nic apparatus, and my preserved specimens,
and all the rest of it,' said the doctor, placing me in a chair by the
fireside. 'And there is my System mutely addressing you just above
your head, under a form of exposition which I venture to describe as
frankness itself. This is no mad-house, my dear lady. Let other men
treat insanity, if they like--_I_ stop it! No patients in the house as
yet. But we live in an age when nervous derangement (parent of insanity)
is steadily on the increase; and in due time the sufferers will come. I
can wait as Harvey waited, as Jenner waited. And now do put your feet up
on the fender, and tell me about yourself. You are married, of
course? And what a pretty name! Accept my best and most heart-felt
congratulations. You have the two greatest blessings that can fall to a
woman's lot; the two capital H's, as I call them--Husband and Home.'

"I interrupted the genial flow of the doctor's congratulations at the
first opportunity.

"'I am married; but the circumstances are by no means of the ordinary
kind,' I said, seriously. My present position includes none of the
blessings that are usually supposed to fall to a woman's lot. I am
already in a situation of very serious difficulty; and before long I may
be in a situation of very serious danger as well.'

"The doctor drew his chair a little nearer to me, and fell at once into
his old professional manner and his old confidential tone.

"'If you wish to consult me,' he said, softly, 'you know that I have
kept some dangerous secrets in my time, and you also know that I possess
two valuable qualities as an adviser. I am not easily shocked; and I can
be implicitly trusted.'

"I hesitated even now, at the eleventh hour, sitting alone with him
in his own room. It was so strange to me to be trusting to anybody
but myself! And yet, how could I help trusting another person in a
difficulty which turned on a matter of law?

"'Just as you please, you know,' added the doctor. 'I never invite
confidences. I merely receive them.'

"There was no help for it; I had come there not to hesitate, but to
speak. I risked it, and spoke.

"'The matter on which I wish to consult you,' I said, 'is not (as you
seem to think) within your experience as a professional man. But I
believe you may be of assistance to me, if I trust myself to your larger
experience as a man of the world. I warn you beforehand that I shall
certainly surprise, and possibly alarm, you before I