ttendant had just brought her. "You would not suppose I
suffered from such a complaint, would you?"--and she held up a small
arched foot, with a scarcely perceptible swelling in the larger joint.
She laughed somewhat affectedly, and the neighbour, who was fat and
coarse, and had decided gouty symptoms herself, looked at her with
something of the contempt an invalid elephant might be supposed to
bestow on a buzzing fly.

"You made that remark the last time you were here," she said; "and I
told you, if you suffered from a suppressed form of the disease, it
would be all the worse for you. Much better for it to come out--my
doctor says."

There was no doubt about the disease having "come out" in the person of
the speaker. It had "come out" in her face, which was brilliantly
rubicund; in her hands, and ankles and feet, which were a distressful
spectacle of "knobs" and "bumps" of an exaggerated phrenological type--
perhaps also in her temper, which was fierce and fiery as her
complexion, as most of the frequenters of the Baths knew, and the
attendants also, to their cost.

The small, dark lady, with the arched feet, lapsed into sulky silence,
and let her eyes wander over the room to see if anyone she knew was
there.

The Baths were of an extensive and sumptuous description--fitted up with
almost oriental luxury and comfort, and attached to a monster hotel,
built by an enterprising Company of speculators, at an English winter
resort, in Hampshire.

The Company had proudly hoped that lavish expenditure, a beautiful
situation, and the disinterested recommendation of fashionable
physicians, would induce English people to discover that there were
spots and places in their own land as healthy and convenient as
Auvergne, or Wiesbaden, or the Riviera. But though the coast views were
fine, and the scenery picturesque, and the monster hotel itself stood on
a commanding eminence, surrounded by darkly-beautiful pine woods, and
was fitted up with every luxury of modern civilisation, including every
specimen of Bath that human ingenuity had devised, the Company looked
blankly at the returns on their balance-sheet, and one or two Directors
murmured audible complaints at special Board meetings, against the
fashionable physicians who had not acted up to their promises, or proved
deserving of the substantial bonus which had been more than hinted at,
as a reward for recommended patients.

On this December morning, some half-dozen la