aid. "I think I can supply it, from the result of
my own professional experience. Before I say what I have to say, Mr.
Delamayn will perhaps excuse me, if I venture on giving him a caution to
control himself."

"Are _you_ going to make a dead set at me, too?" inquired Geoffrey.

"I am recommending you to keep your temper--nothing more. There are
plenty of men who can fly into a passion without doing themselves any
particular harm. You are not one of them."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't think the state of your health, Mr. Delamayn, is quite so
satisfactory as you may be disposed to consider it yourself."

Geoffrey turned to his admirers and adherents with a roar of derisive
laughter. The admirers and adherents all echoed him together. Arnold
and Blanche smiled at each other. Even Sir Patrick looked as if he
could hardly credit the evidence of his own ears. There stood the modern
Hercules, self-vindicated as a Hercules, before all eyes that looked at
him. And there, opposite, stood a man whom he could have killed with one
blow of his fist, telling him, in serious earnest, that he was not in
perfect health!

"You are a rare fellow!" said Geoffrey, half in jest and half in anger.
"What's the matter with me?"

"I have undertaken to give you, what I believe to be, a necessary
caution," answered the surgeon. "I have _not_ undertaken to tell
you what I think is the matter with you. That may be a question for
consideration some little time hence. In the meanwhile, I should like
to put my impression about you to the test. Have you any objection to
answer a question on a matter of no particular importance relating to
yourself?"

"Let's hear the question first."

"I have noticed something in your behavior while Sir Patrick was
speaking. You are as much interested in opposing his views as any of
those gentlemen about you. I don't understand your sitting in
silence, and leaving it entirely to the others to put the case on your
side--until Sir Patrick said something which happened to irritate you.
Had you, all the time before that, no answer ready in your own mind?"

"I had as good answers in my mind as any that have been made here
to-day."

"And yet you didn't give them?"

"No; I didn't give them."

"Perhaps you felt--though you knew your objections to be good ones--that
it was hardly worth while to take the trouble of putting them into
words? In short, you let your friends answer for you, rather than make
the effo