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Rh profess to take a prescription and apparently it will have just the opposite effect from that intended. Sometimes I have asked myself if he has not, all the time, some disease that he rigorously conceals from me, and he simply uses these subterfuges to deceive me."

"Anything is possible with Mr. Romaine," said Ethel quietly. "And yet—he is the most generous of men. Our own father was not half so free with his money to us as Mr. Romaine is. And he seems to shrink from the least acknowledgment of it. How many men, do you think, would allow a doctor to carry his wife and sister-in-law around with him as he does, and do everything for us, as if we were the most valued friends and guests?"

"Oh, Romaine is n't a bad man, so much as a perverse one," replied Chessingham, lightly, "and he is a tremendously interesting one."

At that very moment, Mr. Romaine was in the condition that any man but himself would have called for a doctor—but not for worlds would he have allowed Chessingham to see him then. He understood his own case perfectly—and the one human being near him that was in his confidence was Bridge.

The evening was a very unhappy one for