The cause of the feeling which for some time past had induced her to shrink from Ronald, to be silent and depressed when he was present, and to be rather glad when he stayed away from Brook-street, was now perfectly understood by her. In her new appreciation of herself she saw plainly that the fact of her brother's having always been Ramsay Caird's friend and Chudleigh Wilmot's enemy would, insensibly to herself, have caused an estrangement between them in these later days. And why was Ronald so hostile to Wilmot, so bitter in his depreciation of him, so grudging in his praise even of Wilmot's professional qualifications? Was this hostility merely a result of Ronald's normal "oddness" and sternness, or did it spring from the fact that Ronald had observed his sister narrowly, and had discovered, before she herself knew of it, the state of her feelings towards Wilmot? Thinking over this, the remembrance of her brother's manner that morning in Brook-street, when he broke in upon her interview with Wilmot, flashed across Madeleine's mind, and she felt convinced that her dread suspicions were right, and that Ronald had guessed the truth.
The reason of his hatred to Wilmot was then at once apparent to Madeleine. Ronald had always supported Ramsay's unacknowledged position in the family very strongly, not demonstratively, but tacitly, as was his custom in most things. He was essentially "thorough;" and Madeleine imagined that nothing would probably annoy him so much as the lack of thoroughness in those whom he loved and trusted. She saw that, actuated by these feelings, her brother would regard, had regarded what she had previously imagined to be her admiration and reverence, but what she now knew, and what Ronald had probably from the first recognised, to be her love for Chudleigh Wilmot as base treachery; and he hated Wilmot for having, however innocently, called these feelings into play. However innocently? There was a drop of comfort even in this bitter cup for poor Madeleine. However innocently? Ronald was a man of the world, eminently clear-headed and far-seeing--might not his hatred of Wilmot arise from his having perceived that Wilmot himself was aware of Madeleine's feelings, and reciprocated them? He had never said so--never hinted at it; but then that soft fond look into her eyes when they were alone together in the drawing-room in Brook-street rose in the girl's memory, and almost bade her hope.