uestioned and perhaps rated.
He was pleased to find that his mother seemed to have forgotten his
promise as much as he had, and to see her in the best of spirits with a
tableful of company.

"Oh, you have come," said she, presenting her cheek to her son; "I
thought that after all you might be detained by that mysterious case you
have at the hospital. Here's Dr. Rippon--and Julius too--dying to hear
all about it;" but she gave no hint of the serious conversation which
she said in her note she desired.

"Not I, Lady Lefevre," Julius protested. "I don't like medical
revelations; they make me feel as if I were sitting at the confessional
of mankind."

Noting by the way that Julius and his sister seemed much taken up with
each other, and that Julius, while as fascinating as ever, and as ready
and apt and intelligent of speech, seemed somewhat more chastened in
manner and less effervescent in health,--like a fire of coal that has
spent its gas and settled into a steady glow of heat,--he turned to Dr
Rippon, a tall, thin old gentleman of over seventy, but who yet had a
keen tongue, and a shrewd, critical eye. He had been an intimate friend
of the elder Lefevre, and the son greeted him with respect and
affection.

"Who is the gentleman?" said Dr Rippon, aside, when their greeting was
over. "It does an old man's heart good to see and hear him," and the old
doctor straightened himself. "But he'll get old too; that's the sad
thing, from my point of view, that such beauty of person and swift
intelligence of mind _must_ grow old and withered, and slow and dull.
What did you say his name is, John?"

"His name is Courtney--Julius Courtney," said Lefevre.

"Courtney," mused the old man, stroking his eyebrow; "I once knew a man
of that name, or, rather, who took that name. I wonder if this friend of
yours is of the same family; he is not unlike the man I knew."

"Oh," said Lefevre, immediately interested, "he may be of the same
family, but I don't know anything of his relations. Who was the man, may
I ask, that you knew?"

"Well," said the old gentleman, settling down to a story, which Lefevre
was sure would be full of interest and contemporary allusion, for the
old physician had in his time seen many men and many things--"it is a
romantic story in its way."

He was on the point of beginning it when dinner was announced.

"I should like to hear the story when we return to the drawing-room,"
said Lefevre.

Over dinner, Lef