'If patience and care can cure him, he shall be cured,' said Ida, with a steadfast look, which gave new nobility to her beautiful face in the observant eyes of the physician—a man keen to appreciate every gradation of the physical and the mental, and to tell to the nicest shade where sense left off and soul began. Here was a woman assuredly in whom soul predominated over sense.

'I believe that, madam,' he said, kindly; 'and you shall have my best assistance, depend upon it.'

'Why should a young man bring upon himself such an affliction as this?'
Ida asked, wonderingly. 'Ours is counted a sober era.'

'Why, indeed? After-dinner boozing and three-bottle men are a tradition of the dark ages; and yet there are dozens of young men in London—gifted young men some of them—who are doing this thing every year. Half the untimely deaths you hear of might be traced home to the brandy bottle, if a man had only the curiosity to look into first causes. One man dies of congestion of the lungs. Yes, but he had burnt up his lungs first with perpetual alcohol. Another is a victim to liver. Why, madam, a temperate man may work thirty years under an Indian sun, and hardly know that he has a liver. Another is said to have died of too much brain work. Yes, work done by a brain steeped in alcohol—not a brain, but a preparation in spirits. They all do the same thing—pegging—pegging—pegging—from breakfast to bed-time; and most of them would deny that they are drunkards.'

'Do you think that if my husband drank it was because he was not happy—because he had something on his mind?'

'Much more likely that it was because he had nothing on his mind, my dear madam. These briefless barristers in the Temple—men with private means, not obliged to hunt for work, with a little fancy for literature, and a little taste for the drama—these idle youths, whose only idea of social intercourse is to be gossiping and drinking in one another's rooms all day long, living an undomestic life in chambers, without the public interests or athletic sports of a university—these are the chosen victims of alcohol. Of course, I don't pretend for a moment that they all drink; but where the tendency to drink exists this is the kind of life to foster it.'

'My husband was not obliged to live in chambers—he had a home here.'

'Yes; but young men, unless they are sportsmen, hate the country; and then, once in the London vortex, a man can't easily escape. And now, I suppose, I had better go and see the patient. Does he know I have been sent for?'

'No.'

'Then perhaps we shall have a scene. He may be angry.'