tion in which she was utterly fit for nothing, except to go on a
Mediterranean cruise, with about eighty other people also fit for
nothing.

Mr. Rasselyer-Brown himself, though never exactly an invalid, had
confessed that after all the fuss of the Yahi-Bahi business he needed
bracing up, needed putting into shape, and had put himself into Dr.
Slyder's hands. The doctor had examined him, questioned him searchingly
as to what he drank, and ended by prescribing port wine to be taken
firmly and unflinchingly during the evening, and for the daytime, at
any moment of exhaustion, a light cordial such as rye whiskey, or rum
and Vichy water. In addition to which Dr. Slyder had recommended Mr.
Rasselyer-Brown to leave town.

"Why don't you go down to Nagahakett on the Atlantic?" he said.

"Is that in Maine?" said Mr. Rasselyer-Brown in horror.

"Oh, dear me, no!" answered the doctor reassuringly. "It's in New
Brunswick, Canada; excellent place, most liberal licence laws; first
class cuisine and a bar in the hotel. No tourists, no golf, too cold to
swim--just the place to enjoy oneself."

So Mr. Rasselyer-Brown had gone away also, and as a result Dulphemia
Rasselyer-Brown, at the particular moment of which we speak, was
declared by the Boudoir and Society column of the _Plutorian Daily
Dollar_ to be staying with Mr. and Mrs. Newberry at their charming
retreat, Castel Casteggio.

The Newberrys belonged to the class of people whose one aim in the
summer is to lead the simple life. Mr. Newberry himself said that his
one idea of a vacation was to get right out into the bush, and put on
old clothes, and just eat when he felt like it.

This was why he had built Castel Casteggio. It stood about forty miles
from the city, out among the wooded hills on the shore of a little
lake. Except for the fifteen or twenty residences like it that dotted
the sides of the lake it was entirely isolated. The only way to reach
it was by the motor road that wound its way among leafy hills from the
railway station fifteen miles away. Every foot of the road was private
property, as all nature ought to be. The whole country about Castel
Casteggio was absolutely primeval, or at any rate as primeval as Scotch
gardeners and French landscape artists could make it. The lake itself
lay like a sparkling gem from nature's workshop--except that they had
raised the level of it ten feet, stone-banked the sides, cleared out
the brush, and put a motor road round i