Miss Wilmot

“ Wilmot was at first bewildered.
"My legs?"
"They are to be grafted on my poor old stumps," said Blizzard. "You won't die. You'll just be as I am now. And I--I," his eyes shone with an unholy light, "shall be as you are now--a biped--a real man--a giant of a man. You are going to consent?"
"How do I know that you will let Miss Ferris go?"
"You shall have news of her freedom and safety in her own writing."
"When I have that assurance," said Wilmot, "I will consent to anything. Any decent man would give his life for a woman--why not his legs? Is Dr. Ferris to operate?" ”

“ For a man like Wilmot, with virtues so eminent, sensations so acute, and a mind so elevated, to be thus impelled to seek a refuge in death was a thought that almost made me hate existence myself, and doubt whether I might not hereafter be driven to the same desperate expedient, to escape the odious injustice of mankind. The distraction too which would seize on Miss Wilmot haunted my thoughts ”

“ The first retreat of Miss Wilmot, after leaving the house of the bishop, was to a poor lodging provided by Mary. From this she was removed by the friendly young lady to her present asylum, till she could find the means of maintaining herself; and had since been supplied with necessaries through the same channel. 'The favours she confers on me,' said Miss Wilmot, 'are not so properly characterised by delicacy, as by a much higher quality; an open and unaffected sensibility of soul; a benevolent intention of promoting human happiness ”

“ Lady Julia Wilmot, whilom a graceful beauty—a handsome woman still—had a theory that worry of any kind told unfavourably on the female face, that thought wrinkled the forehead, puckered the eyes and mouth, and consequently she never thought or worried herself about anything, and therefore was wonderfully young-looking and smooth-visaged for her years—being one of the best preserved women in England. ”

“ A pity for a beautiful girl to do anything but exist."
Wilmot's eyebrows went up a little. The beggar's speech surprised him, and pleased him, since it expressed a favorite thought of his own.
"Is any of her work on exhibition? Having seen her once, one takes an interest, you know."
"I think there is nothing that can be seen," said Wilmot coolly, "except upon special invitation. And I think she is very shy of showing anything that she has done."
"True artists," said Blizzard, who criminally was an artist himself and knew what he was talking about, "live in the future." ”

“ No infant was ever known to cut its teeth with greater ease. No little girl was more amiable, more beautiful; the intelligence the child exhibited was preternatural. When, in course of time, Wilmot grew into a really pretty girl, with very taking if somewhat forward manners, the exultation of the father knew no bounds. Nor was her mother, Zerah, less devoted to the child; and for a long period Wilmot was the bond between husband and wife, the one topic on which they thought alike, the one object over which they were equally hopeful, ambitious, and proud. ”

“ Miss Wilmot is such a sweet young lady; she don't seem to have a bit of pride. I do love her already."
"Hallo, my girl, you're going on fast! Forsaking old friends for new ones already!"
"O no, father, please don't say that. I couldn't forsake old friends, and I love everybody at home as much as ever."
Littleburgh was not yet "home" to the Dunns.
"But I do think Miss Wilmot is sweet, and I'm so glad she will have the class herself."
CHAPTER XIII. MISSING.
AT half-past eight Archie reached his home, feeling altogether guilty and uncomfortable. ”

“ Lord Wilmot was only slightly known to them; but they received him courteously, and learned from him a good many details of the disastrous fight at Worcester, and the hopelessness of any farther resistance to the Parliamentary leaders.
"But His Majesty is safe, I trust?" questioned the old lady anxiously. Lord Wilmot made guarded reply:
"His Majesty is with friends, who are forwarding him to the coast where he must take ship for France once more."
"Pray heaven he fall not into the hands of his foes!" cried Mrs. Lane earnestly; and the two men breathed a fervent "Amen." ”

“ He found himself arguing the whole matter out with Francey Wilmot—a cool and reasoned exposition such as he had been incapable of at the crisis of their relationship. ("This woman is a malignant growth. Nature destroys her. Do you pretend to feel regret or pity?") But though he imagined the whole scene—saw himself as authoritative and convincing—he could not re-create Francey Wilmot. She remained herself. Her eyes, fixed on him with that remembered look of candid and questioning tenderness, blazed up into an anger as unexpectedly fierce and uncompromising. ”

