He asked question on question:  but Elsley gave such unsatisfactory answers, that Lucia had to detail everything afresh for him, with—­“You know, Mr. Thurnall, he is always overtasking his brain, and will never confess himself ill,”—­and all a woman’s anxious comments.

Rogue Tom knew all the while well enough what was the cause:  but he saw, too, that Elsley was very ill.  He felt that he must have the matter out at once; and, by a side glance, sent the obedient Lucia out of the room to get a table-spoonful of brandy.

“Now, my dear sir, that we are alone,” began he blandly.

“Now, sir!” answered Vavasour, springing off the sofa, his whole pent-up wrath exploding in hissing steam, the moment the safety-valve was lifted.  “Now, sir!  What—­what is the meaning of this insolence, this intrusion?”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Vavasour,” answered Tom, rising, in a tone of bland and stolid surprise.

“What do you want here, with your mummery and medicine, when you know the cause of my malady well enough already?  Go, sir! and leave me to myself.”

“My dear sir,” said Tom firmly, “you seem to have forgotten what passed between us this morning.”

“Will you insult me beyond endurance?” cried Elsley.

“I told you that, as long as you chose, you were Elsley Vavasour, and I the country doctor.  We have met in that character.  Why not sustain it?  You are really ill; and if I know the cause, I am all the more likely to know the cure.”

“Cure?”

“Why not?  Believe me, it is in your power to become a much happier man, simply by becoming a healthier one.”

“Impertinence!”

“Pish!  What can I gain by being impertinent, sir?  I know very well that you have received a severe shock; but I know equally well, that if you were as you ought to be, you would not feel it in this way.  When one sees a man in the state of prostration in which, you are, common sense tells one that the body must have been neglected, for the mind to gain such power over it.”

Elsley replied with a grunt; but Tom went on, bland and imperturbable.

“Believe me, it may be a very materialist view of things:  but fact is fact—­the corpus sanum is father to the mens sana—­tonics and exercise make the ills of life look marvellously smaller.  You have the frame of a strong and active man; and all you want to make you light-hearted and cheerful, is to develop what nature has given you.”

“It is too late,” said Elsley, pleased, as most men are, by being told that they might be strong and active.

“Not in the least.  Three months would strengthen your muscles, open your chest again, settle your digestion, and make you as fresh as a lark, and able to sing like one.  Believe me, the poetry would be the better for it, as well as the stomach.  Now, positively, I shall begin questioning you.”

So Elsley was won to detail the symptoms of internal malaise, which he was only too much in the habit of watching himself; but there were some among them which Tom could not quite account for on the ground of mere effeminate habits.  A thought struck him.