purpose soon after the dessert has been placed on the
table.

The waiter enters the room with a letter for me, and announces that the
bearer waits to know if there is any answer. I open the envelope, and
find inside a few lines from my lawyers, announcing the completion of
some formal matter of business. I at once seize the opportunity that is
offered to me. Instead of sending a verbal message downstairs, I make my
apologies, and use the letter as a pretext for leaving the room.

Dismissing the messenger who waits below, I return to the corridor in
which my rooms are situated, and softly open the door of my bed-chamber.
A second door communicates with the sitting-room, and has a ventilator
in the upper part of it. I have only to stand under the ventilator,
and every word of the conversation between Sir James and the physician
reaches my ears.

"Then you think I am right?" are the first words I hear, in Sir James's
voice.

"Quite right," the doctor answers.

"I have done my best to make him change his dull way of life," Sir James
proceeds. "I have asked him to pay a visit to my house in Scotland; I
have proposed traveling with him on the Continent; I have offered
to take him with me on my next voyage in the yacht. He has but one
answer--he simply says No to everything that I can suggest. You have
heard from his own lips that he has no definite plans for the future.
What is to become of him? What had we better do?"

"It is not easy to say," I hear the physician reply. "To speak plainly,
the man's nervous system is seriously deranged. I noticed something
strange in him when he first came to consult me about his mother's
health. The mischief has not been caused entirely by the affliction of
her death. In my belief, his mind has been--what shall I say?--unhinged,
for some time past. He is a very reserved person. I suspect he has been
oppressed by anxieties which he has kept secret from every one. At his
age, the unacknowledged troubles of life are generally troubles caused
by women. It is in his temperament to take the romantic view of love;
and some matter-of-fact woman of the present day may have bitterly
disappointed him. Whatever may be the cause, the effect is plain--his
nerves have broken down, and his brain is necessarily affected by
whatever affects his nerves. I have known men in his condition who have
ended badly. He may drift into insane delusions, if his present course
of life is not altered. Did you hear