want to know is, has my wife got a disease? I haven't seen any signs.
Is it Bright's, or cancer, or the lungs, or the liver, or the kidneys,
or the heart, or what's its name?"

The Young Doctor had an impulse to flay the heathen, but for the girl-
wife's sake he forbore.

"I don't think it is any of those troubles," he replied smoothly. "She
needs a thorough examination. But one thing is clear: she is wasting;
she is losing ground instead of going ahead. There's a malignant
influence working. She's standing still, and to stand still in youth
is fatal. I can imagine you don't want to lose her, eh?"

The Young Doctor's gray-blue eyes endeavoured to hold the blinking beads
under the shaggy eyebrows long enough to get control of a mind which had
the cunning and cruelty of an animal. He succeeded.

The old man would a thousand times rather his wife lived than died. In
the first place, to lose her was to sacrifice that which he had paid for
dearly--a mortgage of ten thousand dollars torn up. Louise Mazarine
represented that to him first-ten thousand dollars. Secondly, she was
worth it in every way. He had what hosts of others would be glad to
have--men younger and better looking than himself. She represented the
triumph of age. He had lived his life; he had buried two wives; he had
had children; he had made money; and yet here, when other men of his
years were thinking of making wills, and eating porridge, and waiting for
the Dark Policeman to come and arrest them for loitering, he was left a
magnificent piece of property like Tralee; and he had all the sources of
pleasure open to a young man walking the primrose path. He was living
right up to the last. Both his wives were gray-headed when they died--it