’Why, Osborne, is it you?  I thought it was an old man of fifty loitering before me!  I didn’t know you had come back.’

‘Yes,’ said Osborne, ’I’ve been at home nearly ten days.  I daresay I ought to have called on your people, for I made a half promise to Mrs. Gibson to let her know as soon as I returned; but the fact is, I’m feeling very good-for-nothing,—­this air oppresses me; I could hardly breathe in the house, and yet I’m already tired with this short walk.’

’You’d better get home at once; and I’ll call and see you as I come back from Rowe’s.’

‘No, you mustn’t, on any account!’ said Osborne, hastily; my father is annoyed enough about my going from home, so often, he says, though it was six weeks.  He puts down all my languor to my having been away,—­he keeps the purse-strings, you know,’ he added, with a faint smile, ’and I’m in the unlucky position of a penniless heir, and I’ve been brought up so—­In fact, I must leave home from time to time, and, if my father gets confirmed in this notion of his that my health is worse for my absences, he will stop the supplies altogether.’

’May I ask where you do spend your time when you are not at Hamley Hall?’ asked Mr. Gibson, with some hesitation in his manner.

‘No!’ replied Osborne, reluctantly.  ’I will tell you this:—­I stay with friends in the country.  I lead a life which ought to be conducive to health, because it is thoroughly simple, rational, and happy.  And now I’ve told you more about it than my father himself knows.  He never asks me where I have been; and I shouldn’t tell him if he did—­at least, I think not.’

Mr. Gibson rode on by Osborne’s side, not speaking for a moment or two.

’Osborne, whatever scrapes you may have got into, I should advise your telling your father boldly out.  I know him; and I know he’ll be angry enough at first, but he’ll come round, take my word for it; and, somehow or another, he’ll find money to pay your debts and set you free, if it’s that kind of difficulty; and if it’s any other kind of entanglement, why still he’s your best friend.  It’s this estrangement from your father that’s telling on your health, I’ll be bound.’

‘No,’ said Osborne, ’I beg your pardon; but it’s not that; I am really out of order.  I daresay my unwillingness to encounter any displeasure from my father is the consequence of my indisposition; but I’ll answer for it, it is not the cause of it.  My instinct tells me there is something real the matter with me.’

‘Come, don’t be setting up your instinct against the profession,’ said Mr. Gibson, cheerily.  He dismounted, and throwing the reins of his horse round his arm, he looked at Osborne’s tongue and felt his pulse, asking him various questions.  At the end he said,—­

’We’ll soon bring you about, though I should like a little more quiet talk with you, without this tugging brute for a third.  If you’ll manage to ride over and lunch with us to-morrow, Dr Nicholls will be with us; he’s coming over to see old Rowe; and you shall have the benefit of the advice of two doctors instead of one.  Go home now, you’ve had enough exercise for the middle of a day as hot as this is.  And don’t mope in the house, listening to the maunderings of your stupid instinct.’