“You see, if any of you had taken up the study from pure philan-thropy, as some people do—-well, at any rate in George Macdonald’s novels-—it would have been the very qualification.  But I had little hope from the time that the fortune came.  I dreamt the first night that Midas had turned the whole of you to gold statues, and that I was wandering about like the Princess Paribanou to find the Magnum Bonum to disenchant you.”

“It has come pretty true,” said Allen thoughtfully, “that inheritance did us all a great deal of mischief.”

“And it took a greater magnum bonum, a maximum bonum, to disenchant us,” said Armine.

“Which I fear did not come from me,” said his mother, “and I am most grateful to the dear people who applied it to you.  I wish I saw my way to the disenchantment of the other two!”

“I suppose you quite despaired till John took his turn in that direction,” said Allen.  “Bobus could really have done better than any of us, I fancy, but he would not have fulfilled the religious condition, as sine qua non.”

“Bobus is not really cleverer than Jock,” said Armine.

“Yet the Skipjack seemed the most improbable one of all,” said his mother.  “I wish he were not deprived of it, after all!”

“Perhaps he is not,” said Armine.  “He told me he had been comparing the MS. notes with Dr. Ruthven’s published paper, and he thought my father saw farther into the capabilities.”

“Well, he will do right with it.  I am thankful to leave it in such hands as his and the Monk’s.”

“Then it was this,” continued Allen, “that was the key to poor Janet’s history.  I suppose she hoped to qualify herself when she was madly set on going to Zurich.”

“Though I told her I could never commit it to her; but she knew just enough to make that wretched man fancy it a sort of quack secret, and he managed to persuade her that he had real ability to pursue the discovery for her.  Poor Janet! it has been no magnum bonum to her, I fear.  If I could only know where she is.”

A civil, but not a very eager note came in reply to John from Dr. Ruthven, making the appointment, but so dispassionately that he might fairly be supposed to expect little from the interview.

However, they came home more than satisfied.  Perhaps in the interim Dr. Ruthven had learnt what manner of young men they were, and the honours they had won, for he had received them very kindly, and had told them how a conversation with Joseph Brownlow had put him on the scent of what he had since gradually and experimentally worked out, and so fully proved to himself, that he had begun treatment on that basis, and with success, though he had only as yet brought a portion of his fellow physicians to accept his system.

Lucas had then explained as much as was needful, and shown him the notes.  He read with increasing eagerness, and presently they saw his face light up, and with his finger on the passage they had expected, he said, “This is just what I wanted.  Why did I not think of it before?” and asked permission to copy the passage.