times even find the author talking--of
scientific subjects in general. You will naturally conclude that it is
"all gross caricature." No; it is all promiscuous reading. Let me spare
you a long list of books consulted, and of newspapers and magazines
mutilated for "cuttings"--and appeal to examples once more, and for the
last time.

When "Mrs. Gallilee" wonders whether "Carmina has ever heard of
the Diathermancy of Ebonite," she is thinking of proceedings at a
conversazione in honour of Professor Helmholtz (reported in the _Times_
of April 12, 1881), at which "radiant energy" was indeed converted into
"sonorous vibrations." Again: when she contemplates taking part in
a discussion on Matter, she has been slily looking into Chambers's
Encyclopaedia, and has there discovered the interesting conditions on
which she can "dispense with the idea of atoms." Briefly, not a word of
my own invention occurs, when Mrs. Gallilee turns the learned side of
her character to your worships' view.

I have now only to add that the story has been subjected to careful
revision, and I hope to consequent improvement, in its present form of
publication. Past experience has shown me that you have a sharp eye for
slips of the pen, and that you thoroughly enjoy convicting a novelist,
by post, of having made a mistake. Whatever pains I may have taken to
disappoint you, it is quite likely that we may be again indebted to each
other on this occasion. So, to our infinite relief on either side, we
part friends after all.

W. C.

London: April 1883

CHAPTER I.

The weary old nineteenth century had advanced into the last twenty years
of its life.

Towards two o'clock in the afternoon, Ovid Vere (of the Royal College of
Surgeons) stood at the window of his consulting-room in London, looking
out at the summer sunshine, and the quiet dusty street.

He had received a warning, familiar to the busy men of our time--the
warning from overwrought Nature, which counsels rest after excessive
work. With a prosperous career before him, he had been compelled (at
only thirty-one years of age) to ask a colleague to take charge of his
practice, and to give the brain which he had cruelly wearied a rest of
some months to come. On the next day he had arranged to embark for the
Mediterranean in a friend's yacht.

An active man, devoted heart and soul to his profession, is not a man
who can learn the happy knack of being idle at a moment's notice. Ovid
found