CHAPTER XI.

T is not an easy thing for a physician to get away from patients, even at the beginning of the London season. But it was absolutely necessary for Dr. Chacomb to see his unfortunate cousin after this new misfortune which had befallen him. For his own part, he took the blow with the serenity of one who had received many buffets from fortune. If there should be a child, farewell to his heirship. If the woman played her cards well, farewell to his rule at Chacomb. In any case, it was a serious check on his projects; for he meditated great improvements on the estate. Taking the position of a country gentleman, just as the heir presumptive to an earldom might almost consider himself a peer, he gave his attention to questions affecting land, con

tracts with tenants, drainage, high farming, and other things. He talked over these subjects with authority, as one personally interested, and, in fact, enjoyed the additional importance accruing to him as the future possessor of a goodly heritage.

No light owned by Dr. Joseph Chacomb was at this period allowed to burn under a bushel, or, indeed, to burn at all save at such times as might be beneficial to himself. He owed, in fact, everything to the Chacomb estate. An adventurer, a shady general practitioner, a projector of companies which, if they were floated, always came to wreck, a haunter of tenth-rate clubs, where very questionable gentlemen associated to drink and tell stories, he found suddenly, ready to his hand, the rents of his cousin's property. He borrowed-who could resist the temptation of borrowing? He founded with great pains his Royal Hospital for Gout, on which he mounted the ladder of professional reputation. He left his old companions-the bond of friendship among the impecunious is like that among savages, uncertain and liable to sudden tempests of suspicion. He put off the

habits and language of their class; changed his channel of thought; cultivated those manners which make the man; and became a gentle

man.

It required careful observation and long familiarity now to distinguish any trace of his twenty years' vagabondage in the polished doctor. He even became an author, and published that treatise of his "On Gout and its Cognate Diseases" which is still the standard work on the subject, although Dr. Porteous, of Savile-row, always declared that it was translated from the Frencha language which Joseph Chacomb had learned in its purity in the Quartier Latin. He had at solid-looking house in Adelaide-street, Carnarvon-square; he had a professional carriage, with the Chacomb arms, and the soberest of liveries; he had a large medical and general library; he had a servant-the prince of servants- -a man whose manners proclaimed him born to be a master of a college; he had a circle of acquaintance, creditable in themselves, and likely to advance his reputation; he gave dinner parties, at which he told admirable stories. All these things were done and established. Chauncey

Chacomb might develop into a Brigham Young in the matter of wives without affecting the doctor's position, credit, and prosperity. All this was his by right-subject, of course, to the few thousands he had borrowed. He was unmistakably chief physician of the hospital, he had undoubtedly composed a great work, and his doors were besieged by clients.

If there was an air of mystery about the doctor's antecedents, that helped him. Joe Chacomb the adventurer was gone and forgotten. In the new doctor, who sprang suddenly into reputation, people saw a man who was reputed to belong to an excellent Devonshire family, to be the heir of a large property, and who had spent the greater part of his life abroad in the pursuit of science-one who had travelled much, and observed a great deal. Dr. Porteous went so far, indeed, as to hint that perhaps he had travelled in the Isle of Portland, but that did no harm.

His prospects and professional name could not be hurt by Chauncey's conduct. What the doctor felt was a mixture of chagrin that he had been outwitted, pity for his cousin, and anger

with himself for not looking after things more closely.

Outwitted by his own creature-the woman he had sent down because he could trust her; a woman whom he had known for twenty years, and whom he had employed as the first matron of the new hospital until he thought she would be more useful as housekeeper to Chauncey!

"It will be worse for her in the end," he said. "I know her. She will find it grand at first to order the people about; then she will feel dull because no one will call upon her; then her temper will break out-Julia always had the devil's own temper; and then-poor Chauncey! It's a deuced annoying business."

Chauncey, too, whose muddled brain was growing every day feebler and less able to bear excitement; who followed him about like some tame pet when he went to Chacomb; who was only to be trusted because he was harmlesswhat would be the effect of a nagging and discontented woman upon him? His health was daily failing-he wanted the gentlest treatment; and here was a headstrong and self-willed