“I have grieved to see you looking so far from well, Mrs. McDermott,” he said, as he poured himself out another glass of wine. “My father was a doctor, and I suppose I caught the habit from him of reading the signs of health or sickness in people’s faces.” Mrs. McDermott was visibly discomposed. She was a great coward with regard to her health, and Tom knew it. “Yes,” she said, “I have not been well for some time past. But I was not aware that the traces of my indisposition were so plainly visible to others.” “They are visible to me because, as I tell you, I am half a doctor both by birth and bringing up. You seem to me, Mrs. McDermott, pardon me for saying so—to have been fading—to have been going backward, as it were, almost from the day of your arrival at Pincote.” Mrs. McDermott coughed and moved uneasily on her chair. “I have been a confirmed invalid for years,” she said, querulously, “and yet no one will believe me when, I tell them so.” “I can very readily believe it,” said Tom, gravely. Then he lapsed into an ominous silence. “I—I did not know that I was looking any worse now than when I first came to Pincote,” she said at last. “You seem to me to be much older-looking, much more careworn, with lines making their appearance round your eyes and mouth, such as I never noticed before. So, at least, it strikes me, but I may be, and I dare say I am, quite wrong.” The widow seemed at a loss what to say. Tom’s words had evidently rendered her very uneasy. “Then what would you advise me to do?” she said, after a time. “If you can detect the disease so readily, you should have no difficulty in specifying the remedy.” “Ah, now I am afraid you are getting beyond my depth,” said Tom, with a smile. “I am little more than a theorizer, you know; but I should have no hesitation in saying that your disorder is connected with the mind.” “Gracious me, Mr. Bristow!” “Yes, Mrs. McDermott, my opinion is that you are suffering from an undue development of brain power.” The widow looked puzzled. “I was always considered rather intellectual,” she said, with a glance at her brother. But the Squire still slept. “You are very intellectual, madam; and that is just where the evil lies.” “Excuse me, but I fail to follow you.” “You are gifted with a very large and a very powerful brain,” said Tom, with the utmost gravity. The Squire snorted suddenly in his sleep. The widow held up a warning finger. There was silence in the room till the Squire’s gentle long-drawn snores announced that he was again happily fast asleep. “Very few of us are so specially gifted,” resumed Tom. “But every special gift necessitates a special obligation in return. You, with your massive brain, must find that brain plenty of work to do—a sufficiency of congenial employment—otherwise it will inevitably turn upon itself, grow morbid and hypochondriacal, and slowly but surely deteriorate, till it ends by becoming—what I hardly like to say.”