let me explain all this to our good friends here:
and mind, not a word about it to Alfred."

When she was gone, he said, "Gentlemen, my
son is madly in love; that is all."

"Oh, Erotic monomania is a very ordinary
phase of insanity."

"His unreasonable passion for a girl he knows
he can never marry makes him somewhat
crotchety and cranky: that, and over-study, may
have unhinged his mind a little: suppose I send
him abroad? my good brother will find the
means; or we could advance it him, I and the
other trustees; he comes into ten thousand
pounds in a month or two."

The doctors exchanged a meaning look. They
then dissuaded him earnestly from the idea of
continental travel.

"Cœlum non animam mutant qui trans mare
currunt," said Wycherley, and Osmond explained
that Alfred would brood abroad as well as at
home, if he went alone: and Dr. Wycherley
summed up thus: "The most advisable course
is to give him the benefit of the personal
superintendence of some skilful physician possessed of
means and appliances of every sort for soothing
and restraining the specific malady."

Mr. Hardie did not at first see the exact
purport of this oleaginous periphrasis. He knitted
his brows. Presently he caught a glimpse: but
said he thought confinement was hardly the
thing to drive away melancholy.

"Not in all respects," replied Dr. Wycherley:
"but, on the other hand, a little gentle restraint
is the safest way of effecting a disruption of the
fatal associations that have engendered and tend
to perpetuate the disorder. Besides, the medicinal
appliances are invaluable; including, as they do,
the nocturnal and diurnal attendance of a
Psychophysical physician, who knows the Psychosomatic
relation of body and mind, and can apply physical
remedies, of the effect of which on the physical
instrument of intelligence, the grey matter of the
brain, we have seen so many examples."

The good doctor then feelingly deplored, the
inhumanity of parents and guardians in declining
to subject their incubators to opportune and
salutary restraint under the more than parental
care of a Psychosomatic physician. On this head
he got quite warm, and inveighed against the
abominable cruelty of the thing.

"It is contrary," said he, "to every principle
of justice and humanity that a fellow-creature,
deranged perhaps only on one point, should for the
want of the early attention of those, whose duty it
is to watch over him, linger out his existence
separated from all who are dear to him, and condemned
without any crime to be a prisoner for life."

Mr. Hardie was puzzled by this sentence, in
which the speaker's usual method was reversed,
and the thought was bigger than the words.

The doctors did not interfere, but let the
suggestion ferment.

"Oh," said Mr. Hardie, at last, "I see. We
ought to incarcerate our children to keep them
from being incarcerated."

"That is one way of putting it with a
vengeance," said Mr. Osmond, staring. "No; what
my good friend means——"

"Is this; where the patient is possessor of an
income of such a character as to enable his
friends to show a sincere affection by anticipating
the consequences of neglected morbid phenomena
of the brain, there a lamentable want of humanity
is exhibited by the persistent refusal to the
patient, on the part of his relatives, of the
incalculable advantage of the authoritative advice of
a competent physician accompanied with the
safeguards and preventives of——"

But ere the mellifluous pleonast had done
oiling his paradox with fresh polysyllables, to
make it slip into the Banker's narrow
understanding, he met with a curious interruption.
Jane Hardie fluttered in to say a man was at the
door accusing himself of being deranged.

"How often this sort of coincidence occurs,"
said Osmond, philosophically.

"Do not refuse him, dear papa; it is not for
money: he only wants you to give him an order
to go into a lunatic asylum."

"Now, there is a sensible man," said Dr.
Wycherley.

"Well but," objected Mr. Hardie, "if he is a
sensible man, why does he want to go to an
asylum?"

"Oh, they are all sensible at times," observed
Mr. Osmond.

"Singularly so," said Dr. Wycherley, warmly.
And he showed a desire to examine this paragon,
who had the sense to know he was out of his
senses.

"It would be but kind of you, sir," said Jane;
"poor, poor man!" She added, he did not like
to come in, and would they mind just going out
to him?

"Oh no, not in the least: especially as you
seem interested in him."

And they all three rose and went out together,
and found the petitioner at the front door. Who
should it be, but James Maxley!

His beard was unshaven, his face haggard, and
everything about him showed a man broken in
spirit as well as fortune: even his voice had lost
half its vigour, and, whenever he had uttered a
consecutive sentence or two, his head dropped
on his breast, pitiably: indeed, this sometimes
occurred in the middle of a sentence, and then
the rest of it died on his lips.

Mr. Richard Hardie was not prepared to
encounter one of his unhappy creditors thus
publicly, and, to shorten the annoyance, would have
dismissed him roughly: but he dared not; for
Maxley was no longer alone, nor unfriended:
when Jane left him, to intercede for him, a
young man joined him, and was now comforting
him with kind words, and trying to get him to
smoke a cigar: and this good-hearted young
gentleman was the Banker's son in the flesh, and
his opposite in spirit, Mr. Alfred Hardie.

Finding these two in contact, the Doctors
interchanged demurest glances.