I want to talk to you about two people in whom you and Dora are both interested—your very lovable sister, and my wife's scapegrace cousin. They are devoted to each other, it seems, and except for this little cloud upon Bothwell's character, I take it you had no objection to the match."

"That was my chief objection."

"Forgive me for saying that it was a most foolish one. Because a few country bumpkins take it into their heads to suspect a gentleman—"