sick, but relieved of a weight.  This, sir, is the rationale of the complaint; and it is to you I must look for the cure.  To judge from my other female patients, and from the few words Miss Lusignan has let fall, I fear we must not count on any very hearty co-operation from her:  but you are her father, and have great authority; I conjure you to use it to the full, as you once used it—­to my sorrow—­in this very room.  I am forgetting my character.  I was asked here only as her physician.  Good-evening.”

He gave a little gulp, and hurried away, with an abruptness that touched the father and offended the sapient daughter.

However, Mr. Lusignan followed him, and stopped him before he left the house, and thanked him warmly; and to his surprise, begged him to call again in a day or two.

“Well, Rosa, what do you say?”

“I say that I am very unfortunate in my doctors.  Mr. Wyman is a chatterbox and knows nothing.  Dr. Snell is Mr. Wyman’s echo.  Christopher is a genius, and they are always full of crotchets.  A pretty doctor!  Gone away, and not prescribed for me!”

Mr. Lusignan admitted it was odd.  “But, after all,” said he, “if medicine does you no good?”

“Ah! but any medicine he had prescribed would have done me good, and that makes it all the unkinder.”

“If you think so highly of his skill, why not take his advice?  It can do no harm.”

“No harm?  Why, if I was to leave them off I should catch a dreadful cold; and that would be sure to settle on my chest, and carry me off, in my present delicate state.  Besides, it is so unfeminine not to wear them.”

This staggered Mr. Lusignan, and he was afraid to press the point; but what Staines had said fermented in his mind.

Dr. Snell and Mr. Wyman continued their visits and their prescriptions.

The patient got a little worse.

Mr. Lusignan hoped Christopher would call again, but he did not.

When Dr. Staines had satisfied himself that the disorder was easily curable, then wounded pride found an entrance even into his loving heart.  That two strangers should have been consulted before him!  He was only sent for because they could not cure her.

As he seemed in no hurry to repeat his visit, Mr. Lusignan called on him, and said, politely, he had hoped to receive another call ere this.  “Personally,” said he, “I was much struck with your observations; but my daughter is afraid she will catch cold if she leaves off her corset, and that, you know, might be very serious.”

Dr. Staines groaned, and, when he had groaned, he lectured.  “Female patients are wonderfully monotonous in this matter; they have a programme of evasions; and whether the patient is a lady or a housemaid, she seldom varies from that programme.  You find her breathing life’s air with half a bellows, and you tell her so.  ‘Oh, no,’ says she; and does the gigantic feat of contraction we