"By Jove! Can it be that I am a victim of it too? It looks confoundedly like it, although even my sweet little Puritan has not felt it a sin against her conscience to keep me in the dark." He thrust his fingers with an impatient gesture through his hair. "Now I come to think of it, the case grows deucedly clear. The South of France one winter and Florida this! Simple nervous prostration would seem to the uninitiated better fought in the exhilirating ozone of Colorado, or--the North Pole--than in this languorous atmosphere. 'An inherited tendency.' Is this the pleasant little legacy which my respected ancestor has bequeathed to his only grandson? It skipped the Judge, but it caught poor Uncle Lenox, and now it has nabbed me! What a fool I have been not to surmise what this confounded pain meant between my shoulders! Grandfather Hildreth kept himself alive with nostrums until he was seventy, but he was an invalid all his life. He ought to be cursed for his contemptible selfishness in bringing so much suffering upon the race! There's none of the taint about Evadne, bless her! Russe told me the Hospital examiners said they had never passed such a perfect specimen of health." He stopped suddenly and bit his lips in pain. Would he not follow his grandfather's example--if he had the chance? "What in the world is the meaning of all this?" Louis had arrived by an earlier train than he was expected and only his mother was at home to greet him. The hall was in confusion, workmen's tools lay about and ladders stood against the walls. Mrs. Hildreth laughed lightly, as she laid her hand within her son's arm. "Oh, they are only getting ready for the floral decorations," she said, "we give a reception to-morrow in honor of your return. How well you are looking, Louis. I am so delighted to have you at home." "Thanks, lady mother. I do not need to ask how you have survived my absence. How is Evadne,--and the Judge and the girls?" His mother laughed again as she drew him on the sofa beside her. She seemed in wonderfully good humor. "Rather a comprehensive question," she said. "Sit down and we will have a comfortable talk before the others get home. Your father looks wretchedly but he says there is nothing the matter. I suppose it is just overwork and the usual money strain. Isabelle too is not as well as I should like her to be. Suffers from nervousness a great deal, and depression. There is a new physician here now, a Doctor Randolph, who we think is going to help her, although he is very young; but she took a dislike to Doctor Russe because he belongs to the old school. And now I have a surprise for you. Marion is engaged!" "Engaged! Why, you never hinted at it in your letters!" "It has all been very sudden. I wrote you there was a young New Yorker very attentive to her." "Yes, but that is an old story. There were two fellows 'very attentive' when I went away. How long since the present devotion culminated?"