must excuse my uncle, Sir
Everard," he added in a lower tone, drawing him a little towards the
door, "if his manners are a little gruff. He is devoted to Lady Dominey,
and I sometimes think that he broods over her case too much."

Dominey nodded and turned back into the room to find the doctor, his
hands in his old-fashioned breeches pockets, eyeing him steadfastly.

"I find it very hard to believe," he said a little curtly, "that you are
really Everard Dominey."

"I am afraid you will have to accept me as a fact, nevertheless."

"Your present appearance," the old man continued, eyeing him
appraisingly, "does not in any way bear out the description I had of you
some years ago. I was told that you had become a broken-down drunkard."

"The world is full of liars," Dominey said equably. "You appear to have
met with one, at least."

"You have not even," the doctor persisted, "the appearance of a man who
has been used to excesses of any sort."

"Good old stock, ours," his visitor observed carelessly. "Plenty of
two-bottle men behind my generation."

"You have also gained courage since the days when you fled from England.
You slept at the Hall last night?"

"Where else? I also, if you want to know, occupied my own
bedchamber--with results," Dominey added, throwing his head a little
back, to display the scar on his throat, "altogether insignificant."

"That's just your luck," the doctor declared. "You've no right to have
gone there without seeing me; no right, after all that has passed, to
have even approached your wife."

"You seem rather a martinet as regards my domestic affairs," Dominey
observed.

"That's because I know your history," was the blunt reply.

Uninvited Dominey seated himself in an easy-chair.

"You were never my friend, Doctor," he said. "Let me suggest that we
conduct this conversation on a purely professional basis."

"I was never your friend," came the retort, "because I have known you
always as a selfish brute; because you were married to the sweetest
woman on God's earth, gave up none of your bad habits, frightened her
into insanity by reeling home with another man's blood on your hands,
and then stayed away for over ten years instead of making an effort to
repair the mischief you had done."

"This," observed Dominey, "is history, dished up in a somewhat partial
fashion. I repeat my suggestion that we confine our conversation to the
professional."

"This is my house," the other rejo