a strumous diathesis. In broad
terms, I may say that you have a constitutional and hereditary taint."

The young baronet sank back in his chair, and his chin fell forwards
upon his chest. The doctor sprang to a side-table and poured out half
a glass of liqueur brandy which he held to his patient's lips. A
little fleck of colour came into his cheeks as he drank it down.

"Perhaps I spoke a little abruptly," said the doctor, "but you must
have known the nature of your complaint. Why, otherwise, should you
have come to me?"

"God help me, I suspected it; but only today when my leg grew bad. My
father had a leg like this."

"It was from him, then----?"

"No, from my grandfather. You have heard of Sir Rupert Norton, the
great Corinthian?"

The doctor was a man of wide reading with a retentive, memory. The
name brought back instantly to him the remembrance of the sinister
reputation of its owner--a notorious buck of the thirties--who had
gambled and duelled and steeped himself in drink and debauchery, until
even the vile set with whom he consorted had shrunk away from him in
horror, and left him to a sinister old age with the barmaid wife whom
he had married in some drunken frolic. As he looked at the young man
still leaning back in the leather chair, there seemed for the instant
to flicker up behind him some vague presentiment of that foul old dandy
with his dangling seals, many-wreathed scarf, and dark satyric face.
What was he now? An armful of bones in a mouldy box. But his deeds--
they were living and rotting the blood in the veins of an innocent man.

"I see that you have heard of him," said the young baronet. "He died
horribly, I have been told; but not more horribly than he had lived.
My father was his only son. He was a studious man, fond of books and
canaries and the country; but his innocent life did not save him."

"His symptoms were cutaneous, I understand."

"He wore gloves in the house. That was the first thing I can remember.
And then it was his throat. And then his legs. He used to ask me so
often about my own health, and I thought him so fussy, for how could I
tell what the meaning of it was. He was always watching me--always
with a sidelong eye fixed upon me. Now, at last, I know what he was
watching for."

"Had you brothers or sisters?"

"None, thank God."

"Well, well, it is a sad case, and very typical of many which come in
my way. You are no lonely sufferer, Sir Francis.