“ Wilmot. “She has won papa’s heart by her kindness to me,” said Margaret, smiling. “You see her beautiful flowers? She seems to me made to lavish pleasures on others wherever she goes.”
“Oh, yes, they are most kind-hearted,” said Mr. Wilmot. “It is only the excess of a virtue that could be blamed in them, and they are most valuable to the place. She will learn experience in time—I only hope she will not be spoiled.”
Flora felt as if her father must be thinking his morning’s argument confirmed, and she was annoyed. ”

“ Wilmot would be a godsend. “I shall learn more than I could pick up in three months, otherwise,” was her smiling reflection as she settled herself opposite her hostess at one of the tables of colored marble, in the embrasure of a window.
“We’re early, or we shouldn’t get a table,” pursued Lady Wilmot. “Always a hideous crush here. Well, my dear, I hope the babies are better? What an untold nuisance children must be! Measles is part of them, I suppose? How do you like your cottage? And when is Jack coming home? Tea and cake and muffins”—this to the waiter, in parenthesis. ”

“ To Wilmot there appeared the figure of a little stout man with red hair and a pug nose, who was dripping wet, and who smiled in an engaging fashion.
"You're safe as you'd be in your own house," said the kindly Jew; "no ether--no amputation--no nothing. And here's a note from Miss Barbara. I'm dripping wet, but I guess the ink hasn't run so's you can't read it."
Wilmot read his note, and a great light of happiness came into his eyes,
"After a while," said Lichtenstein, "I'll hunt up more clothes for you, and you can jump into a car and run out to Clovelly. ”

“ Therefore, although he had often been forbidden to call during working hours, he had himself driven to 17 McBurney Place and climbed the two flights of stairs to her studio.
It was a disconsolate Barbara who received him. She had on her work-apron, but she was not working. She sat in a deep chair, and presented the soles of her small shoes to an open fire. Wilmot, expecting to be scolded for disobeying orders, was relieved at being received with visible signs of pleasure.
"You're just the person I wanted to see," she said, "just the one and only Wilmot in the world."
"Are you dying?" he asked. ”

“ The affectionate friendship of Miss Wilmot: A very unexpected visitor: His extraordinary conduct, and a scene of reconciliation: A letter which excites delightful sensations
The morning came, the diligence of Mr. Hilary was that of a friend, and the best parlour was soon filled: the reader will easily guess by whom. There is an undescribable pleasure, when we are persecuted by one set of human beings, to receive marks of affection from another. It is a strong consolation to know that kindness and justice have not wholly forsaken the earth.
Wilmot, Clarke, and Turl were with me. ”

“ Wilmot was left a widow when her two daughters, Grace and Lucy, were very young—so young that Lucy, who is now ten years old, does not remember her father at all, and Grace, who is twelve, has only a very faint recollection of a gentleman, who, when he was lying on a couch in the parlor, used to have her brought to him, and kiss her, and give her some of the candies which he always seemed to have near him. Mrs. Wilmot found herself not very rich on the death of her husband, and as she was a very highly educated and accomplished woman, she was advised to keep a school for young ladies. ”

“ Wilmot was his second mate. A harum-scarum fellow, and pretending to a great scorn for all the girls. The fact is he was really timid. But let only one of them do as much as lift her little finger in encouragement, and there was nothing that could hold the beggar. As apprentice, once, he deserted abroad after a petticoat, and would have gone to the dogs then, if his skipper hadn’t taken the trouble to find him and lug him by the ears out of some house of perdition or other.
“It was said that one of the firm had been heard once to express a hope that this brute of a ship would get lost soon. ”

“ Wilmot, as her colour deepened, and tears rose to her dark gray eyes. "If he has any feeling, it is certainly for his friends--at least he wastes none of it on me."
"You are always brooding over that, Mabel," said her cousin, "and it is labour and sorrow wasted. No man is worth being miserable about, dear, and Wilmot is no more worth it than his neighbours. ”

