What could he see in her? She asked herself this question a thousand times without arriving at any satisfactory result. She thought that Wilmot, whom she had exalted into her hero, would naturally not bestow his thoughts on any but a heroine; and she knew that there was very little of the heroine in her. Indeed I, writing this veracious history, am often surprised at my own daring in having, in these highly-spiced times, ventured to submit so very tame a specimen of womanhood to public notice. Madeleine Kilsyth was neither tawny and leopard-like, nor hideous and quaintly-fascinating. She was merely an ordinary English girl, with about as much cleverness as girls have at her age, when they have had no occasion to use their brains; And she thought and argued in a girlish manner. She could not tell that the difference in each from their ordinary acquaintance pleased them equally. 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.
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 to try to merit his approval--such, as we have seen, had been Madeleine's scheme. Now this was all changed: he was gone; the greatest enjoyment of her life, his society, was taken from her. He was gone; he would be absent for a long time; she should not see him, would not hear his voice, for weeks--it might be for months: it took her a long time to realise this fact, and with its realisation flashed across her the knowledge that she loved Chudleigh Wilmot.