urned. Tom Ryfe, worried,
agitated, unable to rest where he was, resolved that he would take his
carriage exercise without delay, and to the housemaid's astonishment,
indeed much against her protest, ordered a hansom cab to the door at
once.

Though so weak he could not dress without assistance, he no sooner
found himself on the move, and out of doors, than he began to feel
stronger and better; he had no object in driving beyond change of
scene, air, and exercise; but it will not surprise those who have
suffered from the cruel thirst and longing which accompanies such
mental maladies as his, that he should have directed the cabman to
proceed to Berners Street.

It sometimes happens that when we thus "draw a bow at a venture" our
random shaft hits the mark we might have aimed at for an hour in
vain. Tom Ryfe esteemed it an unlooked-for piece of good fortune that
turning out of Oxford Street he should meet another hansom going at
speed in an opposite direction, and containing--yes, he could have
sworn to them before any jury in England--the faces, very near each
other, of Lady Bearwarden and Dick Stanmore.

It was enough. Dorothea's statement seemed sufficiently corroborated,
and after proceeding to the number she indicated, as if to satisfy
himself that the house had not walked bodily away, Mr. Ryfe returned
home very much benefited in his own opinion by the drive, though the
doctor, visiting his patient next day, was disappointed to find him
still low and feverish, altogether not so much better as he expected.

CHAPTER XXII

"NOT FOR JOSEPH"

But Dick Stanmore was _not_ in a hansom with Lady Bearwarden. Shall
I confess, to the utter destruction of his character for undying
constancy, that he did not wish to be?

Dick had been cured at last--cured of the painful disease he once
believed mortal--cured by a course of sanitary treatment, delightful
in its process, unerring in its results; and he walked about now with
the buoyant step, the cheerful air of one who has been lightened of a
load lying next his heart.

Medical discoveries have of late years brought into vogue a science of
which I have borrowed the motto for these volumes. _Similia similibus
curantur_ is the maxim of homoeopathy; and whatever success this
healing principle may obtain with bodily ailments, I have little doubt
of its efficacy in affections of the heart. I do not mean to say
its precepts will render us invulnerable or immortal. T