“ If Madeleine had been bright, clever, witty, fast, flirting, or blasée, she would never have seen her physician after her recovery. Wilmot was too thoroughly acquainted with women of all these varieties to find any pleasure in an additional specimen. It was the young girl's freshness and innocence, her frankness and trusting confidence, her bright looks and happy thoughts, that touched the heart of the worn and solitary man, and made him feel that there were in life joys which he had never experienced, and which were yet worth living for. ”

“ If the case had not been his own, Wilmot would have remembered that the spectacle of a new-made widow or widower always has attractions for the curiosity of the vulgar: strong, if the grief in the case be very violent; and stronger, if it be mild or non-existent. Wilmot was awfully shocked by his wife's death, terribly remorseful for his own absence, and perhaps for another reason--at which, however, he had not yet had the hardihood to look--almost stunned by the terrible sense, the conviction of the irrevocable ill of the past, the utterly irreparable nature of the wrong that had been done. ”

“ Poor Jerry! The life of the mess and the life of Wilmothurst when at home, where, in consideration of his five feet ten inches and irreproachable moustache, he had been latterly permitted to be termed a 'son,' and not, as his mother would have wished, a 'boy.'
Lady Julia Wilmot had never posed in society save as a beauty, and the great consideration that was ever shown her was due to that beauty and her birth and position as an earl's daughter; but not to any brilliant qualities of head—still less of amiability of heart. ”

“ She was of a dreamy and romantic temperament, to which the delicacy of health and the not quite congenial conditions of her life at home contributed not a little; and she had seen in Wilmot the man of talent, action, and resolve, the realisation of the nineteenth-century heroic ideal. To admire and reverence him; to find the best and most valuable of resources in his friendship, the wisest and truest guidance in his intellect, the most exquisite of pleasures in his society; to triumph in his fame, and try to merit his approval,--such was the girl's scheme for the future. ”

“ Wilmot, is she as good as she is beautiful?"
"How absurd," said Julia hastily; "just as though one cannot be handsome and good too."
"I didn't say they couldn't, sister," said Fanny; "but I thought—yes, I'm sure she looks a little selfish!"
"Upon my word you're very polite," said Julia. "Mr. Wilmot will doubtless feel complimented by what you say of his sister."
"Never mind, Fanny," said Mr. Wilmot; "never mind; you are more of a physiognomist than I thought you were, for Kate's great fault is being too selfish; but she will overcome that in time, I think." ”

“ She changed color under his steady eyes.
"You just give me a certain promise, Barbs, and I give you my word of honor I'll settle to something above-board and make it hum. Look here now! How about it? Who's been so faithful to the one girl for so long? Who understands her so well? Who'd enjoy dying for her so much?"
"Good old Wilmot," she said gently and gave him her hand. He kissed it and would have liked to go on holding it forever, but she took it away from him, and after a silence said, with some bitterness: "I mustn't ever marry anybody. I've learned to know myself too well. ”

“ He could see her Catherine-wheeling round the stage, and the man with the bloated face and tragic, intelligent eyes.
"Life itself, my dear fellow. Life itself."
And she was dead.
Frances Wilmot married Uloth a year later. With her he became something more than a great doctor. ”

“ When Barbara was kind he despised his anomalous position and strove to free himself from it; but even the best man has to live.
And during those intervals when he thought he could do without her, Wilmot sank deeper and deeper into methods of self-advancement which, if not actually base and culpable, at least smirched the finer qualities of his nature, and hardened his heart.
If the father's heritage, drink and women, were spared him, or at least that part of him which was really noble, a love of cleanness, clear-mindedness, and purity, died hard. But gambling was second nature to him. ”

“ What is it, Clara?" Mrs. Wilmot's eye rested just then on the locket which she wore on her wrist, and this prompted the question—"Clara, did you speak the whole truth to-day when you told me this locket was paid for? Do you owe nothing on it?"
"No, mamma Wilmot; nothing on that, but I owe—" she stopped.
"Not Cecille, Clara," said Mrs. Wilmot; "you could not be so thoughtless—so selfish—as to keep her hard earnings from her for a single day, for any purpose of your own. Speak, my child, and tell me it is not so." ”