It began in a sufficiently curious way. It was not common then for girls of twenty-five or so to get engaged: we held that a girl ought to make a living for herself and have something to settle down upon before she looked about for a partner in life. But my mother, who was old-fashioned in some ways, had set her heart on my marrying young. Although I was aware of this, I did not connect it at all with the person of S—— (I will not give his real name), a gentleman of about forty whom my father picked up on the links one day and brought home to luncheon. He was evidently in very comfortable circumstances, and he had good manners and a good presence; in a word, I found it quite easy to get on with him. Only gradually, as his visits became more frequent and more extended, did I (as we used to say in those days) “tumble to the situation.” Some indefinable instinct, a legacy, as my doctors told me afterwards, from the days of marriage by capture, told me that he was beginning to take a more than casual interest in me. From that moment, I am sorry to say, I began to conceive the greatest possible distaste for him, and lost no opportunity of being away when he called, or of treating him with coldness when I was forced to be in the room with him. At last my mother tackled me directly. I told her the exact truth, that I had nothing whatever against him, and that he seemed to me well suited to make any woman happy and to help her forward in her career; but that I did not and could not feel any affection for him. My mother (I remember it all as if it were yesterday) knocked the ash off her cigar and said anxiously, “My dear, I don’t think you can be well. What’s wrong with seeing a doctor?” In those days, many families were still old-fashioned enough to have a doctor who not only diagnosed the presence of disease but went on to prescribe for it himself—very much as if you were to put a law case in the hands of a solicitor and he were to take your case into court and plead as counsel. We had already adopted the more modern method, and Dr. Shanks, our dear old family physician, never dreamt of doing more than telling you whether you “had a case” and recommending a suitable specialist to take it to. I went round to his house, where he looked at my tongue, X-rayed me, felt my pulse, took my reaction-times, and shook his head importantly. “I am afraid you are in for some trouble, Miss Winterhead,” he explained, “but I am not quite sure who is the best man to take it to. My feeling is that the nervous disorder is primary, and the organic only secondary, but on the whole it would be safest to start by seeing if we cannot attack the organic trouble first. I will make an appointment for you with Sir Alexander Rymer; and if there is any man who can keep you out of the hands of the nerve-doctors, he will.” With a few reassuring words he showed me out, and I awaited Sir Alexander’s verdict.